UNSW Subject Reviews. (5 Viewers)

[nightweaver066]

Sem 1:
ACTL1101
Ease: 6/10. A lot of introductory stuff that you need to wrap your head around, and concepts that at first seem extremely difficult but looking back, you're surprised at how simple they were lol. But by no means did I find this course easy when I was doing it.
Content: 8/10. Somewhat interesting, delving in to various aspects of probability, statistics, survival functions and introduction to insurance and it's various forms.
Lecturer: 8/10. Dedicated lecturer, sometimes moved a bit quickly and didn't clarify important concepts (Brian Chu).
Overall: 8/10. Somewhat interesting, was rather difficult and the mark allocations for exams are weird (8 marks for 3-4 dot points??? Going from matching the marks in the HSC to this was weird).

ECON1101
Ease: 9/10. Everything seems quite simple, nothing too difficult. Some aspects linked with what we learnt in ACTL1101 so that helped too.
Content: 9/10. Some parts just seems so dull because it's common sense really. Other parts such as introductory game theory, learning about basic S&D etc. was pretty cool.
Lecturer: 10/10 Alberto Motta. Awesome dude, explained concepts very well and made lectures very engaging. 4/10 Dianne. Skipped most of the lectures then because they got pretty boring and dull.
Overall: 9/10. Pick it for an easy subject that's quite fun to do. I found the final MC questions a bit dodge though.

FINS1613
Ease: 8/10. Only thing not making this 10/10 is the accounting aspects and the theory learn at the end (already forgotten what it was). Doing ACTL1101 where the same concepts and formulas are used made this quite easy. Pretty much didn't touch it for the first half semester lol.
Content: 8/10. Somewhat interesting, and it provided dumbed down / easier explanations of concepts you learnt in ACTL1101 which was really helpful.
Lecturer: 10/10. Rob made the lecturers very engaging, provided humorous examples and was always willing to take questions. Also scaled up marks to
Overall: 9/10. Easy if you get Rob (I hear this sem was really difficult). Thanks to the scaling, although I felt like I failed the final (<50%), I still ended up with a good mark.

MATH1151
Ease: 8/10. Not bad, just follow the concepts and you'll do fine.
Content: 7/10. Dull at times, but it's really all introductory.
Lecturer: 8/10 Womersley. Great job explaining concepts, sometimes a little dull (probs due to the content) but engaging nonetheless. 5/10 Kress. Doesn't do a great job explaining concepts, and has difficulty controlling the lecture so it's hard to focus.
Overall: 8/10. Wasn't overly difficult, final paper was really just rehashed off past papers.

Sem 2:
ACTL1122
Ease: 4/10. Not easy and consists of lots of lateral thinking in a business/actuarial/economic context which I'm not so great at.
Content: 6/10. Didn't really feel like I learnt much, and the content just seemed like a small extension off last semester's work.
Lecturer: Brian Chu so same comment as above.
Overall: 6/10. Difficult course, I regret not picking Accounting 1A and 1B.

MATH1251
Ease: 7/10. Harder than MATH1151, but still isn't too bad.
Content: 7/10. Still dull at times and I still don't see how all the maths we learnt is going to help me later on in the course.
Lecturer: 6/10 Jefferies. Monotonic, boring and dims the lights so you feel like sleeping. I can't really comment on Grundling because I just stopped going to lectures at some point.
Overall: 7/10. Final paper was harder than past papers. The course pack notes have saved my life in this haha.

ECON1102
Ease: 6/10. Thought this would be my WAM booster as I thought it'd be as easy as ECON1101. Took me a lot longer to wrap my head around the concepts and what was going on. Students who studied HSC economics had an advantage because they've already learnt half the things.
Content: 8/10. Was pretty interesting, understanding why certain things happen/occur, what monetary/fiscal policy is and how the government manages the domestic economy.
Lecturer: 7/10 Cho. I didn't go to most of the lectures, but from the ones I did, he seemed like he could explain the concepts pretty well. He wasn't that engaging though, and would (?) lock the door so you couldn't come in through the back if you were late.
Overall: 7/10. Harder than I expected, final was surprisingly easier than what I had expected from past papers so that was a surprise.

MATH1081
Ease: 4/10. I found this course extremely difficult. The way of reasoning things out, the way of thinking, and the style of questions really opened my eyes. Having Steele as a tutor didn't really help because his writing was illegible 95% of the time.
Content: 6/10. Some parts seem useful and interesting, others seem completely redundant (probably because i'm studying actuarial and most others are doing something like computer science where it is useful).
Lecturer: Jefferies. Same comment as above.
Overall: 5/10. Would not pursue anything down this course again because I struggled quite a bit with it. One more thing about this course. Why did they make it 4 lectures each early in the morning (9am)? Why couldn't they have condensed it in to 2x2hr lectures at times later in the day

 

[SpiralFlex]

^Copied and pasted his layout because I cannot be bothered writing it.

MATH1241
Ease: 7/10. More difficult than first semester since topics are slightly more abstract and take more time to learn.
Content: 7/10. Some parts were interesting, but I didn't enjoy the content as much as first semester
Lecturer: 8/10 We had two lecturers (One that takes Calculus for the 1st hour and one that takes Algebra for the second hour). Both are good and engaging and are very easy to approach.
Overall: 7/10. Course isn't difficult at all provided you learn the content properly.

PSYC1011
Ease: 7/10. We have something called 'Sona Research participations' which grants you almost 'automatically' 8% provided you participate in their experiments.
Content: 6/10. Content is not difficult at all, although some parts is quite bland.
Lecturer: 7/10 (Several lecturers, half were boring).

