UNSW Subject Reviews. (6 Viewers)

[filagirl1]

I'm currently taking up Commerce at UNSW. I'm worried w/ ACCT1501 & ECON1101 because my raw marks are 24/45 & 27/50 respectively. Can I still pass?

 

[kawaiipotato]

I'm currently taking up Commerce at UNSW. I'm worried w/ ACCT1501 & ECON1101 because my raw marks are 24/45 & 27/50 respectively. Can I still pass?

Yes, in terms of passing, you'll have to at least get 50% in the final exams for both (iirc they aren't "double pass" subects and they were weighted around 50% of your final grade).

 

[RenegadeMx]

alright im bored/drunk lets do this

Edst4096 - Gifted/Talented

Ease: 8/10 assignment questions a bit hard to interpret at first, but once u get rolling hard to fail. Also does depend on your teaching method - goodluck finding articles for visual arts

Content: 8/10 - contradicts a lot of what you learn in other courses but as this focuses more on the upper end of intelligence a lot of the strategies and resources are useful.

Lecture: Smith 8/10 - quite helpful answers questions and queries like ASAP, very knowledgeable in the area and does mix up the lecture a bit to make it engaging

Tutor: Hay - 5/10 - answers questions but overall quite average and the tutorial content itself was boring considered the lecture was standard enough, if it wasnt the comulsory attendance id skip most

Overall: 8/10 Probably one of the better core courses. By 3rd/4th year you should have a decent english level to not struggle in this course and overall will help you if you teach at selective or for the 1 random gifted kid u get in western sydney




Math3560 - History of maths

Ease: 9/10 - would be 10, but fuck group work. Nothing really mathematical about it, its literally an essay writing where u put some equations every so often.

Content: 9/10 - depends on a personal basis, but was quite interesting to actually see how advanced greeks were for the time and the often forgotten contribution from india/arab before the european powerhouse

Lecturer: Wildberger 10/10 - quite engaging really does make the 9am lectures interesting, you also get to understand why he is a walking meme

Tutor : N/A

Overall: 7/10 - its only 3 UOC so you will be forced to pair it with Calculus which is pure aids and why its not 10/10





Math3570 - Foundations of Calculation

Ease : 0/10 - every1 did so shit that he had to scale every single assessment task and the final to ensure like 50% dont fail the course. (test 2 had an average of 18/50 which still only scaled to 18/40). Assignments are cancer but ironically this will make most of you marks for the course so place effort into it. heavy proof course and very definition specific

Content: 0/10 - go over the foundations so you do calculus just like the 1800s so ironically u dont learn anything new except how much u hate epsilons and deltas

Lecturer: Crocker 2/10 - Always was behind in lectures had to go into week 13 to cover everything... Basically far better in Complex Analysis than this, most likely due to nature of course

Tutor: N/A

Overall 0/10. For a 3UOC course you are better off having people shit on you. Do not recommend this or the higher course unless you are forced in your degree to do it. Hopefully with trimesters they can fix this shit course up but I highly doubt it





Psyc1022- Addiction

Ease: 9/10 - Online, midsem and finals are multi choice, essay is like 1000 words. Lots of shit to remember though so all rote learning

Content: 10/10 goes into every detail of addiction including the biology so I found it quite interesting, though it still wont save me from alcohol.

Lecturer: N/A - i just read lecture slides didnt bother with audio so no score

Tutor: N/A

Overall: 9/10 Not exactly a WAM booster like astronomy but still is a nice elective to do if you want to keep a nice timetable

 

[Squar3root]

manf4611

Ease: 5/10, course content is extremely vague, not all of it is related to the exam. only ron's part of the stats was, tbh the final was pretty easy

Content: 1/10 basically the whole course was doing a group assignment about optimising a system using simulations. it was very tedious

Lecturer: all 3 lectures are 1/10. they do not make the course interesting. it does have potential like simulating smaller systems etc but this was just over the top having a simulation run for 52 cycles on a yearly basis.

