UNSW Subject Reviews. (1 Viewer)

MC Squidge

BOS' Apex Predator
Joined
May 13, 2008
Messages
267
Location
none
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
ECON1101 - shit
ACCT1501 - shit
MGMT1001 - meh
MATH1151 - wonderful
 

karnage

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2007
Messages
420
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
My anger is probably overrepresented atm as I'm studying at 2am for the 20% test tomrorow and desperately googling EVERY kind of source I have.
Just go to all of pahors lecture man, stuff the course pack.
 

biopia

WestSyd-UNSW3x/week
Joined
Nov 12, 2008
Messages
341
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
I hate this course so fucking much I'll write a review on it before even have finished it.
I am in the same boat as you, so I will review a subject too =]

BENV1080...

Take heed anyone who comes across this thinking of doing Architectural Studies, Architectural Computing or Civil Engineering/Architecture. If you have no advanced standing, you will have to do this course, and I know for a fact you will hate it.

It is called "Enabling Skills & Research Practice" and the idea is to set you up with basic skills for the rest of your degree e.g. visual, academic and computing skills in things like model making, critical thinking and photoshop/indesign.

The biggest reason why this subject sucks is because its workload is bigger than any of the other core subjects. There are 5 assignments in total, and they all suck big time.

I must concede that SOME elements of the course are enjoyable, but the fact that the workload is so heavy really diminishes this.

The course involves a three hour studio and a one hour lecture for the entire semester, and a two hour computing lab 4 weeks of the semester.

Another bad part of the course is the fact that all 5 assignments are geared towards and inspired by the Opera House. Basically, the course is 13 weeks of studying the Opera House. I am not over exaggerating.

So...

Ease: 7/10
Lecturer: 6/10 (You get a ton of guest lectures, but sometimes they can be more boring than the regular lecturers.)
Interest: 5/10
Overall: 6/10

This subject is worse than History... I can't believe I am saying that.
 

tommykins

i am number -e^i*pi
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
5,730
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
Lol i have like 6 mates doing civ/arch together and they hate architectures with a passion. said something about them being completely pompous and arrogant when it's the engineers that put their 'ideas' into action.
 

Prosper

Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
171
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
COMP2911 Design in Computing
Ease: 5/10 - Design tasks and the overall project will eat up much of your time to focus on other subjects
Lecturer: 10/10 - Richard Buckland is a genious
Interest: 10/10 - Great content
Overall: 9/10 - The only reason it didn't get 10/10 is because it takes so much time to do well in this course


COMP2121 Microprocessors:
Ease: 3/10 - A lot of the numbers content is fairly easy, the assembly programming really isn't that easy though
Lecturuer: Pretty good, says "are you with me?" too often though
Interest: 6/10 - Some of the content feels outdated, should do ARM processors instead of AVR
Overall: 5/10 - Not an easy course and not sure how useful the assembly coding will be when we've learned the AVR instruction set when most companies use ARM these days

COMP3331 Networks:
Ease: 8/10 - Fairly easy course, programming and maths here is fairly simple
Interest: 9/10 - Pretty interesting content
Lecturer: Lecturer is really good and attempts to keep everyone's concentration throughout a 3 hour lecture, a lot of people leave at the 2 hour mark because they can't stay concentrated for longer and feel more useful listening to the recording later
Overall: 9/10

SENG4921 Ethics
Ease: 10/10 Fairly easy course to get good marks in
Interest: 5/10 - Course content varies between interesting and incessantly boring
Lecturers: Guest lectures, some are good, some are horrible - we had ones that were just advertising their services the whole time
Overall: 6/10 - Feels like a pretty useless course and doesn't deserve to be 6UOC
 

hungwell1337

Member
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
885
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
mgmt1001- i fucking hate this shit

ease - 8/10 nothing to difficult
interest - 0/10 too much fucking readings, too much common sense being taught
lecturers - 5/10 they try hard, but the content is rubbish
overall - 2/10 compulsory

actl1501 - not bad
ease - 9/10
interest 5/10
lecturers 5/10
overall 6/10

econ1101
ease - 10/10
interest 9/10
lecturers 8/10
overall 9/10

math1151
ease - 6/10
interest 8/10
lecturers 6/10
overall 7/10
 

kaz1

et tu
Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
6,960
Location
Vespucci Beach
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
2009
Uni Grad
2018
ENGG1811- Computing for Engineers
Ease: 7/10, Excel and Acces is piss easy but VBA makes you want to die if you haven't done it before.
Lecturer: Ashesh 10/10 teaches you everything you need to know for excel and access. Whale is 0/10 explains horribly and his instructions for labs are shithouse.
Overall: Good course until you get to VBA.
 