MATH1081
Ease: 8/10. This course can be tricky at times, but it's overall quite straightforward since it doesn't go into that much depth (at times).
Content: 10/10. Loved it. We learn set theory, integers and relations, logic/proofs/induction, counting and recurrence relations and graph theory. All of which I enjoyed.
Lecturer 7/10, 10/10. We had two lecturers, I will not name them for reasons. One was interesting and made me enjoy coming to class, the other was monotonic .Couldn't hurt to crack a joke once in a while...
Overall: 8/10. Highly recommend this course for anyone interested in any maths!

 

[nightweaver066]

lol totally opposite opinions on discrete

 

[4025808]

CHEM1011 - Chemistry A - Atoms, Molecules and Energy

Ease: 6/10. It's alright. If you have done HSC Chemistry before you should cope well with the course. I didn't do Chemistry at all, and this is my first chemistry course. But I found that you'll have to spend quite a bit of time studying this course in order to do well in it. I took this instead of doing MATS1101.
Content: 6/10. Fairly decent content. Very similar to HSC Chemistry but added stuff on top and harder calculations.
Lecturer: Colbran - decent lecturer 7/10. Forgot the other two lecturers but I didn't really attend lectures for this subject, although went to 1 or 2 of them.
Tutor: Diane Gershwin - 8/10. Good tutor, but just needs to clarify some of the stuff in her slides. Nevertheless, still entertaining.
Overall: 7/10. Pretty good course to take, despite the minimum requirements and all that stuff (80% compulsory lab attendance, otherwise instant course failure, 21/60 scaled final mark in order to pass the course).


MATH2501 - Linear Algebra

Ease: 8/10. Very easy course. I basically crammed for it and felt that I did better than that of MATH2011.
Content: 8/10. Interesting content, although somewhat complicated because the lecture slides given to us by our first lecturer was shit. Luckily I got someone's notes from last year and used that as learning material.
Lecturer: Dmitry Zanin - 3/10. What a dickhead I swear. Went to his consultation before and expected us to know everything before we came in =_=. David Angell - 8.5/10. Good lecturer, explains things well, gives us speed techniques as well
Tutor: Dmitry Zanin - as above.
Overall: 8/10. Would do this course again. Pick this course over MATH2601 unless if you are planning on doing a pure maths major.


MATH2931 - Higher Linear Models

Ease: 2/10. Holy shit I didn't know what the fuck was going on in the course. So much theory and so much stuff that was just very difficult in general. Assignments were hard as well.
Content: 2/10. Wut I dont even know what's going on half of the time.
Lecturer: Zdravko Botev - 5/10. Boring as usual but he's a decent person otherwise
Tutor: Botev again - but then again I never went to the labs because it was pointless.
Overall: 4/10. Difficult course. Only take this if you are doing a statistics major. Finals are going to be very difficult as well.


PTRL1010/5015 - Introduction to the Petroleum Industry

Ease: 9/10. Easy stuff. Basically just like HSC Economics all over again but with less calculations and more writing of responses.
Content: 7/10. Drilling was interesting, overview of the industry was good, just some parts were dry, like geology and reservoir estimation. Gives a good overview of the industry and what it is like
Lecturer: Leigh Brooks - 6/10. Boring lecturer but decent enough to get by.
Tutor: There was no tutor for this course.
Overall: 8/10. Good course to do. Easy tests and easy finals (although some trivial questions as well).

 

[ismeta]

I don't see many COMP reviews so I guess I'll stop lurking and post.

Semester 1

COMP2121 (Microprocessors and Interfacing)
Ease: 7/10. If you put in the effort then it's quite okay
Content: 7/10. Some of the content was interesting, like interfacing with peripherals, but some of it was boring. More interesting than boring though.
Lecturer: 10/10. Sri is the best! Very engaging and I always wanted to turn up to lectures just because he was engaging and presented the content in an interesting way despite some it being dry.
Overall: 8/10. Sri made the course worthwhile. Woo Sri! (Although I did dislike how the first assignment was to write a comparative report on two ISAs, that's no fun. I did COMP to get away from the reports )

MATH1141 (Higher Mathematics 1A)
Ease: 6/10. Maths doesn't come naturally to me so this was no different.
Content: 6/10. Wasn't super interesting but maybe having 9am lectures wasn't good for my engagement with the subject...
Lecturers: 7/10. (Doust & Cowling). Doust is cool, a happy fellow. Cowling is less happy. They're both decent lecturers though.
Overall: 7/10. Meh, it was okay.

MATH1081 (Discrete Mathematics)
Ease: 7/10. It wasn't particularly easy but the exercises weren't overly challenging.
Content: 9/10. Really interesting stuff, especially since a lot of it applies to computer science.
Lecturers: 7/10. (Angell & Trenerry) Angell is good, Trenerry was a bit boring. My attention span isn't good though, so this possibly wasn't Trenerry's fault.
Overall: 9/10. Discrete <3

Semester 2

COMP1927 (Computing 2)
Ease: 8/10. However I had some experience with data structures and algorithms before I took the course, so don't take my word on that. But if you know how to code well, and understand your linked lists and such (and can implement them!), then this course will be fine.
Content: 7/10. it's good content, don't get me wrong, but because of aforementioned experience I found the course to be a bit dry - it was a lot of data structures and algorithms and not a lot of applying it to stuff. Also the first assignment was annoying - had to analyse anonymous sorting algorithms and write reports on them. I hate writing reports Second assignment was annoying too - writing an AI.
Lecturers: 8/10. Angela Finlayson's nice. Not as engaging as Buckland or Sri, but then again not many people are.
Overall: 8/10. You should do it.

