First Year Subject Advice for 2018 (1 Viewer)

[calamebe]

Hello, I'll be studying at the University of Sydney as a first year student this year, and I had a few questions. Firstly, here are my provisional units of study for next year:

CHEM1991
MATH1902
MATH1921
PHYS1903
INFO1110 (?)

CHEM1992B
MATH1905
MATH1923
PHYS1904
INFO1113 (?)

So, I'm doing the special studies program for Chemistry and Physics in both semesters, is that a good idea or will the workload be far too much? And if I'm not interested in a career in Chemistry right now but am just doing it out of curiosity, would it be better to keep the SSP for Physics and drop down to the advanced units for Chemistry?

Also, I'm not sure about the INFO units. Right now I'm interested in computer science but haven't had much experience in the field, and don't even know much programming. I think those two subjects are a good idea for an introduction but I am not certain yet. Also, I've seen COSC1003 and COSC1903 (second semester) as other Computer Science subjects which I am interested in. Is that better than INFO1113 units, or if I'm more interested in Computer Science than Chemistry would it be better to drop CHEM1992?

Final question, I am very interested in accelerating math units. Is there any way to attempt this in first semester, or at least first year? I already know first year math (bar statistics) and a fair bit of second year math, so would like to try some second year subjects as well. Also with math, is discrete mathematics worth taking?

Thank you in advance.

EDIT: Also I forgot that USYD has those compulsory open learning subjects, is it better to get them out of the way quickly or just do them near the end? I'd probably just overload them on some of the easier subjects.

 

[sida1049]

SSP is pretty interesting, but doing two might be quite a bit of extra work. I recommend only doing SSP in one area that you're really interested in. But if you're personally up for the challenging, you can try enrolling in both. Remember, you can still choose to drop out of SSP in the first few weeks.

If you're interested in learning a bit of computer science, your current computer science units set up is fine. But after INFO1110, if you lose interest, I totally recommend COSC1003; it's an easy, interesting and fun unit that I really enjoyed when I took it. In COSC1003, you're taught how to use MATLAB in the first 2-3 weeks, then the rest of the semester is involves learning about an eclectic range of scientific and maths topics, in which you apply programming to solve interesting problems involved. Of course, if you lose interest in physics or chemisty, you can always replace one of those units with COSC1003, instead of INFO.

Yes, you can take second year units in first year second semester. But only normal stream units, unless you can convince unit coordinators. MATH2068 Number Theory and Cryptography can be taken in semester two, since you only need 6 junior maths credit points. Same with MATH2070 Financial Mathematics and Optimisation (which assumes that you've done MATH1X23, but this isn't really an issue). The main issue with taking these units is that you'd either have to substitute them for one of your physics, chemistry or computer science units, or overload, which obviously shouldn't be taken lightly. Furthermore, these maths units are considered by most people to be somewhat of an "elective", since they aren't required by any of the third year maths units, and aren't essential to a well-rounded maths education/major (unlike MATH2X21, MATH2X22 and arguably MATH2X23). Accelerating in first semester is very difficult, and I've only met one person who did it, and that guy is an IMO medalist who dropped out of USYD to go to Princeton halfway through first semester.

I would recommend getting Open Learning subjects out of the way as early as possible, maybe even by overloading (since their workload seems to be very small). This is because workload for most people tend to be at a minimum in first year.

Good luck!

 

[calamebe]

Thank you so much! That was very helpful. I'll definitely keep in mind all that you've said.

A final question: Would you think the best course of action is to overload 6 units of OLE over with in semester 2 and then overload the final 6 in semester 1 of year 2 because it seems hard to overload in semester 1"

 

[sida1049]

Thank you so much! That was very helpful. I'll definitely keep in mind all that you've said.

A final question: Would you think the best course of action is to overload 6 units of OLE over with in semester 2 and then overload the final 6 in semester 1 of year 2 because it seems hard to overload in semester 1"

Ultimately you only need to take 6 OLE courses (i.e. the 2cp ones). I wouldn't recommend overloading with 3 OLE units (6cp) in a single semester unless you expect that semester to be relatively easy. I'd suggest overloading one or two each semester, depending on your expectation of workload for that semester. So I think the distribution of OLEs are best left to your discretion. Overloading the OLEs in the later years isn't a bad idea, either.