How hard is Engineering compared to HSC (1 Viewer)

[turntaker]

Hi guys, How hard is Engineering really.
I have heard people saying you won't have any social life and stuff like that.

How is it compared to doing your HSC with my subjects listed in my signature.

I am not really afraid of being challenged but just wanted to have some idea on the difficulty.

 

[Squar3root]

Significantly harder

In general, all university courses are harder than the HSC

 

[turntaker]

Significantly harder

In general, all university courses are harder than the HSC

rip me

 

[Amundies]

Hi guys, How hard is Engineering really.
I have heard people saying you won't have any social life and stuff like that.

How is it compared to doing your HSC with my subjects listed in my signature.

I am not really afraid of being challenged but just wanted to have some idea on the difficulty.

It's hard to have a social life as good as someone who does, say, Arts or Commerce. But you can still have a social life. First year uni isn't TOO hard imo (this is obviously subjective), but after first year it really does pick up no matter how hard/easy you found first year.

 

[turntaker]

It's hard to have a social life as good as someone who does, say, Arts or Commerce. But you can still have a social life. First year uni isn't TOO hard imo (this is obviously subjective), but after first year it really does pick up no matter how hard/easy you found first year.

Commerce lol

 

[D94]

It should be expected and well established that 'higher/tertiary education' is harder than secondary education. Your HSC courses are not even comparable.

Each semester of uni builds up on the previous semester or year. Each university year is like a jump from high school to university. University is meant for the brightest students. Universities are a place for intellect, research and innovation. How can you have that if the standard is as low as the HSC? Please think about it logically.

But why is the metric of difficulty a consideration in doing engineering or any degree for that matter? You don't learn by doing things on the same level. You may eventually build a rocket and that may seem a lifetime away of learning, but it's not as if university will expect you to do that when you are in your first year.

Also, difficulty is relative. There is no objective answer.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Well university is a completely different ballgame and can't be compared to HSC. How can a study over the course of roughly 14 months be compared to 2 blocks of 4 months of study?

University is a lot more fast paced. Back in HSC it was easy to make comprehensive notes and revise everything daily and spend a long time on the same content. University will pretty much speed through content and you'll have to apply your studies outside of class quite a bit. As a result, it isn't that easy to make notes.

Personally if I need notes, I use the lecture slides. If I don't understand something, I set myself my OWN homework which can vary from the textbook, to tutorials, to laboratory work, etc (note the "own" because you aren't forced to do much by others). If I want to revise, I just read over lecture content and do my own work/questions.

See how much more different this is to HSC? There's a lot more relying on your application to your own learning and understanding.

 

[engineering]

It is a bit like asking "how much harder is high school compared to primary school"

One of the biggest issues is the change in style from high school to uni. You are now an adult, and have to live with the consequences of your actions (eg dont turn up to lectures, or dont do your reading in advance (ie "homework")) then the only person to blame is yourself.

You are potentially an anonymous person in lecture of 500 rather than an individual in a school class of 30.

You have a lot of other "distractions" that you may not have had at school (a part time job, a drivers license, alcohol, girlfriend/boyfriend, adult responsibilities).

 

[such_such]

Engo: Study smart not hard.

 

[astroman]

im guessing the difficulty of the course varies from uni to uni?

 

[MascaraOfIce]

To add to all this amazing collective advice.

In HSC, you're doing subjects that you may or may NOT enjoy such as HSC English or the HSC Chemistry course (it's very socioeconomical) etc.

At University, you (generally) are expected to do a course that you find interesting/good at/motivated to do and hence you're there to gain skills and learn. The vision is very different and therefore your study habits and perception of workload varies.

In the HSC, you have a lot of time to do a limited of content over 14 months. There is ridiculous amount of resources in these 14 months such as tutors and notes that have completely mastered the HSC Content. So you basically have to master this amount of content over this time. Since it's very competitive and rank is important, along with everyone having the same resources, the whole scheme of "doing well" is changed.

Now if you compare this to University, you can't say "Uni content > HSC content" therefore Uni is harder. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

 

[Queenroot]

im guessing the difficulty of the course varies from uni to uni?

Not really

 

[Amundies]

Not really

Yeah what she said. Thermodynamics is thermodynamics no matter where you study it, it has the same rules at MQ as it does at USYD. Same for all other physics, chemistry and maths (which is what engineering is).

 

[Silly Sausage]

Yeah what she said. Thermodynamics is thermodynamics no matter where you study it, it has the same rules at MQ as it does at USYD. Same for all other physics, chemistry and maths (which is what engineering is).

Sorry for reviving an old thread but can you imagine if the laws of physics changed depending on which uni you went to

 

[Amundies]

Sorry for reviving an old thread but can you imagine if the laws of physics changed depending on which uni you went to

Well gravity changes depending on where the uni is located so... close enough?

 

[TheBondiTutor]

Engineering / Mathematics Graduate here.

I get what you're saying. You're probably studying harder than you ever have your entire life. You probably asked this question because your afraid that your workload is only going to increase later this year and it's already bad enough as it is. You're biggest fear is probably wondering when will the "end" finally come where you no longer need to worry about assignments, exams, homework etc.

If this is you then I have some good news for you, it gets better after the HSC.

To answer your question, is engineering harder than the HSC, absolutely but not in the way that you think. What you need to understand is that the HSC is your first ever experience of a major event that you have to prepare for with real world consequences. From here on in you get much better at dealing with this.

Is the content harder? Yeah sure it is, but you have a lot more tools to help you out. There a lot of advantages that you will have e.g. you will only do 4 subjects every six months and most of them don't need you to remember what you did the year before. You won't be in class for 7 hours a day 5 days a week. You may have the odd day or two with terrible 12 hours worth of lectures but you will rarely have that more than once in your degree.

Engineering is definitely not an easy thing to do, but I would argue that it's easier for an engineering student to go through an engineering degree than for a HSC student to go through the HSC. It's not a walk in the park but you won't have that sense of dread a lot of HSC student's get this time of year.

Take things one step at a time, Good luck

 

[sinophile]

id say its like 3-4 times harder than the hsc

engineering is no walk in the park. if youre not a quality student youll get weeded out eventually.