UNSW Subject Reviews. (3 Viewers)

[Variably]

ECON1101 (Microeconomics)

Ease: 10/10. The assessments were quite easy as long as you understood the content which wasn't too hard to learn as long as you were were following the lectures. Finals were all multiple choice and pretty manageable.
Content: 9/10 I really liked the content, a bit of it came from prelims eco.
Lecturers: 10/10 Peter - Awesome lecturer, explained concepts really well, etc. Heard Alberto was pretty good as well.
Tutor: 9/10 I think her name was Van? Other than having a bit of an accent she was really helpful and explained concepts really well
Overall: 9/10 Pretty interesting/bludgy subject as long as you keep up to date. Make sure you get Alberto/Peter though because they're really good.


ACCT1501 (Accounting 1A)

Ease: 9/10 Not an overly hard course. Midsems were pretty easy, gave 25% free marks (though realistically you get 22.5 of them) via quizzes and perdisco. Finals weren't that bad.
Content: 10/10 I really enjoyed the content for some reason, but I found it pretty interesting learning about the accounting cycle and management accounting.
Lecturers: 7/10 Youngdeok - Heavy accent, explained things quite well. 3/10 Asian lady - Slept through 1st lecture with her, skipped the rest. 8/10 White guy - Explained concepts pretty well, though skipped every lecture anyway
Tutor: 10/10 Derek - Pretty cool tutor, explained stuff really well and was heaps chilled.
Overall: 9/10 Pretty chill/bludgy


ECON1203 (Business and Economics Statistics)


Ease: 6/10 30% fail rate in mid sems, harsh marking for the project, finals were quite similar to previous years though
Content: 7/10 Idk, after the regression topic started everything just built up to a pile of shit but for the most part it was pretty manageable and somewhat interesting.
Lecturers: 4/10 Roger? Idk, I kinda feel sorry for him because it seemed like he was trying really hard to be a good lecturer but he was pretty bad. Like he spoke way too softly and mumbled a lot, so much so that you had to concentrate really hard to understand what he was saying let alone understanding the theory
Tutor: Umm we had 2 pretty bad tutors which i don't remember the names of, though there was one time we had this really hyper old asian lady (apparently she's the tutor in charge?) who's name was Lee Lee or something and she was great so 9/10 for her.
Overall: 5.5/10 Death when finals come around. If you don't want to die go to Denzil for lecturer. If you don't want to die go to PASS classes. If you don't want to die make sure you do tute questions and actually understand them.

 

[kalstar]

Re: 回复: Re: UNSW Subject Reviews.

Turner is the best lecturer in the school, closely followed by the geotech (kurt and adrian) the other water guys (ron and bruce).

Subject review time (grouped, since all the courses have changed since i did them...)

1st year civil: Maths, physics, chemistry, basic mechanics, computing
This stuff seems hard when you do it. Half of it you will never touch again, the other half (concepts and basic methods) will be used so often that it will become second nature. The bad news is that if you can't do statics, you're boned for 2nd and 3rd years. Don't underestimate the powar of computing. Take a look at the programs in the lab comps, they can do your homework for you in pretty much every subject. Get good at cad or slope software or struc analysis or hydro modelling or matlab or systems modelling. Everyone will love you and beg for your assistance.

Industrial training:
12 weeks is mandatory and usually taken after 3rd year. Try to do 12 weeks after 1st, 2nd and 3rd years, with different employers in different areas. Pick up a 1-or-2-day-a-week job for 3rd & 4th years. You'll have HUGE advantage over everyone else if you can manage to do this.

Geotech
Not nearly as hard as it looks if you just do all the practice questions out of H&K. Great lecturers help. KNOW YOUR STUFF beforehand and nasser will give you extra marks for answering questions in the lecture, I picked up 5 or 6 marks this way (although I suspect that he doesn't actually add them on at all...) Pick one geotech elective so you can go on the field trip in fourth year. DO IT. Career is hell - nobody can see what you do, nobody wants to pay for it and you only get credit for disasters. Try to get job at PSM.