Tutor: tutors were same as lectures 1/10

Overall: 1/10 would not recommend as a prof elective, core course for mtrn and manf students

comp2121
ease: 4/10. learning about how a processor works, again very tedious will never use anything i have learnt in this course irl.
content: the content was taught through labs with is just tedious. making leds light up when interrupts were enabled, making sounds on a board etc it just takes a lot of time. make sure to google "cloudier 2121" for lab code. 3/10
lecturer: didn't go to any so can't comment but from what ive heard he wasn't that great
tutor: our tutors were strict markers, if you can't explain even 1 line of code they mark you down. sometimes they did help us write the code and show us how things worked like words and bytes 2/10
overall: 3/10 would not recommend was not interesting

elec2141
ease: 8/10 fairly straightforward course, there is a lot of stuff packed into it. a lot of design concepts were if you misunderstand the question ur fucked
content: 7/10 fair interesting tbh. basically picks up from the last part of elec1111.
lecturer: "elways" 6/10 hard to understand him but he's alright
tutor: chinese phd guy. just wrote solutions on the board and didn't help us understand it. 2/10
overall: 8/10 dececnt course, easy to do well in especially assignments. make sure that u google the question because the lecturer or whoever set the assignment basically copied it from a textbook and there are worked solutions on the internet

gens5003
basically 2 assignments worth 40% and 60%. i spent maybe all up 20hrs on this course writing about safety on flights and the flight 3411 incident. easy course to do last minute and end up with a distinction

 

[aoc]

Hopefully more people start posting their reviews for this sem:

Econ1101:
Ease: 8/10 - Pretty easy overall except there were a few concepts that were hard to wrap my head around but they have a question forum where tutors always respond so thats pretty helpful. Also note they started marking the prefinal tests a lot harder i think the average for a couple classes was 7/15 for both tests. So you needa know your stuff.

Content: Basically above

Lecturer: Didnt watch any so cant comment but the textbook has everything you need to know

Tutors: Really helpful and my tutor went over the questions we wanted him to go over rather than the set material

Overall: Interesting/fairly easy would recommend

Acct1501:7-8/10
It was quite hard for me at first hence the 7 but towards the end of the semester when everything kind of came together and made sense i found the course to be super easy.

Content: I dont really like accounting so it was incredibly dry for me but i did have friends who did business studies in HSC that loved it (i didnt do business so i wouldnt know if its similar)

Lecturer: Didnt watch any so cant comment

Tutor: Not really helpful they upload the answers at the end of the week and everyone is basically hunting for participation marks resulting in unproductive lessons

Math1041
Ease: 9/10

Content - Straight forward nothing too difficult but there was an assingment where they kinda throw you in the deepend and expect you to know things they barely mention. The content is kind of interesting since they introduce you to concepts you dont learn about in hsc (at least if you did 3u/4u math)

Lecturer: The lecturer Jakob Staklosa was 10/10 and goes pretty slow with the content which i think is pretty helpful and he explains every step which was really helpful.

Tutorial: Biggest waste of time, they hardly help you with anything so i was just waiting for the tutor to write the solutions on the board so i could take pictures of the answers

overall: 9/10. Good wambooster/ interesting intro to stats

Psyc1001
Ease:6-8/10

Content: would rate it 6-7/10 in terms of content cause theres literally a shitload of content. Every single word said by the lecturer is examinable no matter how insignificant you think it was. Midsem was a shitshow was really hard but finals was pretty easy and for the most part covered the main concepts. (i think its a trend where they make midsem super hard and finals decent). Although the content was interesting there was too much to cover for me to fully enjoy the subject. Note that the content was not particularly hard to understand or anything. It was quite straight forward.

Lecturer: Some were fantastic some were horrible depends whether you like lecturers who cover their content quickly or slowly

Tutorials: Not really helpful for content but they usually had discussions about main concepts or videos to watch so it was definitely interesting.

Overall 8/10: Content was interesting but assingments were marked quite harshly and there was too much content.

