UNSW Subject Reviews. (5 Viewers)

[Recondit]

CVEN1300: Engineering Mechanics for Civil Engineers
Ease: 8.5/10
This course, from what I have understood, underpins most of the advanced civil engineering units so this is where you should try to understand the content as much as you can. The course is divided into a two sections: statics for 8 weeks and dynamics for the remainder 4 weeks, so content is roughly 65% statics and 35% dynamics. I think it is ideal to get a textbook for statics, not so much for dynamics as a bare minimum. The majority of this course involves calculations of axial force members in trusses and other systems, devising AFDs, SFDs and BMDs, centroids and second moment of areas of different shapes, projectile motion, rectilinear and curvilinear motion and conservation of energy which are not so hard to understand. The assessment of this course is divided as follows: 10% Quiz 1, 10% Quiz 2, 10% Tutorial homework check and 70% Final exam. In all the exams, they give plenty of time to finish and the tutorial component is an easy 10%, they would really only check if you have attempted the question or even if you have just attended the tutorial. They introduced this semester a 2 bonus mark assignment which is additive to the final mark, where for me, you attended a demonstration during a lecture, a truss system is demonstrated with different applied loadings and the corresponding strains (change in lengths) of each truss member were recorded to determine the theoretical and experimental axial force of each member and whether they were in compression or tension. This was quite interesting as well, as you see the calculations you have learnt get applied to practical situations, with fluctuations in results due to variable factors.

Lecturer (Statics): 8/10 (Hamed)
Hamed left a lot of holes in the lecture notes as an incentive for people to come. He is very informed in the field of statics but I don't think he is particularly engaging... Especially in the afternoon at 4 to 6. He answers all queries to the fullest, and sometimes you can get information out of that. I was able to grasp more on the content in my tutorials than I did here, the lectures were more of a foundation towards learning the content so to speak.

Lecturer (Dynamics): 9/10 (Kellermann)
Kellermann's lectures were very engaging and the lecture slides felt very complete and concise. He has a slight British accent and his voice is very permeating so I was very hooked on the content while I attended the lectures, in comparison to Hamed. A fair bit of the component comes from PHYS1121/PHYS1131 which is a pre-requisite of this course, so it is refreshing after having learnt new content in statics.

Tutorial: 9/10 (Walker)
Every tutorial has a predefined structure: (1) Questions which tutor solves at the beginning, (2) Questions to be done during the tutorial and if there is time will be gone through and worked out, and also (3) Homework questions for next week's tutorial which are marked on attempts. I had two tutors, originally one but classes were combined I think due to the initially small classes. The other tutor I forgot his name. Both tutors were 3rd/4th year UNSW students so the tutorials were quite engaging to be honest. When explaining each step, they would always emphasise viable shortcuts in answering questions and with previous experience of doing the course, they provided hints for exam techniques or topics which may need more attention to others. Most queries were answered on the spot with conciseness and some more advanced queries understandably left to the next week. I guess not the most knowledgeable of tutors in terms of academic qualifications, but it is worth reiterating that they were engaging and made content much easier to delve into. It also helped that the tutorials were during the day and not in the afternoon like lectures were (probably will need to get used to that with future CVEN units).

Overall: 8.5/10
Course was not chunky in any aspect, straightforward exam layout and assigned assessment weightings. This course may as well decide whether you want to further pursue in the field of civil engineering as well. A personal preference for me is for the lectures to be slightly earlier, and this can be echoed by others in the course since probably only around 50 of 115 people attended the lectures. I really liked how they introduced the 2 bonus point assignment, as it incorporates a pseudo-practical, provides incentive, and also allows us to get the hang of handing in assignments (note that this is a 1st year course/elective). Make sure you attend the tutorials and understand the method of calculating the basic questions. The final exam has 6 questions and you get to choose 5 to solve which makes things a lot easier. If you are fairly confident in solving all tutorial and exam questions, it is virtually a guaranteed high distinction. That was not the case for me though, I still have nightmares regarding SFDs and BMDs in complex systems - How they manage to write solutions for those questions with minimal working out still baffles me.

 

[anomalousdecay]

easy marks make sure you know what you are doing or try to find AD to come and help you

I should be a lab demo.

 

[RenegadeMx]

Math2011 - Several Variable Calculus

Ease 8/10, after final 5/10- moving on from the calculus u are used to into 2+ dimensions, aswell as vector calculus tisdell has 150 videos on this, however the last few sections he doesnt cover in his vids. Alot of integration, double, triple, line integrals...
Content 6/10 - some parts are interesting, but overall pretty dry and alot of mechanical computations of questions- easy to make mistakes which fuck up the whole question, not as fun compared to other math courses
Lecturers Voineagu 6/10 - alot of worked examples, chill guy just kept writing for the whole lecture, explained some things, overall pretty average
Macnamara:1/10 - shit notes, takes 30mins to explain a thereom yet u still dont understand, uses very basic questions. I normally dont skip lectures but I started after a few lecturers since he took over, out of a class of 110~ only 8-10 came to the last lecture.
Tutor Voineagu 7/10 - did core questions explained them well, best part is finishes 15mins early and just walks out of the room
Overall 5/10 not as fun as other math courses, and is only made worse by the shit delivery for this year, can tell since average for class tests was 10-11/20 compared to 15/20 for algebra.