Cinnamonster

Active Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
1,322
Location
Somewhere in the general vicinity of the Universe
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
SART1502 - Drawing
Top notch course. 10/10 for everything except perhaps ease because sometimes the amount of homework due each week is difficult to achieve, especially if you tend to work slowly when making art (like I do). But even then, the homework is generally fun and you can complete it while you're watching TV or something.
 

FlipX

Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2009
Messages
65
Location
Narnia
Gender
Male
HSC
2005
A few recent courses I've done, off the top of my head...


ECON2107: Labour, Income and Growth in the Global Economy
Teaching: Lisa Magnani was one awesome, awesome lecturer. She knew her stuff (which, in a perfect world, wouldn't even be a bonus when discussing uni lecturers) and provided a solid structure to the topics she covered.

Feedback: George Leipnik was the tutor for this course and did an exceptional job going over the material. The assessment structure was fairly easy - one tutorial presentation at some point during the session and the usual mid-sem/final exams.

Relevancy: Immensely relevant topics relating to global labour markets and their inputs and conditions - the influence of education, policy recommendations for child labour, dualistic rural/urban economics in developing countries, etc.

Enjoyment: Well-structured, well-taught and practical courses are always enjoyable - definitely recommended.

ECON2127: Environmental Economics
Teaching: Regina Betz was clearly very passionate about the subject matter and has a lot of material to share. The structure of the course was good, but she often had twice the number of lecture slides than she had time for... -.-

Feedback: Formal assessments were a little inconsistent, but George Leipnik was an amazing tutor and you'll be fine if you pay attention in his tutes.

Relevancy: Practical analyses of different environmental topics, from fishery management to optimising visitor charges for funding destination preservation.

Enjoyment: Overall, a really relevant and enjoyable course. Was good to see economics applied outside of the typical corporate context. Highly recommended.

ECON3109: Economic Growth, Technology and Structural Change
Teaching: Peter Kriesler taught this, and as others have pointed out in this thread, he is one of the better economics lecturers at UNSW - very engaging and passionate. In terms of structure, though, I feel that he wasn't as focused with his topics as the two lecturers above.

Feedback: This course involved constant assessment, with a short essay due every fortnight and plenty of higher-level readings (the prescribed text, which was a collection of political economy essays, killed a lot of people). It's appropriate for the type of material covered, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant. :(

Relevancy: Not as practical as some other econ courses, but I'd say it's quite important to cover some of these more social-sciences kind of topics to have a better grounding in the historical and political context in which we make micro/macro decisions.

Enjoyment: A real eye-opener in terms of its more philosophical approach to economics, but still involves some practical topics. Just be prepared to do some real work!​
 

Justina

Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
321
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
Anyone her done management accounting 2?
I've enrolled in it for next semester, but today the lecturer said that people who leave it till 3rd year perform significantly better....got me a little worried.
 

kzsv

New Member
Joined
Dec 21, 2008
Messages
29
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
can anyone can post a review up for infs1602, and the aviation behind the scenes gen ed? cheers =)

edit: thanks secremify, just realised u did one for aviation , tops
 

hollyy.

stop looking at me swan.
Joined
Apr 26, 2008
Messages
1,148
Location
cadbury world.
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
infs1602
ease - 7/10 Its not a particularly hard course, just so fucking annoying and time consuming. Quizzes in every lecture, homework to hand in every week, group presentations/debates in every tute plus the 30% group major assignment. The concepts arn't really hard to understand, but some of the questions can be difficult to figure out what theyre asking. When all else fails; bullshit away.
lecturer: 6/10 hes alright I guess, but i doze off without fail every time. and his lecture notes are shit, basically just have pictures. So you'll be learning via the textbook the whole sem (which doesnt even have an index wtf)
overall: 6/10
 

jellyy

New Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
29
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
infs1602
ease - 7/10 Its not a particularly hard course, just so fucking annoying and time consuming. Quizzes in every lecture, homework to hand in every week, group presentations/debates in every tute plus the 30% group major assignment. The concepts arn't really hard to understand, but some of the questions can be difficult to figure out what theyre asking. When all else fails; bullshit away.
lecturer: 6/10 hes alright I guess, but i doze off without fail every time. and his lecture notes are shit, basically just have pictures. So you'll be learning via the textbook the whole sem (which doesnt even have an index wtf)
overall: 6/10
infs1602
ease - 2/10 i have no idea what i'm meant to know, and what is relevant? it's impossible to read the textbook every week and remember every minute detail. and the textbook is not logical at all! literally a compilation from several sources shoved under one title.
lecturer - 6/10 he's ok, but annoying about the quizzes. lost a whole bunch of marks because i was 5mins late to class.
tutor - 3/10 tries to be funny. dresses like the little kid from 'up'. has a friggen annoying accent that i cannot understand. and has no clue how to mark or write a proper essay.
overall 3/10
 

Lydia_88

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Messages
228
Gender
Female
HSC
2006
Some more recent courses done this semester...