COMP2041 (Software Construction and Tools)
Ease: 8/10. Not that bad. If you do the exercises and such then it's all good. Paying attention in lectures helps too (I didn't pay a whole lot of attention...but a lot of the stuff you can just look up on the internet anyway, so it's not a huge problem.)
Content: 7/10. I would give it an 8, since shell, python and perl are great but...the lecturer spent way too much time on Perl when we should've been doing version control. Also way too much time was spent like "here is some code, what's wrong with it?/what's the security hole?" - wasted time when we should've been looking at new content. Assignment 1 sucked - it was to write a perl to python compiler. It's impossible to get completely right, and there were subsets that we were to complete for a certain percentage of the marks...but it just was...not worth the extra marks if you tried to get higher subsets. I know people who wrote lexers and parsers and still got less than people who used regex (though to be fair, the intention was for people to use regex.).
Lecturer: 7/10. Andrew Taylor. People like him a lot, I'm impartial. He spent too much time on 'find the problem with my code' stuff and I wish he'd allocated time for version control, since i was quite looking forward to git...but ah well. He's not bad.
Overall: 8/10. The stuff you learn is really very useful and you come out of it feeling like a h@xx0r. Or at least some semblance of one.

COMP3311 (Database Systems)
Ease: 9/10. Very easy. Very dry. It's a pretty bludgy course.
Content: 7/10. It's very useful stuff, but I found myself drifting off quite a bit...(or was that the sleep deprivation?)
Lecturer: 7/10 (John Shepherd). He's cool and wears interesting shirts.
Overall: 8/10. Good for a bludge. However, I only got my assignment 1 mark yesterday. I handed it in at least ten weeks ago. I am not pleased. I am still waiting on my second and third assignment marks and am doubtful about getting the exam marks on time too...apart from that it's a good course though I learned a lot. If I came from a database background though, it wouldn't be worth it - I didn't know very much about databases before doing the course.

MATH1241 (Higher Mathematics 1B)
Ease: 7/10. Easier than MATH1141 I think...but I guess my final mark will reflect that. I didn't do as much work as I should've so that'll bite me in the butt.
Content: 8/10. More interesting than last semester.
Lecturers: 8/10 (Britz and Steele) Britz is awesome and when he just comes into the room smiling and bouncy I kind of can't help but smile too. That aside, he's a very engaging lecturer. Steele is cool too, and has a neat British accent.
Overall: 7/10. I should do more maths homework.

 

[fizzbylightning]

Wow I can't believe I'm doing this on the night I finish my exams.

ANAT1521 (Anatomy for Medical Science)
Ease: 7/10. You really have to work for this in order to do well. But that being said, a whole lot of it is memorising the bolded terms in the lab manual for the spot tests as well as understanding concepts in the lecture notes that will assist in your understanding of these bolded terms.
Content: 9/10. I was scared after the first week of lab because I felt like we were going at such a fast pace and I couldn't see myself keeping up, especially when my tutor said that week one's content was by far the easiest. But it's turned out to be my favourite subject this semester. You learn about the different systems of the body (this is an introductory anatomy course) so things like skeletal, muscular, cardiovascular, urogenital, digestive etc. It's an interesting subject amidst the general chemistry and biology courses you'll be doing in first year medical science. You consolidate lecture material with 3 hour labs which involve you listening to your lab demonstrator go through the lecture material more in depth and than you fiddling around with dissected bodies and plastic models and it's pretty fun.
Lecturers: 8/10. We had two lecturers - Liz Tancred and Irina Dedova. I found that I preferred Liz's style of lecturing because her slides were neat and not as congested as Irina's but in saying that, Irina had a lot more extra information than we needed to know which is good for those who want to know more than the learning objectives. People had trouble with Irina's accent but she's good. I have to put in a good word for my lab demonstrator, Andrew Tosolini because he's a funny guy and went through everything thoroughly and I feel I am doing well in this course largely due to his work.
Overall: 8/10. Yeah it's good. No regrets with this subject. Why am I saying this... it's a compulsory course for me.

CHEM1021 (Chemistry B: Elements, Compounds and Life)
Ease: 6/10. I just really hate chemistry and I am glad it's over for me. I struggled with it in semester 1 and why did I think it would be any different in semester 2. It's not too difficult but I think I just had a grudge against it which made it a lot more difficult for me.
Content: 6/10. Chemistry B is substantially different to Chemistry A. There are fewer calculations (that was the biggest difference for me). The course is split into three main components: I don't know what the name of the first section we covered is called, but we covered things like interpreting NMR spectrums (ok that's all I can remember....pretty sad). The other two sections are inorganic and organic chemistry. Though Steve Colbran kept saying inorganic chemistry is not all about memorising, it was. For me. And nobody get nowhere with memorising. I was probably doing it wrong. I found organic to be really fun. You're given an organic roadmap and that's all you really need to do well in organic.
Lecturers: Three lecturers: Jon Beves (9/10), Steve Colbran (7/10) and Shelli McAlpine (7/10). I'm giving Jon a 9 because his slides were really excellent (???!!) I talked to a few people about this and they agreed so I'm not going crazy. But I'm sure he made his own lecture notes (unlike many other lecturers) and they were concise and neat and GOOD FONT (NOT COMIC SANS) - it made revision a lot easier in terms of locating material and though people thought his voice/lectures were a bore, he is severely underrated!!! I had Steve in semester 1 for Chem A and he's a funny guy with a really odd sense of humour few understand and I do know he makes his own slides so I'll give him that but teaching inorganic does not give him many points LOL! And finally, Shelli. She's a pretty cool lecturer but I found her to become more condescending as her lectures went by and she wouldn't do homework problems because not many people did them JUST DO THE DAMN HOMEWORK PROBLEMS LADY IF YOU WANT US TO PASS YOUR COURSE. Her enthusiasm is good even though it was not reciprocated.
Overall: 6/10. Yeah. No.