Structures
Go buy HB2.2, or photocopy the entire thing. You need it. The new course has crap structure. Lecturers either cater for advanced students (steve and tinloi) or for the morons (zora + mario). It's not hard, everything you need for design is in HB2.2, everything you need for analysis can be easily copied off examples (open book exams). If you are a dull person or have poor english, this is the career for you. Aim to work at Arup.

Construction & Management
These courses are the easy option, guaranteed DNs for everyone, HDs if you aren't a moron. Boring lecture material - try to distract the lecturers, they're really interesting people. dCar likes talking about how stupid politicians and students are, steve likes talking about projects he's worked on (and is deceptively smart, liek genius level smart, but it doesn't show because the material is so easy).
Try and get work experience in construction before you decide on it as a career. I did - 60hr weeks, rural placement, dealing with bogan construction workers all day, not for me. Go for big companies, there's more variation in the projects to keep it interesting.

Transport
Dull. Easy option for honours. Aim for a design consultancy, road construction is the worst job in the world.

Water
AWESOME (biased...)
Seriously, it's awesome. Hydraulics courses are easy, there's only liek 3 principles. Find a good tutor, copying off the board will get you nowhere. You must do the tutorials to not suck at this stuff. Water treatment course is crap. Hydrology with ashish and matt is fun, they have good notes. Coastal / beach is the best course ever. None of this is too easy, you have to teach yourself how to do the stuff, it's not spoonfed like in structures. Careers abound, try WRL for an awesome working environment or one of the big consultancies. Phd scholarhips everywhere.

Which companies do industrial training after 1st year pls, I haven't found any so far.

 

[fizzbylightning]

ANAT2241 (Histology: Basic and Systematic)
Ease: 7/10. People get scared about histology because everything looks the same under the microscope. There are many food analogies such as coiled glands looking like spaghetti as well... It helps quite a bit if you have gross anatomy under your belt because you can apply your knowledge of function of various body parts and systems to this course. The mid-sems were good. The MCQ were easy, the spot test was straight-forward (you get 1.5 minutes to identify two things on each slide) and the three shorter response questions were alright. The final exam was really random though; they weren't very predictable questions so make sure you know your stuff as anything will be tested. I am yet to do the final spot test though I think it would be pretty straight-forward.
Content: 7/10. As this focused on the histological aspect of anatomy, it wasn't as interesting as gross anatomy. You also have to adopt the 3D mindset early on as you get a cross-section of tissue on a slide. Patrick always emphasises the importance of arranging your notes in tables and in fact, the final exam calls for you to do a compare/contrast table. However, I've never been a person who tabulates stuff so I didn't really listen to his advice... but I should have...
Lecturers: Patrick (8/10) - he is your typical Aussie bogan but I say that in an endearing way. He is very "black-and-white" (a self-proclaimed statement) and will tell you what you need to know. He is good at making this course organised. Thomas Fath (3/10) is on the other end of the spectrum. His slides have a lot of information and he unfortunately has a German? accent that puts most to sleep. The two lab demonstrators, Peter and Jessica were A+ and they are very smart.
Overall: 7/10.

BIOC2021 (Principles of Biochemistry)
Ease: 5/10. I do not like biochemistry or chemistry for that matter and that mindset doesn't make it any easier to study it. They break up the assessment weightings quite a bit - you have lab reports and tutorial quizzes, the latter of which gives you an idea on what the final will be like. The final wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be but I did decide to selectively study for it, missing on entire lectures and I was pretty lucky with the questions we got in that respect.
Content: 5/10. I liked the lectures that applied what we learned to what I was familiar with. Eg. what fuels do your body use when you fast or exercise. I found the last couple of lectures that integrated all the metabolic pathways we learned difficult though. I really crammed for the final. I was in what was possibly the most awkward tutorial/lab group in history too.
Lecturers: There were quite a few. Rebecca LeBard (7/10) reminds me of a giddy school girl... but she's good and takes most of the lectures. Anne Galea (8/10) - I didn't like her in BABS1201 but she's changed in my books. She took the last couple of lectures and was very clear. Vincent Murray (8/10) - he's clear and he'll be taking most of the lectures for BIOC2201: Principles of Molecular Biology next semester. Andrew Brown (7/10) - clear. Brett Neilan (6/10) - really dodgy guy and sometimes funny but at times racist....... He's a "guest" lecturer and we also had him for microbiology. Marc Wilkins (8/10) - proteins guy. He nods his head a lot after he's explained something.
Overall: 5/10. Yeah. Nah.