Math2501 - Linear Algebra
Ease 9/10 - once you get used to the core questions, it becomes hard to fail- they give u 2 bonus marks per test(which saved my 20 mark), and they offer a repeat test with a cap on 15
Content 9/10 - you think math1231 algebra was shit?, well this course successfully shows you the proper uses of vector spaces, linear transformations as well as eigenvalues/vectors. The Jordan Matrix was pretty fun aswell, as well as solving differential equations via matrices
LecturersAngell: 9/10 - he is just not as entertaining as Brown, still overall gives really good explanations.
Brown: 10/10, the rule with Brown is, if he has a lecture at midnight you still go since nothing beats the experience, you can read other reviews to back this up, apparently he lurks these forums every now n then.
Tutor Brown: 10/10 - as above, gives nice shortcuts regarding questions, in particular finding eigenvalues/vectors really fast, makes 9am friday morning tutorials enjoyable
Overall 9/10 - course is well executed, one of my favourite math subjects taken so far, plus always good to have a cheeky nandos with peter.

Math2801 - Theory of Statistics
Ease 5/10 then 9/10 - It takes a while to understand statistics, since this will be the first major course regarding statistics(no the probability in 12x1 doesnt come close), once you get the key ideas in statistics it becomes pretty simple. Both assignments were simple, the midsem test was much easier than expected (which caught alot of people offguard), finals this year was harder but high marks are attainable
Content 7/10, Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis testing were pretty interesting, otherwise not much to say.
Lecturer - Combe 9/10: Has nice notes, explains things really really well, and takes things slow(which I personally like), is pretty helpful at consultations as well.
Tutor - Forgot name, had American Accent 9/10: Just sit and doze off while she writes up all the answers. If you listen carefully, you will understand how to do the more complicated things aswell, was a fun hour every friday.
Overall 8/10 - good introduction to statistics, teaches you how to use R which might be useful later on.

Edst2003 - Introductory perspectives in Teaching/Learning
Ease 8/10 - assignments are easy, personal reflection as well as a lesson plan adjustment, No need for extra research, they specifically want you to use readings from course, which makes it easier for lazy people like me
Content 8/10 - Finally an education course which moves away from the obviousness of teaching, teaches you a lot about literacy/language/numeracy regardless of what teaching stream you are in. Teachers a few good tips which will help you later in the practicals.
Lecturer Morsy 7/10- seemed to engage other people well, i usually just slept in the lectures, lectures finished early usually whcih was always nice
Tutor Whittle 9/10 - Explains the lecture in much more detail during tutorials, helped alot with the assignments, was pretty engaging and overall nice tutor.
Overall 8/10 better than the first year education courses.

Edst2044 - Motivation in Teaching/Learning (Summer)
Ease 9/10 - assignments were generally easy to score high in, plus lecturer explained the marking criteria really well
Content 10/10(teaching) 8/10 (gen ed) - Alot of different thereoms regarding motivating yourself as well as others, really useful even if you are not going into teaching as connections are made in other areas, such as business etc. Highly recommend this course as an elective, even if you're not in teaching.
Lecturer Mansour 10/10 - was a while back so dont remember details much, but she knows her shit well, whilst also being very engaging and helpful in all areas. Shows how to apply the theory in actual practical applications, and I personally have tested them and they do work well.
Tutor Mansour 10/10 - as above
Overall 10/10 - Truly one of the best courses I have taken, the knowledge gained from this course is valuable and can help in all areas of your life.

 

[Menomaths]

Math2011 - Several Variable Calculus

Ease 8/10, after final 5/10- moving on from the calculus u are used to into 2+ dimensions, aswell as vector calculus tisdell has 150 videos on this, however the last few sections he doesnt cover in his vids. Alot of integration, double, triple, line integrals...
Content 6/10 - some parts are interesting, but overall pretty dry and alot of mechanical computations of questions- easy to make mistakes which fuck up the whole question, not as fun compared to other math courses
Lecturers Voineagu 6/10 - alot of worked examples, chill guy just kept writing for the whole lecture, explained some things, overall pretty average
Macnamara:1/10 - shit notes, takes 30mins to explain a thereom yet u still dont understand, uses very basic questions. I normally dont skip lectures but I started after a few lecturers since he took over, out of a class of 110~ only 8-10 came to the last lecture.
Tutor Voineagu 7/10 - did core questions explained them well, best part is finishes 15mins early and just walks out of the room
Overall 5/10 not as fun as other math courses, and is only made worse by the shit delivery for this year, can tell since average for class tests was 10-11/20 compared to 15/20 for algebra.

Math2501 - Linear Algebra
Ease 9/10 - once you get used to the core questions, it becomes hard to fail- they give u 2 bonus marks per test(which saved my 20 mark), and they offer a repeat test with a cap on 15
Content 9/10 - you think math1231 algebra was shit?, well this course successfully shows you the proper uses of vector spaces, linear transformations as well as eigenvalues/vectors. The Jordan Matrix was pretty fun aswell, as well as solving differential equations via matrices
LecturersAngell: 9/10 - he is just not as entertaining as Brown, still overall gives really good explanations.
Brown: 10/10, the rule with Brown is, if he has a lecture at midnight you still go since nothing beats the experience, you can read other reviews to back this up, apparently he lurks these forums every now n then.
Tutor Brown: 10/10 - as above, gives nice shortcuts regarding questions, in particular finding eigenvalues/vectors really fast, makes 9am friday morning tutorials enjoyable
Overall 9/10 - course is well executed, one of my favourite math subjects taken so far, plus always good to have a cheeky nandos with peter.

Math2801 - Theory of Statistics
Ease 5/10 then 9/10 - It takes a while to understand statistics, since this will be the first major course regarding statistics(no the probability in 12x1 doesnt come close), once you get the key ideas in statistics it becomes pretty simple. Both assignments were simple, the midsem test was much easier than expected (which caught alot of people offguard), finals this year was harder but high marks are attainable
Content 7/10, Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis testing were pretty interesting, otherwise not much to say.
Lecturer - Combe 9/10: Has nice notes, explains things really really well, and takes things slow(which I personally like), is pretty helpful at consultations as well.
Tutor - Forgot name, had American Accent 9/10: Just sit and doze off while she writes up all the answers. If you listen carefully, you will understand how to do the more complicated things aswell, was a fun hour every friday.
Overall 8/10 - good introduction to statistics, teaches you how to use R which might be useful later on.

