Studying math at Macquarie Uni vs UNSW or others? (1 Viewer)

[kingofgames]

Hey i've studied some of the basic math first year and second year maths courses at macquarie uni. It was alright i loved the numeracy center that was great and the numeracy center workshops. The assignments were challenging and achievable i think. And some of the lecturers were really great and i can't imagine studying math without Gary who i believe anyone who does math at macquarie will have met. But i can't help but feel like something is off sometimes, some lecturers do not feel like they're really up there which got pretty frustrating when they happened to cover important topics. This was fine i guess since this is math, you can read multiple books and go online and ask around. And if that's not enough then maybe you're not really ready for that level yet because it should all essentially be in a book.

But i cannot escape the glaring fail rates and faint seem of distress in the faculty when i was taking them. Quite a few times in our units the fail rates were at 60% or 50% and the 5 assignments i did that semester i would hear would conveniently be condensed into three. Which i just found weird that they'd have this now as obviously the uni has been teaching these subjects for decades. Maybe it was just a weird time I took these classes for fun and to open self study for extra work skills (r, machine learning, mysql, maybe python)... The last time i took math both lecturers weren't the best: one was ok which was good because he had the easy half but the other was the worst i've had and he had the most abstract material i've had in math by then and it made it hell so i decided not to take anymore oh yeah and that was the class that got 60% fail rate.

Well anyways that's how i came up with the question. Whenever i had a tough topic and i would look around on youtube and these nice UNSW lectures would always come up with at times a slightly more reassuring explanation and most impressively the lecturer was filmed in 3rd person not a screen capture which i admit i do not expect any uni to do this but it was very nice. So yeah that got me wondering what studying maths is like in UNSW or other unis. Hopefully 60% fail rates are a rarity.

 

[BLIT2014]

USYD has pretty good mathematics notes in my opinion.

 

[sida1049]

Does it really matter if fail rates are high?

Usually with your usual first and second year maths units covering the essential topics, regardless of how good your lecturers and tutors are, the fail rates are going to be quite high because most of the students are only there because maths is a requirement for them to graduate.

If you want to be in a maths class with an incredibly low fail rate, enrol yourself into an advanced maths unit and/or third/fourth year unit. The fail rates in these classes are incredibly low despite the much more difficult content, since only motivated students with a fair background in mathematics will choose to sit them. Even with poor lecturers and challenging assignments, the students in these classes will usually end up doing well anyway.

 

[sida1049]

Agreed with math god. People studying advanced mathematics have the diligence and drive to achieve better marks. In fact, people on average receive higher marks studying advanced than mainstream (i'm in that group).

don't drop maths

 

[LightOfTheSeven]

would probably say that subjectively, UNSW/USYD's assignments and exams would be harder than Macquarie Uni's.

UNSW or Usyd is not more difficult than Macquarie. I see that tossed around, and there is no proof. All three of those universities have standards, and if you slag off you're going to fail. OP, I suggest you research more into the course content offered by UNSW.