MICR2011 (Microbiology 1)
Ease: 6/10. At the start of semester, I thought this would be a piece of cake but then came along the metabolic processes lectures which were a bit overwhelming. There is quite an overlap with biochemistry content which is cool.
Content: 7/10. The labs and tutorials tie in nicely with the lecture content. There is a bacterial isolation project that goes on for 5+ weeks of the semester where you are in charge of isolating your chosen bacteria from a soil sample and the autonomy is fun but I'm still not sure how I feel about that project. You also have to write a final report on it. The mid sem and final are structured the same - both requiring a couple of sentences of response to each question which is good because essays are daunting.
Lecturers: I gained an appreciation, amazingly enough, for micro-organisms. In general, many of the lecturers were quite passionate about their fields and emphasised the importance microbes have in the world. Without them, a lot of the fundamental processes in the biosphere wouldn't be possible and larger life rely on such to survive. Rick Cavicchioli (9/10) - I know a lot of people found him boring and maybe a bit self-indulgent but his lectures were quite eye-opening for me (not the one on archaea, but the global impact one). Torsten Thomas (7/10) - yeah he has a pretty cool accent and likes to say "bazically" a lot. John Wilson (3/10) - he did the food microbiology lecture and I found that redundant, especially with the lecture slides he had. Hazel Mitchell (5/10) - she took the antibiotics and fungal infections lectures and antibiotics was a section of the course that I understood really well. My lab demonstrator Vipra was good - she's clear and has experience though one week she said she had a cold so asked us to not ask her too many questions that week and to use our common sense instead??? I thought that was a bit funny.
Overall: 6/10.

PHSL2101 (Physiology 1A)
Ease: 7/10. I am genuinely interested in this aspect of science so it motivated my interest.
Content: 7/10. There's excitable tissues (5/10), muscle (8/10), blood (8/10), cardiovascular system (6/10) and neurophysiology (7/10). What's cool with the finals is that you can choose from one of two questions for the longer response section. I once again chose to selectively study for this final due to time constraints and this format undoubtedly helped me out. Though I'm not a big fan of fill-in-the-blank responses, particularly when they're ambiguous. The lab MCQs in the final were difficult because I underestimated this section and discounted it in my study.
Lecturers: Andrew Moorhouse (7/10) - he does funny dance moves to illustrate the opening and closing of ion channels during an action potential. His topic (excitable tissues) is fundamental for later topics. I really like the muscle guy Stewart Head (8/10) because he has a nice British accent and drinks Coke Zero intermittently throughout his lectures. Lesley Ulman (6/10) - she's okay, I wasn't too crazy about her. Tim Murphy (6/10) - I thought he was a bit of a sleaze but I don't have much evidence to back that up. Richard Vickery (9/10) - A+ guy with A+ colourful lecture notes. He's friendly and approachable. The lecturers take their lab classes for their respective topics.
Overall: 7/10.

 

[amandada]

Note: I do not go to any Commerce lectures so take from this what you will.

ECON1101 (Microeconomics)

Ease: 9/10.
Content: 9/10. Probably one of my favourite courses at uni so far. Interesting to learn and everything made sense. I've been told it's like HSC eco but much easier.


ACCT1501 (Accounting 1A)

Ease: 10/10. I did acct during HSC tafe so everything was a breeze. Hardest thing in this course is learning which figures to add or subtract from.
Content: 10/10 I might be in the minority, but I personally enjoy accounting. Unlike some other compulsory cores (i.e. mgmt) I think this is probably one of the most useful courses you can learn during your degree.
Pro-tip: Perdisco is a bitch. Get answers off someone else or thinkswap. You WILL be severely disadvantages if you do not have the answers.

ECON1203 (Business and Economics Statistics)

Ease: 3/10 If you haven't done HSC maths, there is probably a high chance you will fail this course. If you find the content hard, go to PASS classes. They were my saviour.
Content: 7/10 Probability and statistics. You will need this stuff if you plan on doing finance. Interesting but difficult.