Edst2003 - Introductory perspectives in Teaching/Learning
Ease 8/10 - assignments are easy, personal reflection as well as a lesson plan adjustment, No need for extra research, they specifically want you to use readings from course, which makes it easier for lazy people like me
Content 8/10 - Finally an education course which moves away from the obviousness of teaching, teaches you a lot about literacy/language/numeracy regardless of what teaching stream you are in. Teachers a few good tips which will help you later in the practicals.
Lecturer Morsy 7/10- seemed to engage other people well, i usually just slept in the lectures, lectures finished early usually whcih was always nice
Tutor Whittle 9/10 - Explains the lecture in much more detail during tutorials, helped alot with the assignments, was pretty engaging and overall nice tutor.
Overall 8/10 better than the first year education courses.

Edst2044 - Motivation in Teaching/Learning (Summer)
Ease 9/10 - assignments were generally easy to score high in, plus lecturer explained the marking criteria really well
Content 10/10(teaching) 8/10 (gen ed) - Alot of different thereoms regarding motivating yourself as well as others, really useful even if you are not going into teaching as connections are made in other areas, such as business etc. Highly recommend this course as an elective, even if you're not in teaching.
Lecturer Mansour 10/10 - was a while back so dont remember details much, but she knows her shit well, whilst also being very engaging and helpful in all areas. Shows how to apply the theory in actual practical applications, and I personally have tested them and they do work well.
Tutor Mansour 10/10 - as above
Overall 10/10 - Truly one of the best courses I have taken, the knowledge gained from this course is valuable and can help in all areas of your life.

fml should've done algebra instead of calc

 

[trapizi]

MGMT1001: Managing Organisation and People
Ease: 3/10 - hard and ambiguous assignments.
Content: 6/10- content is very interesting and could be better used in Business Psychology
Lecturer: Dr. B (7/10)- The way he taught the content was fun and ok imo. But then he kept focus on telling his stories and chicken chow mein rather than teaching the materials.
Tutor: 2/10 I'd prefer not to reveal his name. Bored, slow, usually taught something off the topic.
Overall: 0/10 WORST COURSE EVER! It's not like what you think it is. If you have to take this course as it's compulsory, I highly recommend you taking this course in your last year. For those who can choose this course as an elective, just stay far away.

INFS1603- Business Database
Ease 7/10 - Group assignments are fairly challenging but then they were rewarding at the end. Be sure to know your teammates really well because mine fked up in the last minute. Quizzes were ok. Exam was far easy than what I expected. Hoping a low HD.
Content 7/10 - The content in the lecture were too technical for people who have not used database before. But then they reflected business practices and model which is very useful in high courses. SQL was interesting but then I was disappointed because the exam had no SQL. If you had some experience with database, 2 nights cramming before the exam will ensure a Credit or better a D!
Lecturer 7/10 Daniel- not very engaging and no sense of humor but then he explained stuff clearly and very straightforward, enthusiast and always helped his students whenever he could. His lecture slides are not very useful...but then the exercises were nice.
Tutor 10/10 Katie - Very engaging and explained content and SQL well.
Overall 8/10 Great course for those who wants to have a solid base knowledge in database or majoring IT.

 

[Queenroot]

ANAT2111:

Ease: Overall 8.5/10 if you put the required effort in

- Mini lab tests: These are pretty straight forward but usually a few labels are taken out of the lecture slides too. So if you really want a HD, make sure you study both terms in the lectures and labs.
- Spot test 1: Relatively alright. Make sure you study the theory from lectures as it is briefly tested. Make use of time in your labs by identifying structures in cadavers and less time on plastic models.
- Spot test 2: This one was quite easy. Make sure you really use your time to learn how the blood vessels and plexuses look on the cadavers as this is probably the only questions that are remotely difficult. Read up on a bit of theory if you want a HD.
- Final Exam: Pretty straightforward in terms of multiple choice, a lot of "choose the correct answer questions". Short answer quite easy too (Questions where you fill in the blanks). Hardest was probably long answer as you don't know how specific or vague to be. There's a really horrible picture of a totally anatomically incorrect diagram of something (e.g. arm muscles/origin/insertions, nerves/innervations, the brain/functional regions) legit looks like it's been taken off wordart and you have to label it and state each label's function/give description.

Content: 9/10

Although it states this course is "Introductory" it does go into quite a bit of depth. The bones/joints/muscles are quite bland but most of the visceral stuff is awesome. It's great if you love poking around with dead bodies and discovering how everything works. I would say it's a pretty solid course.

Lecturer: 4/10

I didn't attend half the lectures. I have not seen someone make Anatomy so bland. Although he does know his stuff.

Tutor: 9.5/10

I had Fleur. She is really really good and clarifies everything. Legit if you listen to her you are well on your way to a distinction. Only bad thing is she tends to drag on a little too long.

 

[Queenroot]

ANAT2241:

Ease: 9/10

- Mid sem prac/spot test: Quite easy, identifying structures from slides that you've done in the labs. Just focus on those and know all the features and maybe some brief functions of these.
- Mid sem theory exam: MC should be straightforward if you've studied the theory. Short answer questions are usually something like compare/contrast stuff so should be all good if you know the histological features. (NO DRAWINGS INVOLVED - just writing).
- Final prac/spot test: Similar to the midsem except you really need to focus on the EM stuff because it can be tricky to distinguish them.
- Final theory exam: There are 4 questions asking you to write some "brief notes on histology of ______". This is a little confusing as you have to write their functions too and you don't know how vague/specific to be. But I'd say focus on the histological aspects more. There are 2 drawings that you need to do which must be correctly labelled with all features, and I suggest drawing EVERYTHING as they could ask you to draw even the things you wouldn't expect (if you would like some drawings/tips then you can PM me). There are 2 compare/contrast tables that you are required to do which are usually the most time consuming, I would say do this part first.


