- Yo Ajeet!
- To 2010ers...
I thought that I'd just give a summary of the FAQs and try to answer any questions that come up regarding Distinction Courses next year. (Or rather, Distinction Course - as Philosophy is the only one available).
1. What distinction courses are available?
Philosophy and
only philosophy is offered in 2010, it will be administered by UNE. 2008 was the last year for Comparative Literature, and sadlly 2009 was the last year for Cosmology. Here is the official literature from the Distinction course website:
2010 Enrolments now Open
Enrolments for the 2009 Distinction Course Program are now open to study Philosophy in 2010.
Potential students have until
5pm Friday 27 November 2009 to submit applications directly to the Board of Studies. More information about the 2010 program and application criteria can be obtained from the
information booklet here.
You can obtain an
application form here.
Please direct all questions regarding applications and entrance criteria directly to the board of studies. Contact information can be found by visting the Contact Us section of this website.
Please note that Cosmology and Comparative Literature will not be offered in 2010.
2. What do you have to do to get in?
From personal experience, speaking to other students in the course and also asking alumni when I was a wee little Year 11 accelerant like you, the following is what I've surmised:
- You have to be an accelerant student, that is, you have to have begun a HSC subject in Year 10 (the Preliminary course) and finished that HSC course in Year 11 (sitting the HSC exam for that course in 2008).
- You have to achieve highly in this course, the basic criteria is to score a Band 6, but it is also important whether this is a "high" band six or a "low" band six - look at percentiles. Essentially you would be looking at 90+ as a HSC Mark.
Frankly, your performance in your accelerated subject is the most important criteria, I know the website alludes to general school performance and extracirrucular activities, but I don't think these are given much consideration.
They want you to, yes, be a good student overall and do well in your subjects other than the one accelerated, but think about it - you would have to be a pretty good student overall to be getting a high mark in an accelerated subject anyway. So it goes without saying, they expect you to be a good student overall, but no, they will not be examining your specific marks in English/Maths/whatever. So long as you're doing average to (most likely) very well, you'll be fine.
Imo, the extracirruculars thing is just paying lipservice to "well roundedness" I highly doubt they give this much thought. For example, I didn't bother sending a list of my extracurriculars, just a school report and the awaiting of my HSC results for the subject I accelerated in.
3. What does the course involve? Distance education etc..
The course is taught via distance, this means that you do not have a teacher or classroom, you don't even have set lesson plans or set hours to be completed.
You DO however have 3 residentials, week-end long study-camps with professors. The first residential will deal with Core topics 1 and 2, the Second residential will deal with core topics 3 and 4, and at the last residential you will be writing your essay for the 4th core module topic to an unseen question. The last residential will deal with the options topics also.
At the beginning of the year (mid January to early February) you will be sent a massive package with 4 red booklets and 1 yellow booklet. The 4 red books are respectively Core Modules 1,2,3, and 4.
Module 1: Time and Cause (time and timetravel)
Module 2: Self Concept (conceptions of what is the "self")
Module 3: Morality, Religion and Happiness (morality, god, ethics)
Module 4: Realitity and Credibility (epistemology, theory of knowledge)
The yellow booklet includes the Assignment questions for the above 4 core modules, their due dates and their weighting. In addition to the Options (more later)
You will be writing 4 mini-essays around 700 words, worth 5% per essay. Each are due roughly 4 weeks after each other (precise dates are provided in the yellow booklet). They are to be mailed with a (provided) cover-letter to Robyn Halloran at the UNE and the professors will mail you back with your marked essay and a mark out of 5.
THEN in July, you will sit the HSC Exam. Yes, you will sit the Philosophy HSC exam mid-year, rather than during the traditional exam period in October/November. Terribly inconvenient for thos with mid-year exams, but the payoff is one less exam during the HSC period. The exam is 2 hrs (not bad for a 2 unit subject)
The exam addresses the 4 core modules, providing you with a choice of 2 questions per topic. That is, 4 essays to be written in 2 hrs. Each essay is 10 marks, therefore the HSC exam is weighted at 40% of your overall philosophy mark.
RIGHT,
after the HSC exam, you have the
Options Topics. You will receive another (considerably thicker) package with 4 booklets, you need only choose
TWO options topics, which means the least liked 2 can be rejected with barely a glance. The options are harder than the Core modules, but correspond to and extend upon the 4 core modules. (Option 1 corresponds to Module 1 and so forth) The 4 options topics are:
Option 1: Time, Physics and the Experience of Time
Option 2: Self, Humanity and the World
Option 3: Justice, Fairness and Gender
Option 4: The Limits of knowledge
The essay questions and due dates are again provided in the yellow booklet of instructions, you can choose ANY two of the four options, writing 2 essays with lengths of 1500-2000 words. The 2 options essays are worth 20% each, again you will mail them off and the professors will mail back your marks out of 20. The options due dates will probably fall during the Trials (fail) and STUVAC (massive fail). But anyhoo, everyone's in the same boat.
However, the course does get wrapped up BEFORE the HSC exams, which is rather relaxing and takes a load off your plate.
The breakdown is:
- 4 core mini-essays, 5% each, ==> 20%
- 1 HSC exam ==> 40%
- 2 options essays, 20% each ==> 40%
There are no internal/external marks, everything is external.
You learn the course at your own pace (keeping in mind the due dates for the assignments of course) and spend as much or as little time on the course as you wish. You won't have professors or a classroom, but phone numbers are provided for some of the professors and they are generally very happy to help if you call during their specified hours or otherwise email them questions.
4. Final thoughts, generally.
Overall, my opinion is that Philosophy is a wonderful but very difficult course - its certainly not for everybody. I think there were roughly 60ish people at the beginning of the course, by the 3rd residential there were 47. These were all incredibly smart people (some of the smartest I have ever met). The distance learning thing and the difficulty of the material and concepts itself is a factor in people dropping, also the time management issue because due dates tend to fall on inconvenient times.
You'll be dealing with concepts that even the professors are grappling with or that are universal debates which are yet to be solved. Check out the HSC past papers for Philosophy to get an example.Obviously you'd be writing essays so some aptitude for writing and the humanities is helpful, but that said fluffy bs and rambling is not going to get you anywhere - it is not like english where if you throw in enough theory and obscure metaphors you get a good mark. The key thing to philosophy is a cogent, logical argument, concise and (hopefully) eloquent articulation, and some originality.
Its incredibly intellectually stimulating, and for me - it was my favourite HSC course. It helped that alot of Philosophy crossed over to my English Extension 2 and History Extenison subjects and vice versa. Ie. Kantian ethics --> Dostoevsky, Berkeley and Idealism --> Romanticism, Gender Studies --> Feminist historiogrpahy. Personally, I felt that what I learnt in philosophy was "real" and "applicable" in a way that alot of my ordinary courses weren't - particularly the stuff with ethics, epistemology, gender studies - all stuff I thought changed (and made much more sophisticated) my viewpoint and thinking.
So, good luck applying, those who get in have fun with it