MGMT1001

Ease: /10. Not sure how to rate this one. I wouldn't say its hard or easy. Marking is highly subjective and you end result will be based on your ability to BS your way through management theories.
Content: 6/10. Dry and boring. The philosophical wishy-washy stuff is not my kind of think


FINS2624

Ease:8/10. Know the content well as the multiple choice questions are a bitch. Answers such as none of the above, more than one of the above, and all of the above tend to screw people over. Also, HW is a lot harder than the exams, which a pretty easy.
Content: 8/10. Favourite finance course so far. Really interesting stuff on portfolio management.


INF1602

Ease: /10. No rating.
Content: 0/10. Absolute worse course I have ever done. If you think MGMT is bad, stay far far far far far far (x100) away from this course. This course is not technical but is 100% fluffy and wishy washy. Basically, you are expected to memorise the textbook back to front. And honestly one of the worse textbooks I've ever read. I do not say this lightly, but I think I could've written a better textbook. I would say at least 50% of marks form this course will test you on your ability to BS your way through essay question. So lucky to the years who do not have to do this to meet CA requirements. Honestly just do not do this if you do not have to. Or spend an extra 3k to do it in the summer. I've heard it's a lot better then.


ACCT1511

Ease: 8/10. Not the 'Wam-Killer' I was expecting. Free marks everywhere, including an extra 2 for attending every tutorial. No mid-sem or anything like that so I just crammed in the 5 days before my exam and I think I did decently in the finals. If you head into finals without being close to full marks, you're doing something wrong.
Content: 8/10. Again I like accounting so this was enjoyable for me. Interesting course. Really builds on ACCT1511. If you didn't like that one, probably best not to do this one.


TABL2741

Ease: 7/10. Easy if you are good at rote-learning and essay writing. Also every single question for final exams reuse past questions word for word. So go over all of them as revision.
Content: 2/10. Boring as eff. About as interesting as watching paint dry. Seriously. If I had any interest in pursuing law, before I definitely do not now.

TABL1751

Ease: 7/10. Same as above for the rote-learning and essay writing.
Content: 4/10. Still boring but better than 2741.

 

[klavier]

MATH1131 (Mathematics 1A)

Ease: 9/10 (Calculus and Algebra)
Nothing too hard except there are a lot of contents to learn in 3 months. Maple test is quite annoying though.
Final isn't too hard because they gave you past exam questions to prepare.


Content: 10/10
got to learn about hyperbolic function, e^i*Pi, matrix ...etc , most are very fun

Lecturers:

Calculus: Milan Pahor (10/10)
At first I dont understand why everyone says he is the greatest lecturer in this uni, then he began to grow on me. Dude really explains
things in interesting way. Also... PUT IT AWAY THANKS !

Algebra: Thomas Britz (9/10)
I like this guy, his voice prevents you from sleeping and he has a lot of energy and passion. He doesn't explain things as good as Pahor though..

 

[Midori-Days]

ACCT1511

Ease: 8/10. Not the 'Wam-Killer' I was expecting. Free marks everywhere, including an extra 2 for attending every tutorial. No mid-sem or anything like that so I just crammed in the 5 days before my exam and I think I did decently in the finals. If you head into finals without being close to full marks, you're doing something wrong.
Content: 8/10. Again I like accounting so this was enjoyable for me. Interesting course. Really builds on ACCT1511. If you didn't like that one, probably best not to do this one.

100% before the finals was gee...but sadly I didn't really study for anything. All my homework was just scribbles and the seminar dude didnt mind.
Strongest bludge...

 

[Squar3root]

gg :/

 

[obliviousninja]

INF1602

Ease: /10. No rating.
Content: 0/10. Absolute worse course I have ever done. If you think MGMT is bad, stay far far far far far far (x100) away from this course. This course is not technical but is 100% fluffy and wishy washy. Basically, you are expected to memorise the textbook back to front. And honestly one of the worse textbooks I've ever read. I do not say this lightly, but I think I could've written a better textbook. I would say at least 50% of marks form this course will test you on your ability to BS your way through essay question. So lucky to the years who do not have to do this to meet CA requirements. Honestly just do not do this if you do not have to. Or spend an extra 3k to do it in the summer. I've heard it's a lot better then.