MATH1131 (Mathematics 1A)
Ease: 8/10. I felt I had to work hard (consistently) to do well in the course. If you fall behind, no good. I set myself the goal of doing all tute problems each week before my tute and man... that failed fast. If you pay attention in lectures and do tute questions, it's pretty straight forward. And also, pay attention to Maple.
Content: 6/10. There are 2 streams: calculus and algebra. The calculus stream is pretty much what you covered in 2/3 unit maths and a bit of an extension of it so BOOOOOO. I liked algebra way better but to think of it, it was just following directions and adding numbers (I'm talking about gaussian elimination here). But I'm ok with that. I only took maths because I took MATH1041 (Statistics for Life and Social Sciences) last semester and it wasn't the kind of maths I liked and I just wanted to do high school maths again. If you are into theorems and how things are derived, you can read the entire course pack and that will keep you occupied.
Lecturers: Adelle Coster (5/10) - she tried to be enthusiastic but that translated into being condescending and it may have been the stream she was teaching because calculus was a rerun of high school calculus. And the working she was write down on the calculus lecture notes - LONG! She would also say the word "infinitesimally" a (guess what), an infinitesimal number of times and it drove me crazy!!!!!! I didn't even know that word existed - I thought she made it up. Milan Pahor (8/10) - yeah everyone calls him a god or whatever. He's okay. What I like about him is that he's straight to the point and THUNDEROUS.
Overall: 7/10. I guess it satisfied my needs to do maths again.

BIOS1101 (Evolutionary and Functional Biology)
Ease: 6/10. People would say this is easy and it is recommended for those who didn't do well in BABS1201 (Molecules, Cells and Genes) or didn't take Biology in high school so you would've thought this would be a relatively breezy course. Well no. There's just a lot of junk everywhere that you have to remember. I did take biology in high school, I did do well in BABS and I don't know why I chose this subject. Just a lot of content to cover.
Content: 6/10. To me, it was quite dry. The course is split into two parts: animals and plants. Hooray! The labs were alright but they do run for 3 hours so that was a bit tiresome and there's a lot of poster reading involved.
Lecturers: Mike Archer (8/10) - he went off on tangents but interesting ones and talking about philosophical things, my favourite being how we shouldn't fear death because life is one big four-dimensional "bio-blob" travelling through space and time (wow Doctor Who) ie. we are made of life preceding us and we will be forever immortalised in life after us. Steve Bonser (5/10) - he talks about plants but he tried! Tracey Rogers (6/10) - she tried to involve students with one minute discussions (speak to the person next to you) which woke people up. Hayley Bates (6/10) - she was my lab demonstrator for a while and she's good at answering questions one on one but she just reads off the slides.
Overall: 5/10. Nah. I feel that first year subjects are very generic so they touch on things and many things and that doesn't feel great. Extra note to add - the course is badly organised.

 

[Midori-Days]

Semester 2, 2013

PTRL1010 (Introduction to the Petroleum Industry)
Ease: 8/10. A true rote learning course, which needs very little to no understanding, so if you have a strong memory, it could potentially be a WAM Booster, but it does take effort to study and memorise the content .
Content: 3/10. The content here would most probably be interesting only to those undertaking Petroleum Engineering, this was just my elective, so no I did no. Oh and there's QUITE ALOT of content.
Lecturers: 9/10. His name was Leigh <something>. Cool guy, explains things thoroughly.
Overall: 5/10, not much to say. Rote-learn well and you will get a high mark.

FINS1612 (Capital Markets and Institutions)
Ease: 6.5/10. Though much easier than FINS1613, I STILL underestimated its difficulty and studied very poorly. The finals, however, were 'slightly' easier than I expected.
Content: 7/10. Much more interesting than FINS1613. Futures and Options were the most interesting parts in my opinion.
Lecturers: Did not go to these lectures, I heard the female lecturer just rages and the male lecturer is okay-ish.
Overall: 6.5/10 Decent course, with an appropriate difficulty level.

CHEM1011 (Chemistry A: Atoms, Molecules and Energy )
Ease: 8/10. if you have done HSC Chemistry, you can skip the first 4 weeks of lectures. If not, then it won't be that hard to catchup judging from others abilities to do so. Finals were harder than I thought though.
Content: 3/10. Even watching Breaking Bad throughout the semester, could not invigorate my mind to enjoy chemistry.
Lecturers: 7/10 There are three lecturers, each explains their topics quite well and even holds revision sessions.
Overall: 6.5/10 Easy to catchup if you fall behind

CVEN1300 (Engineering Mechanics for Civil Engineers)
Ease: 8/10 for Statics: Do the tutorial questions and you will be sweet. 6/10 for Dynamics: MAKE SURE you do the tutorial questions.
Content: 5/10. Very bland and uninteresting
Lecturers: 9/10 Wei Gao, has that ultra-fobby accent, speaking Chinglish, but he explains things extremely well and does all the working out step-by-step on the slides. Solid lecturer. 8/10 for Carolin Birk, good lecturer as well, but kind of rushes sometimes.
Overall: 7/10. Uninteresting but not such a hard course unless you REALLY bludge it out.

 

[RealiseNothing]

She would also say the word "infinitesimally" a (guess what), an infinitesimal number of times and it drove me crazy!!!!!! I didn't even know that word existed - I thought she made it up.

Wait what.

 

[sakurashizune]

Peter White was alright but I don’t like how he turns the lights down throughout the lectures since I had difficulties staying awake. I personally feel that Peter White should probably put a bit more relevant information in his slides. Funny how he briefly mentions a few things like the central dogma of biology and that ends up being in our mid-semester test and final exam (He pissed a lot of people off).

OMG he did that Central Dogma thing too. He's also quite an ass outside of lectures. I also agree with the turning down of the lights. I fell asleep in a few of his lectures last year and would only wake up when he did those random half-lecture quizzes to see if we were listening.

