Science degrees (1 Viewer)

[Zoltan]

Anyone who is doing a science degree (BSc or any other degree, like agriculture or earth sciences or anything), which university do you go to, and what do you think of its science faculty?

 

[hfis]

I'm in the faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at my uni, but I have a bit of contact with the Science faculty. UoW has great facilities I find, and the staff are easy to contact and are very helpful. Also, apparently we've just invested in a new high mass spectrometer machine - of which there are only three in the entire world (the other two are at Cambridge).

A BSc student will probably be able to tell you more than me, but I hope I helped.

 

[PrincessSJ]

My sister is doing B Applied Science at SCU (Lismore campus) and loving it! She said all the lecturers are really nice and kinda laid back, everything is really easy and accessible and given in terms she can understand!.. She's really enjoying it... lol she rang me last night and told me she had a 'rocks exam' im guessing geology hey?

 

[hipsta_jess]

I used to do a BSc last year, at Newcastle...I found it to be good, at 1000 level (ie, first year) we're forced to have what are known as two "science pairs", so one subject and its follow on partner for second semester (eg, psyc1010/1020 and chem1010/1020), and for most disciplines I think there was only one 1000 level subject offerred each semester, so we had to experience a pretty broad range. We also had to do 60 units of science subjects for first year (ie, one subject = 10 units), and then the other 20 units (2 subjects, to make up a typical full time load of 80 units [40 per semester] could be done from a range of other faculties, namely arts)
With the budget cuts, I'm not too sure how the program will be affected. I hear that do complete a geology major, you have to do all of the 3000 level GEOL subjects on offer, because they have cut the rest out.
I don't think we have much range in terms of disciplines offerred compared to a lot of the Sydney ones, but hey, what can you expect.
hmm what else....the academics are generally ok....pretty full of themselves, think they're such hot stuff and whatnot, but that would be the same everywhere.
Ohh, and you can usually score a pretty good timetable (unlike some uni's, we get to make our own timetable)

 

[PrincessSJ]

all hail jess.. who knows everything!

 

[Cape]

I have done an earth sciences subject this semester. We got to go onto two field trips to see the geology of Sydney, the lecturers are always willing the help, and the texts were easy to read (well, some parts). Although the down side was that we spent 3 hours each week looking at rocks but we didn't just learn about rocks, we also studied natural disasters and weather formation.

As part of my course I have to choose 8 agriculture subjects. These subjects are great. It helps having the campus on bushland and farm as well

 

[withoutaface]

I'm doing a BSc at USyd, but only doing maths and physics because I'm in a combined degree, and even considering dropping physics for the second semester because it's so annoying. Overall the teaching standard in maths is pretty good, physics was good for the first half of the semester but then the good lecturer left and we got annoying ones.

 

[ballerinabarbie]

i go to UNE (in armidale) and do Rural Science - it's a more full on Ag Science course (they have just straight BAg here too)
i'd suggest either going to UNE or CSU (wagga) to do ag related courses. obviously being in the country to start with you have actual enterprises close by (ie. at UNE we are at most, 1/2 a day from pretty much any agricultural enterprise in australia) - we did a field trip this semester that took 1 day (8-4) and we covered about 5 different enterprises...
also, going to a country uni you have greater contact with lecturers because there are less people in each course, plus they aren't as hard on you as say sydney uni would be (eg. i had food poisoning the other day, there was no way i could go to a prac and all i had to do was ring up the prac supervisor and let them know... no medical certificate required or anything)
also they are a lot more lenient with assignments (eg. i know of quite a few people that have got extensions because they have been to see the lecturer and said they have heaps of assignments on at once - don't think that happens at sydney unis!!)
as for the straight BSc course i couldn't tell u what it's like - however 3 out of the 4 units i do at the moment are BSc units as well and we have good lecturers, good facilities, great demonstrators and a lot of help avaliable if its needed