Imao

 

[obliviousninja]

INFS1602

Ease/Content: 6/10; A lot of content to take in, some of it is general knowledge, crosses over with other hsc/uni subjects (eg. business studies, MGMT). As someone said earlier the course is really really wishy washy, like the assignments were shocking, all the questions are were so broad and general that they all crossed over. Assignments are tough to get above credit and consume so much time. Also choose your groups well for assignments, if not you will get rektd, do not trust your peers. Final exam was alright for me, but if you didn't study really really specific things that might not have even been in the textbook and only mentioned in lectures, you will certainly fail, fail as in repeat the course, you will get destroyed. For example a question may ask, explain X and the components within X (where X is some technical jargon) and relate to this Y. If you don't know and didn't study X, say goodbye to 15% of your finals marks. And the thing was that there were 3 or so questions that behaved like this, so essentially you would be crying your way to another semester/holiday of this subject. Also for finals there's 25MC that has negative marking, whereby if you get them wrong, you lose marks. tl;dr if you don't put in effort you will struggle

Lecturer: 4/10 - Terrible jokes, learnt nothing, stopped going after week 3, unless there was a guest lecturer, one week some guy from westpac came in to talk. Once again heed caution skipping lecturers, as concepts will be seen in the final exam which are not in the textbook.

Tutor: 8/10 - Probably one of my favourite subject tutes. Even though its two hours, I enjoy them as they are interactive (group work/discussion) so you get to know people, ie every1 stops being anti-social unlike other subjects; made a lot of friends in the opening couple of weeks at uni! My tutor was alright, except kept picking on me to answer questions which was annoying but no harm done.

Overall: 6-7/10 ~Expecting D hopefully <3

 

[Squar3root]

ON is expecting the D

 

[kalstar]

ON is expecting the D

He wants it badly

 

[nightweaver066]

So another round of exams have just passed and I feel like this was definitely the roughest.

ACTL2111
Ease: 7/10. Not the easiest of courses, but it isn't too bad. Things are very conceptually based so if you nail those, you should be OKAY. Final exams are definitely not easy though, however is something that you can prepare for by doing past papers and also institute papers which I would say helped me IMMENSELY.
Content: 8/10. Pretty interesting having deepened my understanding about pricing financial products rather than what we covered very roughly in 1st year. I'd say it's helped me with my problem solving skills heaps.
Lecturer: 8/10. Ziveyi is a funny guy and is very helpful. I'm sure many students have annoyed him over the semester, especially during the period before midsems, before a ridiculously long assignment was due and right before finals but he's always willing to help out.
Overall: 8/10. Pretty good course. Had fun taking it.

MATH2111
Ease: 6/10. So, it starts off easy... then you hit analysis which was definitely the hardest part of the course. The later concepts aren't actually too hard which I found makes the content easily crammable lol. What is bringing this rating down is the final... oh god........ scaling pls save me.
Content: 6/10. TBH I didn't find it interesting.. Don't really see the purpose of any of this.
Lecturer: Kress - his lecture notes are great and good to learn from. Dick - his lecture notes aren't notes and are blog posts (thus less aesthetic) but can also be learnt from.
Overall: 6/10. Hard course, got wrecked in finals, hoping for scaling.

MATH2901
Ease: 8/10. Having covered bits and pieces of random statistical concepts in 1st year, this made transitioning to this maths quite easy. Already knowing the first 4 weeks of content helped me build a solid foundation as everything is taught in a very detailed manner. The lecture notes are complete and are great to learn from which helped during study. I found the content itself not so bad too.
Content: 9/10. Pretty interesting stuff! Although some stuff that is introduced is never used and seems so out of place...
Lecturer: 8/10. Botev has a monotone voice and at times this can disengage you. However, he explains concepts in a way that's easy to understand using analogies and diagrams. He's also a heaps chill guy and shouted us pizza (Y)
Overall: 8/10. Good course, had fun, learnt a lot, finals wasn't too bad too where half was rehashed from past papers and the hints he gave us helped a lot too.