Content: 10/10

I find histology really interesting. Once you are able to identify all the nitty gritty stuff it's really awesome to see how everything works at a tissue level. The theory is relatively mediocre and easily doable. Very solid and structured course, if you put in the effort you will become an expert at Histology.

Lecturer: 9/10

Patrick is a solid lecturer although he doesn't touch as much theory in the lectures as he does in the notes. However the notes are very useful and he has written them nicely so you don't need to make any.
There's some other lecturer you have for like one week (the neuro stuff) 1/10 I didn't understand him.

Tutor: 9.5/10

Jessica Lazarus knows her stuff really well, she is very helpful and gives you great tips on everything. Make sure you attend the labs they are very useful. The only thing I didn't like is that sometimes she would go at top speed and it would be hard to keep up.

 

[Queenroot]

PHSL2101/PHSL2121/PHSL2501:

Ease: 6/10

- Online Quizzes: Honestly, it is quite difficult but if you study the lectures you should know what you're doing. There's unlimited attempts available so that will take the load off your chest.
- Mini Lab tests: The dumbest of all assessments. These are held randomly in any lab (you won't know when), so you have to be prepared. But WTF they test you on the weirdest shit, like even reading the labs beforehand won't do you that good unless you've got a photographic memory (but read them anyway). The safety net is that you do it individually then again with your group so the mark is averaged.
- Mid sem: MC questions are the same as the ones you do online, so if you've got those roted, then you should be fine for that bit. The long answers are a bit more difficult. You get to choose one question from two parts, so if you want to, I would selectively study one topic more than the other. Personally I don't know what the hell I wrote in this exam so I probably didn't do too well.
- Final Exam: Goodness. If anything, study Neurophysiology well because Richard Vickery likes to really give some "thinking questions" for long answers, they're not straightforward at all. 30 MCQ's on the prac material, just study them well and you should know them. The questions on blood and CVS are similar as in the back of the lab book. But don't get your hopes up for Neurophysiology, it's really going to require some effort. Other than that, it was alright.

Content: 7/10

Interesting but some concepts are very difficult to understand. It's important to keep up with this course as you can fall behind quite quickly. Those 1 hour lectures have a myriad of content. Covers the CVS, ANS, Excitable tissues, Neurophys, blood and muscle.

Lecturers:

Richard Vickery 8/10 everyone else "...". There is a different lecturer for each topic.

Tutors: 2/10
Incompetent in my opinion

 

[mreditor16]

ACCT1501

Ease: 7/10. A process driven subject, where there is a focus on accuracy, number crunching and the nuances. Mathematics doesn't get too hard, probably the hardest math you will come across is inventory and depreciation methods. Otherwise, its just adding and subtracting. Friends who had done Business Studies said they had a distinct advantage with understanding the content. When you get to the midsem and final exams, you will find them to be 75% quantitative 25% qualitative.

Content: 7/10. Got to agree with Cleavage above, about how initially it can be confusing and that a lot of accepting has to be done early on, rather than understanding. But as you go on, everything starts to tie together and you start to understand how concepts introduced early on actually work. And it all makes sense, its just first few weeks that may be a bit tough to get your head around. Personally, I struggled in the first few weeks, but as you went on, things increasingly make sense, as more pieces are fit into the jigsaw.

Lecturers: 5.5/10 for Youngdeok Lim (Weeks 1 to 4) - Lectured with a disengaging tone and a tough accent. But really did know his stuff and went through the content relatively well. Wasn't impressed by his teaching, nor was I frustrated with it.

3.5/10 for Jeffrey Knapp (Weeks 5 to 8) - I'm really going to disagree with Cleavage on this one. I thought Knapp was the worst lecturer I had this semester. Literally spent half the lecture on an article or TV news report he was mentioned in or interviewed for and then arguing how accounting is the most important business area and how it is so fun. Then, when we did finally get to the content, he would explain it in a convoluted way and didn't allow any questions during the lecture, so if you got lost or confused at any point during the teaching, you effectively got screwed over for the remaining content covered in that lecture. Didn't bother going to his last two lectures - I learnt more from spending two hours reading the relevant textbook chapter(s) than the two hours attending his lecture. N.B. Apparently, he was very variant in his lecturing. And from hearsay, in other timeslots, he spent much less time on the irrelevant time wasters and more time on the actual content.

8/10 for Radzi Jidin (Weeks 9 to 12) - Personally, my favourite and most effective lecturer of the three. Went comprehensively through ALL the content and lecture slides, and I particularly liked his explanations of the practice questions we went through. Sometimes, content was a bit rushed, but that's mostly due to the sheer amount of content that had to be covered in his allotted lectures. Overall, left Jidin's lectures feeling that I understood everything

Tutor: 7.5/10 for Abarna - A chillax tutor, who certainly knew her stuff comprehensively. I really liked the handy tricks and tips she gave to us, especially in regard to how to structure our answers and all that. Was able to answer any lingering questions I had well.

Overall: 7/10 - A subject that didn't captivate me nor did it disengage/bore me. At the heart of it, a straightforward subject, where avoiding common pitfalls and mistakes is one of the major things that will boost your marks. I would definitely agree with Cleavage in saying that if you keep up with the tutorial homework and do enough past papers, you're set for final exams, because style of questions effectively has to stay the same, considering the nature of the content.

