Honours (1 Viewer)

[plumpudding]

Disclaimer: post written by stupid 1st year.

Okay, so I've been skimming through information on honours years, but could somebody give me a student insight on what it entails?

Eg, is it difficult and worth it? How easy/competitive is it to get one of those honours scholarships?

And also, the E&B site said you can do joint Finance and Marketing honours. What does joint honours entail, and what are the requirements?

thanks for your time

 

[doink]

Im assuming that you mean for a commerce degree but you didnt specify.

Honours is not easy, you need a relatively high WAM to be accepted into it I believe. You do an extra year and get honours (I think if your WAM is high enough you can graduate with it after 3 years).

In terms of employability 1 year of working would be more appealing and its only really for people who want to do a PhD or sound cool.

 

[townie]

i disagree with doink on employability, though i suppose it depends on what course your doing

an honours year will usually entail some coursework, but the majority of it will consist of an independant piece of research/thesis.

it is difficult, and highly competitive, but i think worth it. if you can do one it shows employers you can work independantly, and to a deadline, on a major project

 

[iamsickofyear12]

I don't go to USYD, and even if I did honours varies between courses, so this is just my experience... it might be helpful, it might not.

Essentially honours involves writing a thesis. The suggested length for the course I am doing is between 10,000 and 15,000 words. It's proper research, not a report. You need to justify your topic and explain why it is unique and original, and follow a proper methodology in order to reach your conclusions. It will almost always involve primary research of some kind, though it is possible for it not to.

I have had some feedback on the first few chapters of my thesis (introduction, literature review, methodology) because in my course the first draft of those sections is done as part of a research methods subject. From that I can tell you that is is marked very hard... easily more than twice as hard as anything else I have done. Essentially it needs to be perfect; perfect referencing, backed by very good academic sources, absolutely no spelling/grammar mistakes etc.

In terms of workload, I am allocated 18 credit points (the equivalent of 3 subjects) this session to write my results and conclusion and go back over what I have already done. There are no classes, only meetings with a supervisor. I also had 6 credit points last session for the first part... so 24 credit points (4 subjects) total.

I think it is worth it, but for me it is just a different 4th year, not an extra year. In my experience a lot of employers really don't understand how much work is involved, so you get less out of it from that perspective than you might think. The main reason I did it was to get out of a year long group project that I would of had to do if I didn't do honours.