 

[fizzbylightning]

Wait what.

My friends and I counted how many times she'd say that word and she said it 18 times in one one hour lecture :'-(

 

[RealiseNothing]

My friends and I counted how many times she'd say that word and she said it 18 times in one one hour lecture :'-(

But you said that she said it an infinitesimal amount of times, infinitesimal means very very small

 

[fizzbylightning]

But you said that she said it an infinitesimal amount of times, infinitesimal means very very small

AHAHA I have clearly learnt nothing this semester. Why they make infinite sound so close to that word???!!!

 

[timeslowsdown]

Sem 2, 2013

GEOS2241 (Peak Carbon)

Ease: 10/10. Very easy, all rote learning. Perhaps too easy - not challenging enough.
Content: 7/10. A lot of the content really interested me. You basically get an overview of climate policy; from different angles etc. So as a generalist course, it succeeds. But personally I was left with a bunch of unanswered questions, so I would have preferred it to be more specific (perhaps focus on less topics). Overall, quite interesting, but not specific enough.
Lecturer: 7/10. There's only one lecturer and she's quite engaging.
Overall: 6.5/10. Overall, interesting, but would have really liked there to be a follow up course - maybe focusing on the economics side to it.

MATH1041 (Stats for life sciences)

Ease: 10/10 - really easy, especially after doing MATH1131.
Content: 8/10. I actually thought the content was quite interesting. Wasn't as boring as everyone made it out to be. Maybe because it was so easy.
Lecturers: I ended up not turning up to most of the lectures, which is the great thing about the course - the lecture recordings are amazing - you literally do not need to go to any lectures! If you are a keen bean, then go to Justin Wishart's lectures; he's pretty good.
Overall: 9/10. Quite happy with the course. Assessments were really reasonable. Tutorials explained everything really well.

LAWS1061 (Torts)

Ease: 6/10. A bit challenging - but was a really good thing - I really enjoyed the challenge
Content: 8/10. Pretty good. Theoretical readings were generally really interesting.
Lecturers: 10/10. If you can choose, get into Jeni Engel's class - she is the most amazing teacher!! Seriously she made it so much better.
Overall: 9/10. I may be a bit biased because I had such an amazing lecturer, but overall pretty good.

GEOS1601

Ease: 10/10 (too easy)
Content: 1/10. So boring, it was like Civics History + Geo all over again.
Lecturers: Main lecturer was pretty good. Tutorials were so disorganised.
Overall: 1/10. Really don't recommend this course unless you want to learn about civics history + geo. Only did it for my major...

 

[kurst]

math1041 - really easy to get a HD, content starts out super simple so it's tempting to stop paying attention. it moves onto stuff that is still pretty easy but if you arent paying attention at the time, it will seem really difficult. dont need a textbook, just do the tutes and past papers, they have good answers. dont really need any maths knowledge, just stuff like probability but it's explained to you anyway. 2 online multiple choice tests with 3 attempts each, one mid sem test with a page of notes allowed, one assignment involving gathering some data and then answering a few questions on it. if you get justin he's a good lecturer and tutor, i heard he's better than that other lady but i wouldnt know. in the course pack theres a book with all the lecture notes, you bring that to lectures and fill in the answers to practice questions. you could probably just watch them online since he records his handwritten notes too. the final exam wasnt as similar to the past papers as i thought it would be and a few questions i had no idea what to do, so be careful not to rely on the past papers

biom1010 - course isn't organised very well, 2 online quizzes that are quite difficult even if you google it but they arent timed so you'll probably do well, ross likes asking you annoying questions like 'what is the diameter of a red blood cell', he speaks really slowly (pro tip: watch lectures online at 1.5x speed to save time) and doesnt seem to give a fuck about the course a lot of the time, theres a group assignment and oral presentations on certain biomedical devices, lots of anatomy/physiology stuff, a bit of chemistry and biology knowledge will be useful, the textbook is a colouring book which is fun but isnt a great use of time in my opinion. the final exam was only worth 40% though, so even though its quite difficult you should pass if you do well in everything else which is fairly easy.

biot1011 - always go to lectures and labs even if they say its optional, because john loves telling everyone exactly what will be on the exam to punish people who dont bother showing up. we had to do a gmo assignment which involved a lit review and opinion pieces, maybe my demonstrator was just extra nice but it was super easy to get full marks in that. you have to keep a lab workbook where you write all your results/discussions and they are pretty strict with that, and werent that clear about what you had to do with it at the start. labs could have been better organised, half the time my demonstrator did the lab a completely different way to whats in the manual after we had read over it and done a flow diagram of the method. even though labs are 4 hours thats because the first hour is supposed to be like a tute, actually i dont think a lab ever ran more than 3 hours, we could often leave after about 2 hours. the experiments are pretty simple to do and towards the end it just involves a lot of waiting around for stuff to incubate. as long as you make a note of all the exam hints and study those parts it should be easy enough. probably wont need the textbook. you get some interesting guest lecturers and learn about beer brewing and all the different biotech applications

chem1041 - same layout as previous chem courses, where do you do the computer assignments every week, a mid sem and occasional lab reports. if the first year chem group on fb exists then join it because it will be extremely helpful for lab and tute answers. you get sample exam questions to do and they are usually very similar to the ones you get in the actual exam, so make sure you can do them. they dont give tute answers so make good notes in tutes. if you did chem1031 then you'll know what to expect from this course

 

[Alkanes]

ECON1102 (Macroeconomics1)
Ease: 7/10. Concepts were more interesting compared to microeconomics I thought.
Content: 7/10. Despite being more interesting than micro, I thought it was much harder than micro. There is a lot of stuff you need to know and studying 1-2 day before the exam wouldn't do you much good. Some topics build up on each other so it's important to be up to date. The finals was straight forward surprisingly, thus didn't scale much as I would've liked.
Lecturer: Stopped going after week 4 but the lecturer (forgot her name..think it was Lisa?) was very good, judging from the times I attended her lecturer. Stanley, the head lecturer, I heard is not too bad either.
Overall: 7/10. People who did well in HSC economics and/or have a genuine interest in economics should do well and breeze through the course with little difficulty.