MATH2601
Ease: 4/10. Definitely found this the hardest course. You start the course with Group Theory which was absolutely mindboggling - I still don't think I fully understand it. Then things get a lot more theoretical when you get in to diagonalisation and the Jordan Canonical Form which pretty much confused me so much and still does. A lot of the theory and proof you go through in the lectures is quite confusing.
Content: 5/10. Didn't find the content very enjoyable at all..
Lecturer: 8/10. Greenhill is enthusiastic about the course and tries to make it enjoyable. However, she sometimes skips steps in her lines of proof which really confused me.
Overall: 6/10. Would never go near again. Luckily the finals were easy though.

 

[jaechen]

So another round of exams have just passed and I feel like this was definitely the roughest.

ACTL2111
Ease: 7/10. Not the easiest of courses, but it isn't too bad. Things are very conceptually based so if you nail those, you should be OKAY. Final exams are definitely not easy though, however is something that you can prepare for by doing past papers and also institute papers which I would say helped me IMMENSELY.
Content: 8/10. Pretty interesting having deepened my understanding about pricing financial products rather than what we covered very roughly in 1st year. I'd say it's helped me with my problem solving skills heaps.
Lecturer: 8/10. Ziveyi is a funny guy and is very helpful. I'm sure many students have annoyed him over the semester, especially during the period before midsems, before a ridiculously long assignment was due and right before finals but he's always willing to help out.
Overall: 8/10. Pretty good course. Had fun taking it.

MATH2111
Ease: 6/10. So, it starts off easy... then you hit analysis which was definitely the hardest part of the course. The later concepts aren't actually too hard which I found makes the content easily crammable lol. What is bringing this rating down is the final... oh god........ scaling pls save me.
Content: 6/10. TBH I didn't find it interesting.. Don't really see the purpose of any of this.
Lecturer: Kress - his lecture notes are great and good to learn from. Dick - his lecture notes aren't notes and are blog posts (thus less aesthetic) but can also be learnt from.
Overall: 6/10. Hard course, got wrecked in finals, hoping for scaling.

MATH2901
Ease: 8/10. Having covered bits and pieces of random statistical concepts in 1st year, this made transitioning to this maths quite easy. Already knowing the first 4 weeks of content helped me build a solid foundation as everything is taught in a very detailed manner. The lecture notes are complete and are great to learn from which helped during study. I found the content itself not so bad too.
Content: 9/10. Pretty interesting stuff! Although some stuff that is introduced is never used and seems so out of place...
Lecturer: 8/10. Botev has a monotone voice and at times this can disengage you. However, he explains concepts in a way that's easy to understand using analogies and diagrams. He's also a heaps chill guy and shouted us pizza (Y)
Overall: 8/10. Good course, had fun, learnt a lot, finals wasn't too bad too where half was rehashed from past papers and the hints he gave us helped a lot too.

MATH2601
Ease: 4/10. Definitely found this the hardest course. You start the course with Group Theory which was absolutely mindboggling - I still don't think I fully understand it. Then things get a lot more theoretical when you get in to diagonalisation and the Jordan Canonical Form which pretty much confused me so much and still does. A lot of the theory and proof you go through in the lectures is quite confusing.
Content: 5/10. Didn't find the content very enjoyable at all..
Lecturer: 8/10. Greenhill is enthusiastic about the course and tries to make it enjoyable. However, she sometimes skips steps in her lines of proof which really confused me.
Overall: 6/10. Would never go near again. Luckily the finals were easy though.

thanks for this review nightweaver - very useful for me ^_^

 

[nightweaver066]

thanks for this review nightweaver - very useful for me ^_^

No worries Mr Jae.

 

[obliviousninja]

When are marks released? When will I know that I have HD'd all my subjects?

 

[nightweaver066]

When are marks released? When will I know that I have HD'd all my subjects?

Officially on the 15th.
But you'll probably receive an email at around 8-9pm on the 14th.