 

[CNSie]

MATH1081: Discrete Maths

Ease: 8/10. Very easy finals this semester imo, however I got deducted some marks in internals.
Content: 10/10. Found it very interesting, specially the proof and logic section.
Lecturer: Catherine Greenhill 10/10. Very enthusiastic lecturer with high end explanations and is mindful that the lectures are being properly recorded. Also does every proof on paper! Denis Trenerry 8/10. Alright lecturer.
Tutor: 10/10. David Crocker. Great tutor who goes beyond what is expected. Can be a bit of a cunt sometimes but his skill and experience makes up for it.
Overall: 9/10. Finals were lifesaving

MATH1141: Higher Math 1A

Ease: 8/10. Had great internals but didnt do so well in my finals
Content: 8/10. Alright for math I guess.
Lecturers: 6/10. Alina/Fedor. Stopped going after 3rd week. Not interesting imo. I'm a bad student tho :/
Tutor: 10/10. Daniel Chan/ Schief Wolfgang. Pretty cool tutors who applied great knowledge while teaching.
Overall: 9/10. Expected finals to be easier tbh

PHYS1131: Higher Physics 1A

Ease: 7/10. The biweekly quizzes were hard as fuck some of them. Gave me anxiety every week
Content: 6/10. Dont like phys :/
Lecturers: 5/10. Wolfie/Alex. Tbh I stopped going to lecturers after 3rd week while Wolf was doing mechanics and did not come back when Alex came. Imo the mechanics topic was poorly taught with me having to go to the textbook to find better explanations. (Me hating phys could be bias in this reasoning tho)
Labs/OTH: 9.5/10. Easy if you do the working out at home and are prepared.
Overall: 7/10. In hindsight I should have gone to lectures and not having been behind the whole semester.

ENGG1000: Design and Innovation

Picked the BioMed project.
Ease: 8/10. Dont like doing reports nor writing weekly shit on a book
Content: 3/10. There is nothing to be learnt from this course. The innovation part of this course is thrown out of the window as you can literally come on the test day with a fucking piece of wood strapped to your arm and call it a day.
Lectures: 8/10 guest lecturers, interesting sometimes. 2/10 host lecturers (Heba/Michael) or should I say slide readers.
Overall: 6/10. An useless course. You better be in Heba's class if you decide to choose this project, otherwise she will be the one to mark your (group) written assessments and fuck you over. (In all honesty she was alright marker, just a bit anal about things).

 

[BHLee]

ACCT1501
Ease: 8/10 Not rocket science, just require a certain degree of effort and everything will be fine.
Content: 4/10 It's accounting, can't expect much colourful from it anyway.
Lecture: ?/10 Didn't attend at all.
Overall: 7/10 Just a bit of effort can guarantee you a high Credit at the very least..

FINS1613
Ease: 6.5/10 Although it is just like plugging numbers into equation, it does require understanding to the question and the concept itself. This is certainly harder than ACCT1501 in overall.
Content: 6/10 More interesting than ACCT1501 but also takes longer time to grasp the concept.
Lecture: ?/10 Didn't attend at all.
Overall: 7.5/10 It's very hard to fail this course, but also difficult to reach high end mark too.

INFS1602
Ease: 8/10 Need more effort on this not because its technically or conceptually hard, its because of the contents that you will need to memorise.
Content: 4/10 Can't say its interesting or not interesting either, if anyone did HSC Business Studies, it's similar but more on technology topic.
Lecture: 7/10 The only one I attend in this semester because lecture recording don't exist lol..
Overall: 6/10 Piece of advice, consistently participate in tutorial, get a decent assignment group and some effort into memorizing, you shall reach to low Distinction easily. Don't be like me and get a group that haunt you for life...

ECON1203
Ease: 5/10 Equation itself is okay, just that the concept of it is hard, I often just blindly follow the 'rules' without really understanding the mechanism behind it.
Content: 6/10 Interesting but time consuming.
Lecture; ?/10 Didn't attend, reckon I would just be as confuse sitting in there for 2 hours.
Overall: 6/10 Again, if your semester has a group assignment, get a decent partner. You should also attempt all tutorial works IN TIME. Assume that your math is so-so, all these should guarantee you an easy Pass.