 

[obliviousninja]

INFS1603

Lecturer be like, guten tag brah, ez HD coursę

 

[Cleavage]

ACCT1501

Ease: 7/10. A process driven subject, where there is a focus on accuracy, number crunching and the nuances. Mathematics doesn't get too hard, probably the hardest math you will come across is inventory and depreciation methods. Otherwise, its just adding and subtracting. Friends who had done Business Studies said they had a distinct advantage with understanding the content. When you get to the midsem and final exams, you will find them to be 75% quantitative 25% qualitative.

Content: 7/10. Got to agree with Cleavage above, about how initially it can be confusing and that a lot of accepting has to be done early on, rather than understanding. But as you go on, everything starts to tie together and you start to understand how concepts introduced early on actually work. And it all makes sense, its just first few weeks that may be a bit tough to get your head around. Personally, I struggled in the first few weeks, but as you went on, things increasingly make sense, as more pieces are fit into the jigsaw.

Lecturers: 5.5/10 for Youngdeok Lim (Weeks 1 to 4) - Lectured with a disengaging tone and a tough accent. But really did know his stuff and went through the content relatively well. Wasn't impressed by his teaching, nor was I frustrated with it.

3.5/10 for Jeffrey Knapp (Weeks 5 to 8) - I'm really going to disagree with Cleavage on this one. I thought Knapp was the worst lecturer I had this semester. Literally spent half the lecture on an article or TV news report he was mentioned in or interviewed for and then arguing how accounting is the most important business area and how it is so fun. Then, when we did finally get to the content, he would explain it in a convoluted way and didn't allow any questions during the lecture, so if you got lost or confused at any point during the teaching, you effectively got screwed over for the remaining content covered in that lecture. Didn't bother going to his last two lectures - I learnt more from spending two hours reading the relevant textbook chapter(s) than the two hours attending his lecture. N.B. Apparently, he was very variant in his lecturing. And from hearsay, in other timeslots, he spent much less time on the irrelevant time wasters and more time on the actual content.

8/10 for Radzi Jidin (Weeks 9 to 12) - Personally, my favourite and most effective lecturer of the three. Went comprehensively through ALL the content and lecture slides, and I particularly liked his explanations of the practice questions we went through. Sometimes, content was a bit rushed, but that's mostly due to the sheer amount of content that had to be covered in his allotted lectures. Overall, left Jidin's lectures feeling that I understood everything

Tutor: 7.5/10 for Abarna - A chillax tutor, who certainly knew her stuff comprehensively. I really liked the handy tricks and tips she gave to us, especially in regard to how to structure our answers and all that. Was able to answer any lingering questions I had well.

Overall: 7/10 - A subject that didn't captivate me nor did it disengage/bore me. At the heart of it, a straightforward subject, where avoiding common pitfalls and mistakes is one of the major things that will boost your marks. I would definitely agree with Cleavage in saying that if you keep up with the tutorial homework and do enough past papers, you're set for final exams, because style of questions effectively has to stay the same, considering the nature of the content.

Beef

 

[Cleavage]

Talk shit about knapp get hit big boii front left corner first actl lecture next sem be there to defend your argument I'll be there to defend knapp

 

[fizzbylightning]

ANAT3141: Functional Anatomy of the Limbs
Ease: 8/10. There's a lot to cover and I guess you could say that with any other anatomy subject but it's easier than neuroanatomy which requires some more thorough understanding of theoretical concepts as opposed to functional anatomy which placed more focus on the routine spot, identify and list function. The lab quizzes are easy (worth 10% in total), the virtual adaptive tutorials are very helpful but hard to get full marks in, the video assignment % breakdown wasn't given to us so I was a bit annoyed with that because for a 10%er, my group spent a lot of effort and got an average mark, the final is straightforward and the spot tests are fair.
Content: 7/10. It was a bit dry and repetitive but I can't blame the course convenor because I wasn't expecting it to be thought-provoking. As you are attending lectures with exercise physiology students, clinical case studies are included in the lectures which serves of some interest. You go through the upper and lower limbs (muscles, bone, joints), associated vasculature and nerves in a routine manner.
Lecturer: One thing I will say about the lectures is that there are some inconsistencies between lecture material and lab manual which is aggravating when you are studying for exams and you don't know which sources to use. Irina (8/10). Nalini (8/10). Both always willing to help.
Tutor: Irina (8/10). Christina (7/10). They rotated tutors midway through semester.

ANAT3411: Neuroanatomy I
Ease: 7/10. It is a challenging course which with hard work, made it fun and rewarding. You definitely feel it if you are a few lectures behind because the subject works on a tight schedule where there are 2 lectures each week and 2 labs in the same week corresponding to those lectures so you don't get the weekend to revise and prepare before labs but rather the night before the lab. And personally when I go to a lab unprepared, I don't get nearly as much out of it. There's a 15% group report which is fun. The spot tests worth 40% in total are fair because Liz is fair. I found the final very fair.
Content: 9/10. There's a lot of variety in this course as you cover all main aspects of the brain. There's also clinical case studies to consolidate what you learn.
Lecturer: Liz Tancred (10/10). I love Liz. Pascal Carrive (7/10). Pascal takes a handful of lecturers which are loosely related to his field of research and many of those lectures are of structures and concepts that we don't know too much on eg. the reticular formation, so this sometimes made the lectures a bit vague and less tangible. There is also a lecture at the end on brain plasticity from Renee Morris for those budding researchers.
Tutor: Andrew (10/10). I had him in first year and I was stoked to have him again.