Maths provisional marks are usually a week earlier??? Not sure

 

[Squar3root]

When are marks released? When will I know that I have HD'd all my subjects?

never

 

[obliviousninja]

never

Id have to agree...got rektd by IS

 

[Squar3root]

Id have to agree...got rektd by IS

I owned maths and physics is my bitch

 

[4025808]

Here's my first batch of reviews for this semester:

ENGG1000: Engineering Design and Innovation (Petroleum Engineering Project)

Ease: 8/10: Tbh Petroleum Engineering project is basically to design a pump that can pump out as much water with the least amount of strokes, as well as spending the least amount of money possible. If you know how to make a pump, you’re pretty set for this project. Tbh I’d say that this project is more interesting (maybe easier) than the Civil one.

Content: 5/10 – First seven weeks – lots of boring content. Basically it tells about the background of why we need CCS (carbon capture and storage). Lecturer tends to repeat stuff on the slides. This is then followed by lots of peer reviews and shitty assessmenting of others The way the assessmenting is calculated is through reference to other people’s scores, so if you mark too harshly or too leniently then you will get a lower mark for the evaluation of that person’s work. Also final reports and mid-semester reports are a bitch to do as well. You cannot choose your group so be lucky that you have a good group and good members who do most of the work for you

Lecturer: Peter Neal – 9/10 – He’s a good person who explains things quite well and isn’t douchey at all. Lets people ask questions and actually checks up on everyone’s progress during projects. Only thing that’s letting him down is that he did not correct my marks that he got mistaken for (I’ve told him about it, he agreed to it but he hasn’t changed it on the system yet).

Tutor: N/A, unless if you count mentor, well I’ve got a bit of advice from him.

Overall: 8/10 – Thank goodness there is no final for this subject. Otherwise would have shit balls. There are times that you have to work hard, other times you can bludge, but you generally put quite a bit of effort throughout the semester. In terms of groupwork, it’s a hit or miss really, some are lucky, others aren’t so much.


ENGG1811: Computing for Engineers

Ease: 7/10 – If you haven’t done computing before, well the first four weeks are quite easy (spreadsheets and knowing how to use them). It starts getting hard in week 5 when they introduce programming on VBA to you (in which tbh it’s a horrible language to actually be using as the foundation of your programming). Not only that, the VBA coding methods aren’t very well explained to those who don’t understand computing in general. Then came matlab and that was actually much harder than VBA. Given that I did a bit of matlab in MATH1151/1251, the first lesson wasn’t so bad. However, when I had to deal with the assignment, it was rather, difficult. Mid-semester was very easy as they pretty much just changed the numbers around – so as long as you know how to use spreadsheets and how to do things if they are slightly changed, you’ll be fine. Finals aren’t too bad either – they pretty much just change the sample paper slightly (multiple choice is the hardest) and the VBA/Matlab questions are easy to do (you can even write pseudocode and get close to full marks for questions).

Content: First four weeks is basically spreadsheets (easy stuff) Next four weeks focus on VBA, so make sure you pay attention in lectures and keep up to date with the work, OR try to understand how to code and how the coding works and what not. The last four weeks is a mix of matlab, as well as computer security, artificial intelligence and computer architecture. Make sure you read through and study a lot of the latter topics because they appear in the MC questions.
Seeing as it is a newly revised course, they changed the labs and stuff as well. The wording of the lab instructions were pretty poor, so they’re looking into changing the wording of the labs for next semester so hopefully it will be better then.

Lecturer: Geoff Whale – 4/10. Not good at explaining stuff. Pretty boring too. However when I asked him about my first assignment, he was quite easy going and willing to give me extra marks. So that's a +1 for that.
Also feel free to skip lectures because tbh they don’t really help anyway - it's one of those first year courses where labs and practical stuff help more than the lectures.

Tutor: Randal Grant – 9/10. Yeah, would say that he’s quite good overall seeing as he’s taught the course for the past 3 years already and he knows what to assess/what not to assess. Plus for the last few weeks he didn’t really check people’s labs and just gave 2/2 regardless to everyone (even if they were just there).

Overall: 8/10. It’s actually quite a good course to take. It’s practical too. It’s compulsory for all engineering students (unless if you’re in ELEC, solar or CSE), although I would recommend commerce/science and other students to take this course. But if you’re thinking of learning how to program, do COMP1911/1917 instead. You learn C and you have better assignments (1917 I hear got settlers of catan and 1911 got to construct 2048)