 

[KingOfActing]

dont do scif its a wam killer

 

[brendan10x]

MATH1141: Higher Math 1A
Ease: 6/10. Good internals, but finals has 4 sections (with the first 2 being same as 1131), after the first 2 sections it gets tough and you instantly regret choosing 1141 (had no free marks, unlike 1131's last 2 piss easy sections)
Content: 8/10. Alright. If you did ext2. calculus should be fine, however algebra will hav more new material like linear algebra,matrices
Lecturers: 6/10. wolfe/daniel. Decent, nevertheless the book of notes saved me
Tutor: 10/10. idk. Class tests should be fine, just do past class tests
Overall: 8/10. I found calculus easier, idk felt like i couldnt visualise the linear algebra stuff. Also found out you dont need to pass the final exam (meaning you just need 50%+ overall to pass) a few days before it, so I instantly turned my attention towards phys

Engg1811
Ease: 6/10 Divided in 3 parts: spreadsheets,openoffice coding, matlab coding. With each one getting harder progressively.
Content: 6/10 decent
Lecture: 4/10 Ashesh. Has a thick indian accent, that will take you a week to get use to (surprisingly becomes easier on lecture recordings). He talks about random stuff in every lecture that has nothing to do with computing, your job is to filter it out and only pay attention to when he does coding examples/tasks
Overall: 7/10 Had a beast tutor that saved me, by answering any questions I had

PHYS1121: Physics 1A
Ease: 5/10. The biweekly quizzes were decent, just collab with mates, if you got none google the phys questions, some of them have answers
Content: 6/10. Just do problems
Lecturers: 5/10. Dimi/Angstman. This year they first utilised webstream lectures, online mechanics lectures were shite, due to joe wolfe never getting to the point. HOWEVER the online lectures by angstman for thermal/waves SAVED my ass. They were done so good, highlights include: First you learn the content, then you do problems. If you dont know the answer to the problem, a solution video is shown with FULL working. Basically I recommend going to the physical lectures for mechanics but jig the thermal/waves because the online version is the same + more problems(and full working out) + ability to rewind when you daydream.
Labs/OTH: 9.5/10. Easy, had a partner that was a god at labs. Other is useless except maybe the practice tests.
Overall: 6/10. Webstream lectures for thermal/waves + God Lab partner + Mates that helped me with the fortnightly quizzes + Memorising how to do past paper questions is how I passed this hellish course. Note that I learnt 0 in mechanics, had the chance to fix myself up in the mid sem break (but didnt), first started to give it my all when thermal started.

 

[Queenroot]

ANAT3411 - Neuroanatomy:

Ease: 7/10

- Spot tests: These were tough. They're done online unlike conventional spot tests. You have drop down menus to choose the right answer but there are like 50 options. Very difficult format I hated it. Also study everything in the pracs really well, you'll need it for identifying the cross sections of the brain stem etc.
- Group Assignment: Fairly straightforward. Beak up the parts of the assignment and just do it. Not sure how I went in this as they didn't give us our marks back but pretty sure we did relatively well.
- Final exam: study your butt off. They also give pictures of cross sections so be ready. There were options in the questions to choose what to answer so make sure you read them carefully. Know some stuff really well and others you can get away with knowing a little bit.

Content: 10/10

Besides all the tedious bits this course is very interesting in terms of neurological disorders.

Lecturers:

Jason's lectures were hard to understand, he abbreviated a lot of stuff and assumed you knew what they were. Information overload and he went through everything very quickly. 6/10

Pascal was slow and steady and he explained things well 9/10


Tutor: 7/10

Pascal as a tutor is different to his lecturing. He goes off tangents and there wasn't a single lab we finished on time. He is extremely slow when it comes to labs but he does explain every small detail which is good.

 

[Squar3root]

at the very minimum another 1.5 more years if everything goes to plan but my plans never go to plan haha

can confim did not go to plan

 

[Queenroot]

can confim did not go to plan

It's Oki boo

 

[skyartemis]

has anyone done econ2206 or econ2209 ? is it worth it and manageable? as well as math1081?

 

[erckle999]

has anyone done econ2206 or econ2209 ? is it worth it and manageable? as well as math1081?

2206 is an interesting subject, and the lecturer for it (Fiebig) in the first semester is really good. Workload not all that high. Keeping up with tutorial questions is helpful but not essential. During semester you need to do one assignment and one project, so apart from a week or two not all that time-consuming.