MARK1012 (Marketing Fundamentals)
Ease: 10/10. Easy course.
Content: 4/10 It is a rote learning and bullshitting course to sum it all up. All the concepts are easy. You can study the day before and do very well. But there is a lot of concepts to cover so studying one day before wouldn't do you any good.
Lecturer: 6/10. Yep the great almighty Mohommed. He is not the best lecturer so to speak. I stopped attending after week 2 due to problems understanding his voice. But despite this, I thought he was very resourceful. He uploaded a lot of resources for students and was very quick when replying to your emails.
Overall: 7/10. It is a good course to take especially if you like group work and presentations. Final exam is pretty easy but majority of the marks comes from group work unfortunately (pick your group wisely haha). So if you're not a big fan of working in groups every single week, I would steer away from it.

FINS1613 (Business Finance)
Ease: 7/10. Course was quite easy until the last few weeks.
Content: 5/10. I didn't like what I was learning due to having problems understanding some of the topics (read below)
Lecturer: 10/10 Amy Kwan lectures were excellent. As for Kyung I give him 2/10. I did not understand his lectures thus was not motivated with this course when he tooked over.
Overall: As a general rule of thumbs up. I would try and avoid this course in semester 2 as I have heard Kyung takes it every year. His lectures are not great, he sets very hard quizzes and finals despite all the tests being multiple choice! I'm sure a lot of people failed this semester or have done very poorly.

LEGT1710 (Business Law)
Ease: 9/10
Content: Everything was straightforward with nothing being difficult. There is a lot of content however, so staying up to date every week would be ideal in doing well. Assignments were doable and the final exam I thought was fair.
Lecturer: Leela 10/10. Excellent lecturer. Her lectures were organised and explained everything crystal clear in her lectures.
Overall: 10/10 (Y)

 

[Riachain]

'Ola! Sorry for disappearing for so long. To make up for it, I'm posting my course reviews for both Semester 1 and Semester 2 of this year. But since they won't all fit into one post, check out my Semester 2 review after this post.


ECON1102 (Macroeconomics)

Ease: 3/10. Truthfully, it would have been easier if I actually understood both my lecturer and tutor, kept up with all the readings and homework, and went for consultations every week. But, er, I didn't. So there's the result. Otherwise, I'd guess you'd find this course relatively easy to pass (around 7/10).

Content: 6/10. Bit more boring than ECON1101 (Microeconomics), but still interesting nonetheless.

Lecturer: LA Zieme --> 4/10. I skipped all the lectures. But I didn't skip them because they were boring or because I wasn't bothered to do my best in the course. Nope - I skipped all the lectures because I couldn't understand her accent! She's an incredibly nice lecturer, but it was absolutely impossible for me to decipher what she was saying, so I stopped coming to the lectures. If you could understand what the heck she was saying, I'll forever call you a genius, I will.

Tutor: ? --> 5.8/10. I don't even know my tutor's name, but her accent was also thick enough to make it difficult for me to fully understand what she was saying. But I liked how passionate she was about the subject and how she kept going through everything to make sure that we fully understood what she was saying. I just wish she wasn't so scary and strict about, well, everything...

Overall: 4.5/10. Not a terrible course, as long as you actually study, do your homework, and get help as soon as you need it. Rated this way because my personal experience with this course just kind of sucked... and part of it was my fault.


ECON1203 (Business Statistics)

Ease: 5/10. If you're decent at Maths, this will be easy right until the end, when you'll struggle a tad bit over multiple regression. If, however, you're absolute crap at Maths like me, then you'll want to cry as the course progresses. So, uh, yeah. (PASS classes will help you greatly. Go to them.)

Content: 5/10. I... don't know how to rate Maths content. Uh... yeah. Next!

Lecturer: D Fiebig --> 5/10. Skipped almost all the lectures, but judging by the ones I went to - well, he taught decent enough. Bit boring at times, but I'm not entirely sure if it was the content or his voice that was boring. So let's just rate this a decent score and move on, shall we?

Tutor: ? --> 8/10. I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER HER NAME, BUT SHE WAS THE REASON WHY I PASSED THE BLOODY COURSE. She explained everything so well, was extremely friendly, and tried to help us out to her utmost ability. If she wasn't my tutor, I swear I would've failed the course.

Overall: 5/10. Not as terrible as I thought when I first started the course. I do recommend everyone to attend the weekly PASS classes though. Without them and my amazing tutor, I would've failed the course and cried myself to sleep.


ACCT1501 (Accounting 1A)

Ease: 8.5/10. Personally, I found this course rather easy, but that could have been because I took Accounting classes during high school. (Oh yeah, forgot to say - I'm an international student. Explains why there were Accounting classes at my high school.)

Content: 8/10. I'm kind of in love with Accounting, so I found the content to be absolutely wonderful for the most part.

Lecturer: ? --> Won't bother to rate this, since I think I missed almost all of my Accounting lectures. I don't even remember my lecturer's name!

Tutor: ? --> Can't rate this either. Don't remember a single thing about them. Wow, my memory sucks...

Overall: 7/10. Decent course. Not too difficult. Not too much homework. Won't throw too many curve balls at ya. Definitely a decent course to do.


