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What does it take to maintain a wam of above 90-95 in a hard course? (1 Viewer)

idkkdi

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Lets say something like actuarial, science, biomedical, stem in general.
so kinda like doing hsc subjects with more content in 10 weeks and then raw scoring like 87 ish externally i guess.
usyd is like -5 wam compared to unsw.
 

Momentazeus

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How many hours a day do you think someone would really need to study? I know intelligence and responsibilities come into it but lets just say for an ordinary individual.
 
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idkkdi

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How maNy hOurs a day do you Think sOmeone would Really neeD to study. I kNow intelligence And Responsibilities come into it but lets just saY for an ordinary individual?
i feel like intelligence plays a bigger role in uni than hs. i can't give you an hours estimate lmao

also quality > quantity
 
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Momentazeus

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That is a good thing to know. Wait so does that mean that high school tryhards who are top don't tend to be top in uni?
 

carrotsss

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How maNy hOurs a day do you Think sOmeone would Really neeD to study. I kNow intelligence And Responsibilities come into it but lets just saY for an ordinary individual?
i did not just spend 3 minutes trying to decrypt your capital letters because I missed an I 😭
 

idkkdi

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That is a good thing to know. Wait so does that mean that high school tryhards who are top don't tend to be top in uni?
sweat levels in general quite low for 1st yr. so ye a sweat that no longer sweats would have a sizeable decrease in scores.
also, a big thing is that you don't get many papers and like no one does tutoring.
 

Epicman69

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a 7.0gpa probs depends a lot on choosing your courses right. some courses have lower marks/are harder.
how do you know what courses are easier tho, like surely asking someone isn't a very good indicator cause everyone has different strong suits...
 

jazz519

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Coming from someone who had a wam near 90 in their degree (adv science - chemistry major and math minor).

This kind of WAM is near impossible for 99% of people. I don't mean to put it in a way that hard work doesn't yield good results because it is an important factor in achieving high marks.

In the HSC you basically have the ability to spend all your time on school/study with very few people working a job and if they are it's only a few hours a week. In uni you will have to juggle around more things and so in my opinion based on you saying for the ordinary individual it's near impossible.

Firstly, you need to understand that the WAM mark is not like the HSC. There's no scaling or aligning that happens. The mark you get in most of the subjects is a raw mark. So say your final test was worth 100% of your grade and you score 80. That's your final mark you get so it will contribute 80 to your WAM. Unlike HSC where a 80 raw mark might mean you get like close to 90 HSC mark. So the number system is different. You can kind of think of a 75+ which is a distinction being the same as getting a band 6 in HSC. While a 85+ which is a high distinction would be like getting a mid band 6 and then 90+ is like getting a state rank equivalent mark.

Getting that kind of WAM even if you spend hours a day studying all comes down to a high level of intelligence, natural intuition and ability to think in the way the degree requires. Much of that you can't gain through just studying for hours. You either have it or you don't. That is because a WAM of 90-95 in most degrees after the 4 years will rank you at the very top of your cohort. Like basically you are top 5 of bigger degrees and for others you will be like top 3 or maybe even 1st.

From my own experience of ranking 1st in multiple subjects at uni, the mark to rank 1st in a subject from 2nd year onwards might only be a low 90. Even in one case I ranked first in a course with an 88. At the end of my degree I had the highest WAM in my course and that was an 89.3. So you can understand from this that the study hours component is not the main factor in it.
 

idkkdi

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Coming from someone who had a wam near 90 in their degree (adv science - chemistry major and math minor).

This kind of WAM is near impossible for 99% of people. I don't mean to put it in a way that hard work doesn't yield good results because it is an important factor in achieving high marks.

In the HSC you basically have the ability to spend all your time on school/study with very few people working a job and if they are it's only a few hours a week. In uni you will have to juggle around more things and so in my opinion based on you saying for the ordinary individual it's near impossible.

Firstly, you need to understand that the WAM mark is not like the HSC. There's no scaling or aligning that happens. The mark you get in most of the subjects is a raw mark. So say your final test was worth 100% of your grade and you score 80. That's your final mark you get so it will contribute 80 to your WAM. Unlike HSC where a 80 raw mark might mean you get like close to 90 HSC mark. So the number system is different. You can kind of think of a 75+ which is a distinction being the same as getting a band 6 in HSC. While a 85+ which is a high distinction would be like getting a mid band 6 and then 90+ is like getting a state rank equivalent mark.

Getting that kind of WAM even if you spend hours a day studying all comes down to a high level of intelligence, natural intuition and ability to think in the way the degree requires. Much of that you can't gain through just studying for hours. You either have it or you don't. That is because a WAM of 90-95 in most degrees after the 4 years will rank you at the very top of your cohort. Like basically you are top 5 of bigger degrees and for others you will be like top 3 or maybe even 1st.

From my own experience of ranking 1st in multiple subjects at uni, the mark to rank 1st in a subject from 2nd year onwards might only be a low 90. Even in one case I ranked first in a course with an 88. At the end of my degree I had the highest WAM in my course and that was an 89.3. So you can understand from this that the study hours component is not the main factor in it.
ye 1st yr definitely seems like where the free-er marks are at. i was thinking more along the lines of 1st yr only assuming they wanted to transfer or sth.
 

jazz519

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ye 1st yr definitely seems like where the free-er marks are at. i was thinking more along the lines of 1st yr only assuming they wanted to transfer or sth.
Yeah first year a decent amount of people can get a 85+ WAM since the courses are generally easier and there is more support available in terms of study notes, question booklets and things that are similar to how you can study for HSC exams. But yeah afterwards the difficulty to get that kind of mark really increases as they tend to not release many past papers and the content becomes harder. In most courses if you get a high distinction after 2nd year you are likely in the top 5%.
 

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