Haven't done 2209, but I would guess similar.

1801 requires more consistent effort. Many find it harder than 1131/41/51 and 1231/41/51 because it is more abstract and it's harder to get through by just learning techniques (row reduction or whatever). I found it much easier and more enjoyable, but I now study a pure maths major, so I am inclined that way.

Unless your other subjects are ridiculously time-consuming, I doubt doing any or all of 2206/2209/1081 would be that strenuous.

 

[Gordon003]

COMP1531 - Software Engineering Fundamental:

Ease: 3/10

It fully depends on the group project which is 25% of final grade. Have a good team and it will be 8/10. But I didn't as I only have 1 team member who worked as hard as me. In term of the other 2, ugh, I got no idea.

As a result, I spent more time on the assignment than on the final test itself. All for just 25%.

Content: 6/10

Quite simple and understandable concept but spent more time on remembering content than understanding thx to the assignment.

Lecturers: 7/10

I haven't been to Aarthi's lecture a lot but her online note is extremely useful.

Tutor: 9/10

Best tutor ever so far. She explained everything slowly in tutorial and that help me a huge amount, especially for difficult concept.

Overall: 4/10

The course is okay but it's fully ruined by the group project, unfortunately.

COMP2521 - Data Structure and Algorithm:

Ease: 2/10

Biggest challenge ever. I programmed for a long time but this course killed me for pretty much the whole time. Took me some time to understand but extremely rewarding at the end.

Content: 9/10

This is based on interest alone. In term of understanding, probably 6 but it's way too interesting for me. Frustrating but cool.

Lecturers: N/A

Tutor: 8/10
Encouraged and helped me a lot during computer lab and that's exactly what I need.

Overall: 8/10

This course is hard but has huge personal rewards and leads to a wide range of COMP course.

 

[KingOfActing]

COMP1521 - Computer Systems Fundamentals
Ease: 8/10 Content itself was a lot of "general knowledge" stuff that most people into CS will already know. MIPS was new, and probably the toughest part of the course, but it's still pretty small.

Lecturer: John Sheppard 9.5/10 He's honestly such a good lecturer, goes a bit slow but it grew on me. I don't love the way he structures his assignments (a lot of code that's unrelated to what you actually need to do) but other than that he was great!

Tutor: 8.5/10 Like most CS tutors, was good.

Overall: 9/10
The course was really well run and I enjoyed it.



COMP1531 - Software Engineering Fundamentals
Ease: 7/10 If you're good at memorising, you can get an easy HD in this course. Group work was ezpz.

Lecturer: Aarthi Natarajan 2/10 Her slides were good. The rest...

Tutor: 8/10 Was fine, the labs weren't hard so he didn't need to help (me) much with them. Gave good feedback for assignment, explained course content well.

Overall: 0.01/10
Hands down probably the worst course I'll ever take. The organisation was awful, the content was all over the place - went way too far into OO and Python, spent too much time on Flask, + more, I just don't have it in me to relive it to write it all down. Will probably get better with time, but I wouldn't recommend taking it unless it will slow down your degree progression if you don't. Delay!



PHYS1131 - Higher Physics 1A
Ease: 5/10 Pretty tough course, make sure you do all of the homework (and not the week before finals like me). Past exams will be your best friend. The labs were pretty easy to get full marks in though.

Lecturer: Duncan Wright - 9/10 great, explained things well, had Dragonball memes on his slides
Tim Duty - 6/10, didn't really get his explanations and tried to make jokes that were just super awkward

Tutor: Lab dude with white hair was super cool, other one was ok

Overall: 6/10
Don't do it if you aren't super into physics or you have to for your degree, definitely don't do it as an elective (oops)



MATH1241 - Higher Mathematics 1B
Ease: 8/10 I didn't find it particularly hard, a few questions here and there were like ??? though. Some people really struggled with the course, however - if you struggled with MATH1141 then MATH1241 is probably not for you.