ARTS1810 (International Relations: Continuity & Change)

Ease: 6.5/10. Easy enough to pass... if you can handle the content. Assignments weren't too difficult. Yada yada, you get the point. Next!

Content: 5.5/10. Yeah, uh. More boring than ARTS1811.

Lecturer: Shepherd --> 7.5/10. Really nice guy! Taught pretty well too. But was occasionally... well... boring. Other than that, no real faults about him.

Tutor: ? --> 4.5/10. Nice lady, but didn't give me proper advice. When I asked what I could do better, she told me to improve my English as soon as I said I was an international student. (Lady, don't you dare even fucking go there.) When I explained that my English didn't need help, she just turned away and ignored me. The fuck.

Overall: 4/10. Dry, dry course. For all those who need to cross this path, g'luck.

 

[Riachain]

Semester 2, 2013! Aka the most recent subjects I took. Here we go~


ACCT1511 (Accounting 1B)

Ease: 6/10. Quizzes weren't too hard. However, the exam was absolutely horrendous and ridiculously different from past exams, which is why the course got this mark.

Content: 6.5/10. Found the content to be a huge jump up from ACCT1501 in terms of difficulty. Still interesting enough, however, to keep your attention.

Lecturers: First Few Topics Guy --> 6/10. Don't even remember his name, but he taught pretty decently and was friendly enough. Occasionally boring. Victoria --> 3.5/10. Reason why I remember her name is because she was the lady who put me to sleep. Miss, you teach some of the most lengthy topics - please don't make it worse by putting us to sleep! Nice enough though. Last Few Topics Asian Guy --> 9/10. Sorry, don't remember your name, but you were absolutely stunning and I love how you teach. Please teach my future subjects. Please.

Tutor: ? --> 9/10. Don't remember her name, but she was an amazing tutor who was extremely friendly, kind, and helpful. She also teaches ridiculously well and managed to get the whole class relatively interested in the topics for each week. Thank you, amazing tutor!

Overall: 7/10. Despite health and time constraints preventing me from doing the best that I could've done, I still found this course worthwhile doing (albeit a bit boring or difficult from time to time) and I believe it to be a (hopefully) useful step stone to future Accounting courses. (Assuming that you're continuing on to do an Accounting major, like I am.)


LEGT1710 (Business Law)

Ease: 6/10. If you participate in your classes and try to get help from the lecturer and your tutor as often as you can, you should find it pretty easy to pass this course with a decent grade.

Content: 5.5/10. Content was interesting, but not enough to keep me from sleeping.

Lecturer: Leela --> 10/10. An amazing lecturer that takes the time to help you with any problems that you may have. Her voice is crisp, loud, and clear and her way of explaining the content is simply gold. Even though I couldn't attend all of her lectures due to health constraints, I absolutely loved going, even though the content caused me to fall asleep almost half the time.

Tutor: Mary --> 6.5/10. She didn't seem to fully understand half of my answers, but I loved that she was passionate about the subject and tried her best to help her students succeed. I also appreciated the participation mark she gave me at the end of the semester, as that helped push my mark up to a credit, even though I didn't participate in class nearly as many times as I would have liked to. (Anxiety issues, you see.) She can be rather repetitive and long-winded though, so...

Overall: 7/10. Looking back at the course, I actually rather enjoyed it, though I would never consider going for a Business Law major. It is a worthwhile course to take if you want to get a glimpse of what the world of law is like, I guess.


MGMT1002 (Organisational Behaviour)

Ease: 7/10. Assignments are bludgy, but easy enough to pass.

Content: 6/10. Mostly common sense. Read my rant pages back on how MGMT1001 uses theory to explain fucking common sense and you'll understand my mark for this. Or not. Your loss.

Lecturers: Catherine --> 6.5/10. Nice woman, lectures were interesting enough, but easy to fall asleep to. Lynn --> 6.5/10. Same thing. Except that she was more enthusiastic.

Tutor: Lynn --> 7/10. Much better as a tutor than as a lecturer. Still explained assignment instructions and concepts a bit vaguely though.

Overall: 6/10. Not great, not bad. So-so.


MGMT2705 (Industrial Relations)

Ease: 8.5/10. If you do the readings and attend the lectures, you're pretty much ready to ace this course.

Content: 8/10. Some of the content bored me, but for the most part, it was actually much more interesting than both MGMT1001 and MGMT1002!

Lecturer: Sarah --> 7/10. Not sure if that's her name, but I really liked her. She was friendly and willing to answer any questions that her students may have had. She also explained the concepts in a clear way. However, her monotone voice made half of her audience fall asleep, hence the mark I gave her.

Tutor: Guy Who Worked In A Union For Ages --> 8/10. Taught the concepts well enough and did his best to get everyone engaged. Had a rather scary attitude though. Other people said that he marked harshly, but I got ridiculously good marks despite my horrible answers, so I'm not sure whether to believe in that rumor or not. Either way, nice tutor... but I kind of pity those who'll have him in the future, haha.

Overall: 8/10. I liked it! Much more better than the introductory Management courses. Makes me glad that I decided to double major in Accounting and Human Resource Management!

 

[wilsondw]

BIOT1011
Ease: 8.5/10 If you managed to do well in BABS1201 (Around DN+), then this course is fairly straightforward as half of it is revision on some of the BABS content and the other half is an introduction to a variety of fields in which Biotech is applied like Wine and beer industry, environment and medical industry etc.

Content: 8.5/10 really straightforward if you’ve done BABS1201. For some of the optional lectures, you just need a broad knowledge of it instead of memorising specific details (a mistake that some students have made).

