Second year subjects (1 Viewer)

[ulph_e]

Hey,

I might be in the entirely wrong place for this, but i'll try anyway. I'm a comp sci student, and just finished the first year subjects. I'm now a little confused about the re-enrolment for second year. The following section is quoted from the UNSW handbook:

"Year 2

* COMP2041 Software Construction (6 UOC)
* COMP2121 Microprocessors & Interfacing (6 UOC)
* COMP2920 Professional Issues and Ethics (3 UOC)

And ONE of:

* COMP2011 Data Organisation (6 UOC)
* COMP2711 Higher Data Organisation (6 UOC)

Electives 21 UOC

Plus 6 UOC of General Education

Four of the ten courses in Year 2 comprise core computing. The remainder are electives. Common electives include mathematics (many choices), psychology, geography, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, arts, more first year courses (maximum 12 UOC), material that follows on from first-year electives and information systems. "

Finding the core subjects are easy, and thus selecting them for enrolment are trivial. However, what is the deal with electives/gen eds? Do we have such complete freedom that we can select courses from the entire uni? I recall from first year that i was given a list from which to choose electives (through using a search based on the course code [3978, if i recall correctly]). This time, i simply receive a rather short message that claims:

"Error
Your search returned no results. Please search again."

Thus, my question is; is there some kind of list floating around somewhere as there was for first year? If there is, could someone point me to it?

Thanks in advance,

 

[sunny]

The search you did in first year was a introductory system in myUNSW to help first year students enrol by just entering their program code. No such thing exists for second year and above.

Whatever electives you did in first year you can now continue doing in second year. For example, if you chose ELEC subjects (eg, ELEC1011) in first year, you can now do second year ELEC subjects if you want. Or if you choose not to, you can do other subjects too, as long as you meet the pre-reqs for those subjects. I did first year physics and INFS in first year, but found I didn't like the physics, so in 2nd year I did some ELEC and more INFS subjects.

After you've done data org next session, you'll have met the pre-reqs for most other COMP subjects, so you can start doing COMP3xxx and COMP2xxx subjects for your electives.

 

[ulph_e]

Sunny, thanks for the reply - what you said has helped heaps. I plan to follow on from the electives i did last year.

I have another question you can probably help me with regarding gen-eds. I've found one list of gen-eds from the cse website;

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/undergrad/current/gened.html

Its pretty limited in scope - mainly commerce and biology (not things i'm much interested in). A bit more searching came up with this site;

http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/vbook2006/brGenEdByFaculty.jsp

This has many more options, and contains subjects of much greater interest to me. However, i dont want to complete them and find out they dont contribute any units of credit. I basically want to find out why the cse list of gen-eds is so limited, and if that is all that i can choose from.

Thanks again,

 

[sunny]

The CSE page lists the gen eds you are not allowed to do as a CSE student. Just follow the notes at the top of the page and see if the gen ed you wanted to do falls under any of those notes.

You can pick any gen ed you like, provided you don't break the rules CSE has set out in that page and that don't do more than 3uoc from your own faculty (engineering, not science, even though you're comp sci), or more than 6uoc accumulated from any other single faculty. (gen ed faq).

My suggestion is you do your 6uoc of gen eds over this coming summer session, and save yourself 6uoc of work for the rest of the year.

 

[ulph_e]

Ok, i get it now. I misread the cse page.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[ulph_e]

This should be my final question on this matter. Let me explain first; one of the core subjects for 2nd year comp sci is COMP2920 - something about ethics - which is only 3 UOC. Now i'm finding it difficult to find any courses that are 3 UOC (other than general education subjects) to fill in the gap.

I went through the gen ed faq from sunny (good work on that, btw), but didn't find out if its ok to do, say, 9 units of gen ed in 2nd year, then only 3 units in 3rd. The comp sci plan does state that both 2nd and 3rd year should have 6 units of gen ed each; but other university sources claim that the requirement is only to have completed 12 units by the end of the degree. Another way i considered it was that i could do the 9 units of gen ed, and then another 6 to meet the requirements of 3rd year.

If anyone knows of other [good] subjects that are only 3 units, i would be grateful to hear suggestions.

Again, thanks.

 

[sunny]

This should be my final question on this matter. Let me explain first; one of the core subjects for 2nd year comp sci is COMP2920 - something about ethics - which is only 3 UOC. Now i'm finding it difficult to find any courses that are 3 UOC (other than general education subjects) to fill in the gap.

Yes thats very true...theres very few mainstream 3uoc subjects out there that you can use to fill the gap. There are some MATH (mathematical computing I think) and ELEC subjects floating around.

I went through the gen ed faq from sunny (good work on that, btw), but didn't find out if its ok to do, say, 9 units of gen ed in 2nd year, then only 3 units in 3rd.

I can't see why not - but you'll just have the same problem in 3rd year in finding a 3uoc subject. The system cares more about whether you have the full 144uoc at the end of your degree rather than the order you did it in (not breaking any pre-req rules of course).

Another way i considered it was that i could do the 9 units of gen ed, and then another 6 to meet the requirements of 3rd year.

I can't find any mention against doing more than 12uoc of gen eds, but I would imagine is not allowed - given how easy some gen eds are I'm sure that 12uoc is the upper limit of gen eds you can do.

If anyone knows of other [good] subjects that are only 3 units, i would be grateful to hear suggestions.

Sorry I'm no use here, the 3uoc ELEC subject I picked gave me my worst mark.