Lecturer: I didn't go to lectures

Tutor: Alina Ostafe - 9/10 explains things well, really funny too. Tries to engage the class, but apparently everyone keeps thinking all her questions are rhetorical since me and my friend were the only ones who seemed to respond? Or maybe it's because it was a monday morning tutorial.
Wolfgang Schief - 9/10 funny, engaging, all round cool dude (also he was one of the lecturers this semester)

Overall: 9/10
I enjoyed it but like I said if you struggled with MATH1141 you probably won't have a good time in MATH1241.

 

[BHLee]

I will just list out uncommon one..

INFS2621 - Enterprise System
Ease: 8/10
This course mainly revolves around Enterprise System/ ERP that you've studied in INFS1602, but in-depth with covering ES architecture, lifecycle etc.
So technically, the contents memorisation of this course is fairly doable frankly since its all about ES logical thinking.
The in-class seminar is fairly enjoyable in term of pace, covering up ES discussions, SAP ECC6 labs and lastly, SAP Lumira for once.

Overall, it's still an enjoyable one in both theoretical and practical pov, not saying that it is extremely practical if that's what you aimed for.
*I find the in-class group 'game' simulation to be interesting, it's always fun to compete*

 

[Squar3root]

I will also list out an uncommon one

MECH9420 - Composites

Ease: 5/10
there are 3 assignments which require a lot of time and effort. the 2nd assignment is a bit difficult if you have no previous FEA experience and will be spending a lot of time in the lab figuring shit out. (tip: crash a MMAN4410 lab and ask the demos for help)
the labs are done in large groups (mainly with other ching chongs) so teamwork is very limited. you need to know what is going on in the lab (calculations, how to use instron, etc)

Lecturers: Prusty, Lyons both 8/10
they are really good lectures, they do go above and beyond to help you understand, the lecture slides are pretty good. It is essesential to attend lectures because they do some calcualtions that come up in the final exam

Tutor: arab guy? 6/10
he was a shy/quiet guy which made his teaching ability hindered. He mainly went through the tutorial questions and if you had questions he would explain it very consisely without much details. Nevertheless, most of us understood the concepts. and tutorial q's came up in the final exam. Don't be scared of the huge formulas and inverting 3x3 matrices

Overall: 8.5/10
I had an interest in the area because it appealed to me. you will need to invest a huge amount of time to do the assignments and labs but it is pretty rewarding to see lab stuff and simulations work out -> makes u feel like a real engineer imo

 

[obliviousninja]

TABL2741 - Entities


Ease:

• Nothing really made any sense to me during the semester but became clear to me when I was revising in Stuvac. Pretty much this whole subject is rote learn. The textbook is your best friend.
• Got 10/10 and 9/10 in the quizzes, and 18/20 for the assignment.
• Finals was a bit cucked, but manageable. If you leave study to the last minute you are bound to struggle.
  

Lecturer:

• Biggest bait. They allocate 3 hours lecture slots, when they just go for 1 hour. Never went to a lecture, just echo360 and chill. Lecturer is pretty good and explains things well.

Overall:

• 8/10. Some of the cases were pretty interesting. Very fortunate that this semester's assignment wasn't hard compared to other semesters. The work load is way less than taxation.

 

[RenegadeMx]

last one for me, been a fun 4 years going over education units and 2nd/3rd yr math units that are lacking here, ill finish off on the final compulsory education unit for UG

EDST4081 - Professional Issues in Teaching

Content: 8/10
The ethical and legal side of teaching that is inevitable in the career, lots of interesting stuff that makes you question yourself and the volatile nature of teaching and is quite good if you enjoy philosophy.

Ease: 8/10
2 main assignments, can be quite tricky to write given its not a normal essay but one that focuses more on ethics and philosophy. Annotating evidence can be a pain for the 2nd assignment. However, given how much help they place in lectures and tutorials - they legit give you past examples, I find it hard for anyone to fail unless you truly fuck up and be like 5 days late.

Lecturers: Niesche 8/10
I personally dont agree with his view of education as he seems to be more on the social justice side though his lectures werent too bad, calm voice and really knowledgeable on his stuff

Tutor: Whittle 7/10
Harsh marker compared to other tutors I hear, but is helpful during tutorials and really wants to make sure u understand the content well

Overall: 8/10
Solid 8 week course that covers most of the ground of ethics, philosophy and professionalism. A nice course to end your degree on.