BABS3041: Immunology I
Ease: 7.5/10. The concepts themselves are easy, it's the sheer load of content that's hard. Particularly if you are like me and left most of your revision the week before finals. It's a struggle. There's a seemingly random problem solving assignment worth 10% - I'd advise you to talk with friends about this a bounce ideas. The final is worth 60% which isn't the best but it was very fair but all writing and no MCQ. There are two class tests on lecture material worth 25% in total and they are fair also.
Content: 9/10. So interesting. I am an anatomy major and I'm doing honours next year and taking this subject made me reconsider doing honours in immunology instead of anatomy. The first half of the semester may make you second guess the subject as there's a large amount of background information presented (this is an introductory immunology course after all) but you get to integrate all this seemingly disparate information in the second half where you learn about vaccinations, AIDS, diagnostic immunology, interesting stuff!
Lecturer: Li (8/10) takes most of the lectures and is always willing to spend lots of time with you one-on-one if you have trouble understanding. There are a host of other guest lecturers as they want to connect researchers with students. Andrew Collins (8/10) - I find him funny in that he is a bit awkward and I find his comments on the side unintentionally funny too.
Tutor: Fang (8/10).

GENT0508: Music on My Mind
Ease: 8/10. Put effort into the discussion forums and read the weekly readings. I'm not used to having readings of 40 pages long set each week and I didn't read the entire thing most of the time but you need to for discussions and the online tests.
Content: 5/10. I was wrong for choosing this subject as my gen ed. You learn about the theory of music which I thought I was interested in but after studying medical science for 2 years, doing this subject was tough as things were less concrete. Maybe I just wasn't keen on the content. I feel that I was interested in it after reading the course description in the handbook and it had potential but it didn't deliver for me for some reason.
Lecturers: Daniel (5/10). Paul (7/10).

 

[sirable1]

FINS1613: Business Finance
Content and Ease: 6/10. Some concepts are fun and enjoyable (Financial Math/Valuation of Projects/CAPM/Risk and Return), some were alright (Capital Budgeting) and some were overly dry (Bonds and Equity/Cost of Capital).
Lecturers: 9.5/10 for Robert Tumarkin. Comprehensive, informative, nice and has a really good sense of humour. Funny memorable moments like Roosterman/Macho man examples or maybe some random life story he had. For one of the quizzes I missed out due to medical reasons, he was very flexible with alternative arrangements (like a choice of what day and time the following week for the rescheduled quiz) which was great.
2/10 for Emma Zhang. 4/10 for Donald Winchester. Both weren't so great and were not engaging as Tumarkin. I liked Winchester more since he was nicer than Zhang lol. Zhang was not engaging at all and yelled at the lecture group once for whatever reason that was…
Tutor: 6/10 Peng Wang. He's alright, tutorial slides could be improved though. Gave a good class participation mark so that's a plus.
Overall: 6/10. Finals were not bad as expected, but I studied the wrong papers ( should have covered more the practice quizzes instead). Quiz 1 was easy, Quiz 2 was hard and Quiz 3 was alright. MyFinanceLab and Class attendance/ participation are potentially free marks (20%) if you will. Hoping to get a raw credit (before scaling) for the course.


PSYC1023 (or GENS9003): Abnormal Psychology (online)
Content and Ease: 9/10. An online psych course that deals with abnormal psychology like mental illnesses (i.e. topics like anxiety disorders, child psychopathology, OCD, schizophrenia to name a few), the aetiology, treatment and as such. The content is quite easy to understand, but like with other psych courses, theres lots of materials that you’ll need to remember for the mid-term and finals.
Lecturers: 9.5/10 for both Joshua Broderick and Helena Pacitti. Both were great, very clear and top notch.
Overall: 7/10. It’s quite fun and actually useful in some aspects (like strategies for tackling anxious situations). Lectures for each (or two) topic/s are posted each week, with one topic running normally for half an hour or slightly less or more. In addition to the lecture, you must also read the textbook which this also assessed.

The thing about the textbook is that it's overly dry to read, a times typeface with size 6, with over 350-500 pages to read, its just too much for an general elective like this. The textbook was the only thing I did not like about this course.

Mid-term quiz and essay was quiet straight forward - you’ll have plenty of time to do this. Finals I have yet not done, I’ll do this in a couple of weeks and repost it back here. The course was a lot more better, engaging and more worth while than Astronomy (online too) which I took last sem.

EDIT: I did the supplementary exam today and gee they only asked less than 10% of the questions were from textbook, the rest were from the lecture slides (even word by word!). Spent countless hard hours and days reading through that book and only asked 5-8 questions from the textbook. Felt a little bit pissed off inside, but the exam overall was fairly easy. Reading, learning and memorising the textbook takes days, even some few weeks to do. Reading, learning and memorising the lecture slides only takes a couple of hours. That's why I reduced a 9/10 to a 7 haha.

 

[erckle999]

MATH2111 (Higher Several Variable Calculus)
Ease 8/10. The first half of this course (Analysis) is very abstract and can take a bit of time to wrap your head around. The questions and techniques, though, are intuitive and interesting once you understand the material. The second half of the course, vector calculus, has almost exactly the opposite problem. Conceptually it is far more straightforward, but owing to the lack of focus on fundamentals and proofs, the questions become tricky because you often do not know if what you are doing is valid, given there is not the same level of rigour as the first half.
Content. 9/10 for first half, 7/10 for second half. Second half is more mechanical and physics-ey which is pretty boring in and of itself compared to the first half. Who cares about magnetism and all that anyway.
Lecturer: Denis Potapov 9/10. Same comment basically as I gave him for MATH1251. Great lecturer, slightly haphazard delivery system. Luckily he re-used a lot of Kress' notes from last year so there was some structure. Managed to set more tutorial questions each week than humanely possible to get through. Also, and seeing as though this happened in MATH1251 Algebra to a lesser extent, he sets very very narrow finals. Of his six weeks of lectures (ie 24 lectures) I think that you could have done 80% of his part of the final having watched exactly 2 of those.
McLean 7/10. Oh Bill, Bill, Bill. The guy knows what he is on about and explains things pretty well, but his lecture slides (and to a degree his lecture itself) seemed to spend too much time on trivial or easy stuff and then brush through the hard stuff much too fast.
Tutor: McLean 8/10. Considering this was a 9am tutorial, he did a fighting job. Explains things well. Sometimes would waste the last 15 minutes of a tutorial on a question he hadn't thought about before class and was trying to do on the fly (usually without success). Still, very helpful in person.
Overall 8/10. Both quizzes were reasonably easy (especially compared to the past quizzes they gave out) and the final, whilst always going to be challenging in 2 hours and being a 'higher' level course, was probably a shade easier than some years owing to the prevalence of past tutorial questions in it. Still, final was more difficult than average and I think a longer, 3 hour paper is better since it gives you time to actually think abotu what you are doing and go over things.