MGMT2721 Managing people - This course is exactly like MGMT1002 (Organisational behaviour), except it can only be taken by students outside Human resources and Management.

Since this semester lecture was quite late in the arvo (4-6pm) i just gave up coming from week 8 onwards and started reading from the textbook. Don't feel bad about not turning up (i've noticed numbers were dwindling down towards the end of this semester....), and the lecture notes are posted on blackboard too.

Pretty commonsense course, but what kills this is the Group Case study assignment (you basically have to identify a 'team problem' and then use theories to justify and come up with solutions)...a lot of the assignments require to use theory and self reflection. They are rather strict on marks on all assessments and you need to pass the final exam to pass the course (all multiple choice). The LEARNING JOURNAL you must complete every week because the tutor may spot check it... and PLEASE do NOT leave the LJ to the last minute because it will totally screw you in the end....and when you complete the Personal Report part, you cannot miss out on the PROFILE survey since its important to the report (you will FAIL if you dont complete the survey and yes 50% marks gone)...

GENT1521 Human variation and education - A rather 'controversial' course, lots of debatable topics (things that are heard on the news)...eugenics, gender biases...don't bother with this course if you don't want to hear offensive material or goes against what you believe.... lecture material was ok, but can be structured better.......5/10.

SESC3620 - Occupational Diseases and Injuries... hehe my safety courses are all straight forward......... pretty interesting stuff but when you complete the take home tests, make sure you write no more than 10 lines....8/10 for easiness...
 
Last edited:

miaowsha

Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
109
Gender
Female
HSC
2006
Some more recent courses done this semester...

MGMT2721 Managing people - This course is exactly like MGMT1002 (Organisational behaviour), except it can only be taken by students outside Human resources and Management.

Since this semester lecture is quite late in the arvo (4-6pm) i just gave up coming from week 8 onwards and started reading from the textbook. Don't feel bad about not turning up (i've noticed numbers were dwindling down towards the end of this semester....), and the lecture notes are posted on blackboard too.

Pretty commonsense course, but what kills this is the Group Case study assignment (you basically have to identify a 'team problem' and then use theories to justify and come up with solutions)...a lot of the assignments was based on crap that i have thought on top of my mind... They are rather strict on marks on all assessments (the mid-session was meh, didnt go so great though...a mere 10%)......and you need to pass the final exam to pass the course (all multiple choice).. Tutor and Lecturer are very passionate too....overall its a 7/10 for this course...

GENT1521 Human variation and education - A rather 'controversial' course, lots of debatable topics (things that are heard on the news)...eugenics, gender biases...don't bother with this course if you don't want to hear offensive material or goes against what you believe.... lecture material was ok, but can be structured better.......5/10.

SESC3620 - Occupational Diseases and Injuries... hehe my safety courses are all straight forward......... pretty interesting stuff but when you complete the take home tests, make sure you write no more than 10 lines....8/10 for easiness...
Your reviews always rock :D <3
 

TehAzner

Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
Messages
777
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Anyone her done management accounting 2?
I've enrolled in it for next semester, but today the lecturer said that people who leave it till 3rd year perform significantly better....got me a little worried.
Are you, by chance, taking Management Accounting 2 with Financial Accounting 1 (i.e. ACCT2542)? It has been said by many people that this combination will definitely take a toll on you during the semester, and it is best to leave it till when you are in your third year. Personally I would recommend you follow this piece of advice, as I have heard that people have been unable to cope with the tremendous amount of work involved with Management Accounting 2 (partly due to the reason of LOTS of reading involved).

I'm only taking it next semester and I'm a third year. Last ever Accounting course ever ftw!
 

Justina

Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
321
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
Are you, by chance, taking Management Accounting 2 with Financial Accounting 1 (i.e. ACCT2542)? It has been said by many people that this combination will definitely take a toll on you during the semester, and it is best to leave it till when you are in your third year. Personally I would recommend you follow this piece of advice, as I have heard that people have been unable to cope with the tremendous amount of work involved with Management Accounting 2 (partly due to the reason of LOTS of reading involved).

I'm only taking it next semester and I'm a third year. Last ever Accounting course ever ftw!
Yes, I was going to take it with ACCT2542, but I chickened out and switched Mgmt acct 2 for INFS1602, which I think would be the smarter thing to do.
Lucky you, last accounting course :) Going for CPA?
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top