UNSW Subject Survival Guides (1 Viewer)

BlugyBlug

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PHYS1131/21
- Ask any engineering/science student, this is the biggest pain in the ass subject with huge failure rates.

1. Do the problem sets they give you. Most likely, you'll only get the easy ones right on first go. That's fine.

2. Check the worked solutions that are on moodle. When I got the non-easy questions wrong, the solutions made it much easier to understand. Don't check the solutions until you've given the q a try. (By 'a try' I mean 'something related to physics is written on the page').

3. Everytime you learn something from these solutions, make a note of it in a note book. These will be your 'notes'. (e.g. "Use potential energy equations instead of projectile motion equations when dealing with falling objects for a scenario when...") ("Heat conduction throughout a material is constant throughout the entire material")

4. Don't waste time writing summary notes. Take notes during lectures and refine those. You want to spend minimum 90% of your PHYS study time doing QUESTIONS and learning from them. Not stupid-ass summary notes that take 10hours to note down and are useless in the end. This is not a memorization subject.

5. Go to your lectures and problem solving classes. I could barely keep up with the symbols during lecture, but no one does. Once you review it while doing problems, you'll understand easier than someone who didn't go to the lecture because "i learn nothing from phys lectures".
Also, sit in the 2nd,3rd or 4th row. It makes a difference in how engaged you are in the lecture. 1st row is for losers, but the extra leg room probably makes it worth it.

6. Don't be afraid to ask Wolfe questions, his only flaw is that he doesn't seem to know how hard PHYS is for first years and moves very fast.

7. Make a note of formulae that are not on the formula sheet but are still useful e.g. Most rotational dynamics equations.

8. When you get to the last few weeks of semester repeat steps 1-3 with past papers.

9. Bombard your lab demonstrators with questions. You'll end up learning which ones are 'nice' ones who give you free marks. Abuse this (lol). Seriously, they're very helpful and basically do your lab for you if you ask them the right questions.

10. Join the facebook group, some people post a lot of questions (*cough* 4025808) and you can learn a lot by trying their questions yourself and seeing what other people do. Contribute!

Source: PHYS1131 - 96 (HD)
 
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4025808

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Iirc for PHYS1121 I spent all of week 13 and STUVAC cramming for it, before that I knew like nothing for that course (except for the first and part of the 2nd quiz). Ended up one off HD (QQ). Still my best uni mark of all time though.

TBH I did this because I was shit scared I couldn't enrol into PTRL2018 and PTRL2019 and that I would be one year behind. Didn't want to do that so yeah.

Never went to lecture or any problem solving classes but still managed to do well somewhat. I focused a lot of my time doing the tute problems as well as all the past papers every year from 2006 onwards. As well as that, discussing problems with other peers. :)
 
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sirable1

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First Year Mathematics
- If you need help with Maths, rock up to the Student Support Scheme on Level 3 of the Red Centre building. Very helpful, asked many questions that I was struggling with now I'm very confident with!

- Consultation with staff members are also good but some are approachable and some aren't.

- I wouldn't imagine anyone signing up for a paid-tutor for first year math. Just be careful imo when looking for these types of tutors (like on Student VIP), because besides paying bucketloads of cash to these 'tutors' (some charge up to $50/hr!!! - which is off the charts...), they may possibly give false detail in their description of getting D/HD in math. There's no real proof unless you ask them for their transcript :L . I think Peter Brown mentioned something similar last semester about these private tutors.
 
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asi9

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Well pretty much all the level 1 commerce courses are pretty easy... I guess an universal tip would be to just keep up with the work and you can get 90+ in all of them. That sounds obvious, but getting a 90+ WAM in first year of commerce which ,imo is not hard to achieve at all tbh, pretty much means the rest of uni is a layup in things such as applying for internships etc (as long as you don't suddenly stop studying, that is).

I guess to be more specific, FINS1612 (a core subject for majoring in finance which I assume a large majority of commerce students usually do) is one of those subjects where the lecturer is rather lazy... In other words, if you know someone who did it in a previous semester (or have access to... certain resources), you can, I kid you not, can get close to 100 in this subject.
 

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