MATH2601 (Higher Linear Algebra)
Ease 5/10 to actually understand lectures, 8.5/10 to get through what you can be assessed on. Anyone who tells you they really understand all of the proofs toward the end of course the first time they see them is clearly lying. However, the assessments have a decent amount of generic questions in them and the proofs you are required to come up with on the spot are never that far out of reach.
Content 9/10. The course generally has a nice and logical progression to it. Except for group theory, which incidentally was my favourite part of the course, which is useful to properly understand vector spaces but is left out of many linear algebra courses of this level (including MATH2501). Still, I suppose that is the first taste of real algebra and it was interesting.
Lecturer: Catherine Greenhill 9.5/10. Really interesting and engaging. A two hour algebra lecture can take it out of you, but she made it bearable I suppose.
Tutor. Catherine Greenhill 10/10.
Overall 9/10. Interesting course with tutorial questions that were less standard than a pretty predicatable final. Would have liked a harder, more proof based final, but what can you do. I will definitely be looking forward to third year algebra.

ECON2112 (Game Theory and Business Strategy)
Ease 9.5/10. The multiple choice aspect of the midsem allowed for some confusing questions (your usual double negative stuff) but generally was pretty straightforward. You really only learn 4 techniques in the entire course and then just apply them differently.
Content. 8/10. All very interesting, logical and devoid of stupid ambiguities. Got a bit boring toward the end as the pace slowed down as everyone started freaking about having to use Bayes rule. Could have been a bit more challenging, but still, as economics courses go this was good.
Lecturer: Carlos Pimienta 9/10. Knows his stuff and will help out if you ask. Used interesting examples and played the entire Australia vs Uruguay Penalty shootout from 2005.
Gabriele Gratton 10/10. Paced around the lecture hall frantically and gave the majority of some lectures from the back row with his feet up. Very funny and engaging.
Tutor: Frank Mazzone 7/10. Nice guy with some hilarious stories but generally didn't give answers that were perfectly clear nor did he seem to want to (or was able to) explain the finer theoretical points
Overall 8/10. The final was pretty much what everyone expected but was made difficult by having to write your answers in these ridiculous rectaingular boxes, most of which could not fit a line of normal sized writing in. For that reason, I had no idea how much to write for most questions. Also, lots of room for stupid mistakes and not that much room for people who really knew what was going on to show it.

 

[Shadowdude]

ECON2112 (Game Theory and Business Strategy)
Ease 9.5/10. The multiple choice aspect of the midsem allowed for some confusing questions (your usual double negative stuff) but generally was pretty straightforward. You really only learn 4 techniques in the entire course and then just apply them differently.
Content. 8/10. All very interesting, logical and devoid of stupid ambiguities. Got a bit boring toward the end as the pace slowed down as everyone started freaking about having to use Bayes rule. Could have been a bit more challenging, but still, as economics courses go this was good.
Lecturer: Carlos Pimienta 9/10. Knows his stuff and will help out if you ask. Used interesting examples and played the entire Australia vs Uruguay Penalty shootout from 2005.
Gabriele Gratton 10/10. Paced around the lecture hall frantically and gave the majority of some lectures from the back row with his feet up. Very funny and engaging.
Tutor: Frank Mazzone 7/10. Nice guy with some hilarious stories but generally didn't give answers that were perfectly clear nor did he seem to want to (or was able to) explain the finer theoretical points
Overall 8/10. The final was pretty much what everyone expected but was made difficult by having to write your answers in these ridiculous rectaingular boxes, most of which could not fit a line of normal sized writing in. For that reason, I had no idea how much to write for most questions. Also, lots of room for stupid mistakes and not that much room for people who really knew what was going on to show it.

this just makes me even more pissed off that the economics school didn't approve my clash


Especially since I was in one of Frank's tutes and there was a cute blonde girl in the class

And a cute brunette girl

and another cute brunette girl

 

[ZombieApocalypse]

CVEN2501- Rekt. Don't be mislead by getting full marks during the semester during assessments, study content because the final is a killer
MATH2019- actually easier than first year maths, you don't really need to try until you get to maybe the last 2 weeks of lectures (I fucked up heat equations LOL)

 

[ninjaturtles10]

Econ1101 - 10/10
Awesome course, no complaints. Was run smoothly, great lectures (Alberto the man) and great assessments. If you have done HSC eco then you are at a slight advantage in terms of content but the whole course is relatively straight forward. The possible only the trap in the course is the nature of the assessments, two 20 mark, 20% assessments. they aren't incredibly difficult but i know some people who did not manage time well or possibly made some silly errors which are costly considering the assessment is only 20 marks so every mistake costs one mark in the course. This is compounded by the fact that some of the questions in the assessments are worth 4-5 marks for really not much content, so if you mess up a question it can be costly.
Lucky i did not face that problem although i know many did, so this is the only real pitfall of the course, the rest is straightforward. the final exam was great, straightforward 50 multiple choice and not many ambiguous ones either, the right answer stood out fairly clearly.
Tutor was great (won't mention name), he was great at teaching content not really approachable though and kind of grumpy lol. if you didn't like the way he marked something gg, he wasn't going to listen to anything.
Overall recommend this course to everyone (gen ed or core), can be a serious wam booster. once you get a hold of the concepts should be able to get a really high mark also considering the 4 bonus marks for completing a game.

