Excuse me, you're not even at uni (or at least that's how I interpret "HSC: N/A"). A credit average is very good! In high school a mark of 65 is a crap mark, but at uni it's a way for them to tell you "good on you! You’ve done more than we required/expected of you!". Emphasis on the word "credit". In the thesaurus, you get words like praise, acclaim, acknowledgement, glory, tribute, esteem, honour, prestige, etc! So don't just say "it's only a credit average". The more difficult course like combined masters degrees (like the one I'm doing, which is a BE (Chem)/ME (Biomed) ) require students to maintain credit averages. For your typical bachelor degree, you don't need to maintain an average as high as a credit average. So therefore, 10 hours was sufficient for me to obtain an average as high as a credit average. But that was just for first semester because the subjects that I did pretty much covered what I had studied in the HSC in maths extension 2, physics and chemistry. But this semester I'm doing about 30 hours per week of study because the subjects are brand new (I've never done them before). So the point I was trying to make before was: the amount of study you do varies from person to person (and from one semester to another). Just don't you dare say "it's only a credit average".
Everyone, even the later year students say that the first year is the hardest. It's only when you finally start specialising after the first year when things get better. You become interested in specific fields and your marks increase as a result of your newfound passion. The universities take this into account. When calculating your honours based on your weighted average marks (WAM), they use this formula:
Final WAM = 0.1(First year WAM) + 0.2(Second year WAM) + 0.3(Third year WAM) +0.4(Fourth year WAM). The first year contributes only to 10% of the final WAM (which the uni's use to determine honour levels).
Actually, no it doesn't. I came from a below average high school but I slogged it out and I achieved a UAI of 96.60. But I made some new friends at UNSW who all had UAIs above 99. Some of them were stumped in first semester because they didn't learn the course content fully. That was an indication that their UAI was not a testament to their intelligence. It was a testament to the teaching they received at their top selective high schools. Selective high schools aren't as concerned with increasing a student's intelligence as they are with preparing them for the HSC. That's why you would go to a selective high school. They spend 6 years training you for 6 exams in the HSC. They train you to memorise what answers the markers want to see. They train you in the "syllabus outcomes". At uni, you don't have the luxury of being pampered and spoon-fed all the facts. You are the one who has to do all the work.
UAIs are NOT in anyway an indication of one's own intelligence and it is naïve to think they are.
As a matter-of-fact, passes do indeed get you degrees. And they don't make you any less appealing to employers. Anything above 65 earns you further honours but passes are acceptable. Once again, to quote my university (UNSW), “a pass demonstrates that the student has achieved an acceptable level of competence in the specified field and he or she is capable of proceeding to the next course or graduation”. One of my lecturers put it in simple terms "A pass is good enough. It means we're happy with the way you performed".
So in closing, I recommend you pull out the pencil you evidently have shoved up your ass.