Fins 1613 - 8/10
Great course, the head lecturer Rob Tumarkin has got to be one of the greatest lecturers !! Wonderful teacher but also really flexible and seems to really care about his students. Top lecturer, hope he teaches other fins courses.

Content: Great content, fairly straight forward, starts off really easy so can be a trap in the first few weeks if you get behind because you believe the whole course is going to be that easy. So you have to stay up to date, if you do you will find it straightforward.
Really interesting topics as well. Although some people did not like the quizzes i thought they were fair and overall fairly easy.
The problems with this course to be honest were the some of the fill in lectures, especially one at the end of the course. Couldn't believe the way he was teaching just reading off slides that were copied from the textbook lol and no explanation of anything, just reading. this made learning the last couple of weeks of the course a bit longer than it needed to be and the course would have been even better if rob taught throughout the whole semester.

The trickiest part of the course was the final, although it was fair. it was not easy to get all the questions particularly a group of 5 ish questions, very difficult it will really separate the top end of the course well and there is scaling anyway so no complaints.
If you work hard in this course and do it in sem 1 lol, you will go well.

Acct 1501 - Won't go into detail about this course, it is well run. Youngdoek Lim runs it really efficiently, if you keep up this course will be no problem, fairly mechanical.

Econ1203 - In two minds about this course.
Really enjoyable course and extremely interesting, a course that encourages you to think more than other first year courses and more of a challenge so it was awesome.
I liked the fortnightly quizzes, kept you up to date and were easy enough to get good marks if you practiced a lot before hand on practice quizzes.
Only complaint of the course would be the marking of the assignment, very lenient marking in certain areas. even if someone used the wrong complete method to analyse the date (e.g. chi-squared for numerical data non-count data) they were no real marking ramifications. Whereas if you spelt a word wrong or incorrectly labelled a graph there seemed to be a higher cost. My advice for the assignment is to not get to technical and try to really just explain as much about the data as possible. Essentially follow the marking criteria. that was my big mistake.

the final was fair i guess, except the 2 marks for every MC questions, especially when they are the ones like I or I and II or I and III or I and II and III, just seemed a bit unfair in that regard, the rest was great. So mistakes in the MC are costly, especially when the exam/60 and MC is 2 marks, lol
There is not much maths in this course despite what people say and it is an introductory stats course so the content never really gets deep, if you are great at understanding concepts you will do well. Don't get caught up in the hype that the course is impossible and everyone is going to fail, just study the content each week and keep up to date.

 

[obliviousninja]

ACCT2522

Worst tutor. I'd rather the fob next to me in week 1 teaching me the coursr

 

[4025808]

First one for the semester, will write up more shortly.

CEIC2001 – Fluid and Particle Mechanics

Ease: 7/10 – It can be difficult if you are planning on cramming this subject within 2-3 days, but if you give yourself at least a week prior to study this course then you should do fine. Getting at least a distinction isn’t difficult for this course because not only it is open book, it also has 3 assignments which you can pretty much just leech off others, as well as the fact that you don’t even need to memorize the stuff required – you just need to know how to apply your knowledge into the question. Not only to mention that the assignments are 10% each and the final is only worth 30%.
Content: 8/10 – The first part of the course is basically physics related stuff (force balances, statics), second part emphasizes the particle mechanics side (i.e. pump + piping, minor losses, non-Newtonian fluids, dimensional analysis), the third part is basically differential analysis, particle size analysis, size increase/reduction, segregation and filtration. I personally found the first part of the course the hardest since I had to actually think of what to do (since its physics based), then the 2nd and 3rd parts were relatively easier.
IMO I really think they should still put more effort and time into the first part of the course. That said still an interesting course. In the second and third parts there honestly needs to be more tutorial questions – seriously how hard is it to make up some questions when there’s over a million examples out there?
Lecturer: Vicki Chen (7/10) -> she was generally okay for the most part – at least she’s quite well organized in what she teaches. Not particularly that great but she’s still good overall.
May Lim (7/10) -> there was a bit of ups and downs with her (especially with issues that happened to the quiz 2 – and how she got very sensitive to criticism. I feel that she’s a little uptight about criticism in general, as well as answering to queries in general – I tried to ask her a question on midnight before the test, and she just told me to go to bed directly. That said she’s still overall a good lecturer and has got her stuff together for the most part.
Tutor: Chaoxu Zheng (iirc) (7/10) – unlike the other tutor, this tutor actually gives us the answers to the tutorial questions and actually does the work for us. He helps us when we’re in need of questions. If you don’t mind his accent then he’s quite acceptable.
Lab: N/A
Overall: 8/10 Probably the best subject I’ve done this semester, though there’s some things they can do better. Imo they should reduce the contact hours (seriously, 6 hours is too much overall, not to mention 2x1 hour lectures and 1x2 hour lectures), make tutorial times more flexible – i.e. choose one tutorial and choose another, not just have sets of tutorials together. Also increase the tutorial questions for this subject – coz srsly there’s so little to get from the tutorial questions, especially from the 2nd and 3rd parts of the course. Then also release the final examination papers (coz you can change the examples all the time) and give more past exam materials for others to study. I don’t pay $1.5K per subject to see lecturers just reuse exam papers due to the fact that they cbf.