Lecturers: As Kurst has stated, you should really go to ALL of the lectures if you want an upper hand in the finals!
John Wilson, John Foster, Peter White (viruses) and Brett Neilan (7/10). Peter White and Brett Neilan (funny guy) can explain concepts quite well, but man they have crappy lecture slides. John Foster should keep the lights on otherwise peeps would fall asleep and his lecture slides have way too much information.
Sven Delaney (8/10) (transgenic) - Overall, he’s a solid and all-rounded lecturer for me.
Chris Marquis (4/10) (fermentation and beer guy)- I don’t feel any passion from his lectures or maybe it’s the content and his voice will put you to sleep.
Belinda Ferrari (6/10) wasn’t great with her “Novel methods of cell culture” lecture, but she got better in the Environmental Micro lecture.
I give Louise-lutze Mann, Anne Galea and Kevin Morris a 9/10. Louise and Anne are great as usual and an important note: Kevin Morris is a boss!

Overall: 7.5/10 I would recommend this course only if you have done BABS1201. I noticed that a few of the peeps didn’t and they struggled in the course. But in the end, some managed to do well while others didn’t. A few of the labs were disorganised as our demonstrators had to make some adjustments and some of the questions in the question booklet were somewhat obscure.

CHEM1041
Ease: 8.5/10

Content: 7/10 The concepts behind kinetics, stereochemistry, structural and Organic chemistry in my opinion were pretty dope. Inorganic on the other hand was not taught very well and for me, I reckon it was the hardest part of the course.

Lecturers: Jonathan Morris (9/10) and Professor Thordason (9/10) are great lecturers as they explain concepts clearly. I like how they incorporate questions into the lectures as a way of consolidating our knowledge and their lecture notes are fairly straightforward. Though for Thordason, his accent can be hard to understand at times.
Dr Ball (5.5/10), cool guy but he wasn’t a great lecturer imo. He mumbles quite often and his tone makes it hard for peeps to stay awake in the lecture. He was using Marcus Cole’s lecture slides and I’m not a big fan of them since it’s hard to learn off them and it doesn’t really answer the learning objectives (according to some).

Overall: 7/10 Do all of the tutorial questions and the past papers they hand out, you should do fine in the course. Just a note, the mid sem past paper they gave us this year was ridiculously easy compared to the one we actually had to do. Finals was surprisingly straight forward.

BABS2202
Ease: 7/10 I found this course to be very challenging as a 1st year since it was my first 2nd year course.

Content and Lecturers:7.5/10 Overall I found the course to be interesting, especially the laboratory component.
Louise (9/10) lectured the various aspects of the birth and end of the cell cycle, cancer and the regulatory mechanisms behind Mitosis and Meiosis and without her awesomeness, I reckon many would struggle.
Mike Edwards (6/10) taught cytoskeletons and cell adhesion and personally, OMG there was so much detail! He has alright lecture slides but everyone (including me) was annoyed by the fact that he doesn’t put up all the info on the downloadable lecture slides so we’re forced to come to the lectures. Other than that, he’s alright.
Noel Whittaker (7/10) taught cell signalling and content wise, it is probably the most interesting part of the course (many would beg to differ) since we got to learn the mechanisms behind certain processes. Though as a lecturer, his lecture slides aren’t that great as most of his content were from sections of our prescribed textbook and his soothing voice puts people to sleep. Overall, he’s a really nice guy!
Diane Mcgould (7/10) lectured on cell-cell interactions and organism interactions and she has good lecture slides, not too much or little information.
Brendan Burns (8.5/10) lectured cell-environment interactions and I reckon he lectures pretty well. He moves through the content at a fast pace which was good, but as a result of that some of the concepts we learnt were not very clear.

Overall: 8/10 As a 1st year, I still managed to do well in this course despite stuffing up my mid sem. Try to keep up with the work, both the lecture content and the labs since there is a lot of things to do. Two assessable components of the course, the handing in of your lab book and the game project are easy marks, so it is important to do well in them, especially your laboratory book.

MATH1231
Ease: 7.5/10

Content: 7.5/10 Calculus was actually quite abstract so I found that interesting, though it kinda hard for me since I had a crappy lecturer. Algebra was a bit repetitive and for that reason, I found it somewhat dull.

Lecturers: Bruce henry (1/10) OMFG This guy is like the SLOWEST lecturer on Earth! He fucken makes too many mistakes when doing problems in lectures and focuses too much on notations. He makes shitty drawings and if he can’t draw it out, he’ll give up. Plus, he’s all like “tell me to slow down if I’m going to fast”, it’s the exact fcken opposite! (Sorry for my rant)
Bill Ellis (7/10) explains the algebraic concepts clearly and goes through a good number of problems which I liked. But I wouldn’t want him as my tutor since he’s kinda tight in the quizzes from what I’ve heard

Overall: 7/10 The format is similar, if not, the same as MATH1131 and 1141. Just don’t forget to do Maple. Also there are consultation hours and few of them are helpful.

 

[4025808]

Planning to write some of my subject reviews here some time after finals.

 

[obliviousninja]

ECON1101 (Microeconomics)

Ease: 9/10. All assessments are rather easy. Participation marks earnt through doing quizzes regardless of your mark. No tute homework checks. Topics for the tests can easily be prepared for. 50MC finals, thank goodness!

Content: 8.5/10 I didn't do HSC economics so some of the concepts learnt were really interesting and not repetitive. First couple of chapters were dry, however later on game theory became my favourite chapter. Most of the content can be rote learnt, however some stuff requires a degree of understanding.

Lecturers: Peter Nichols (first 4 weeks) - really great, explained concepts well and clearly, his use of the drawing projector was good. (8/10). Diane Enahoro (rest of the semester) - her power point slides were great, but their value only exists if you go to lectures (which the majority of the time, I didn't) ie lots of graphical explanations in the lecture. However its a bit hard to get away with sleeping or talking frequently to the person next to you; she's pretty strict. (6.5/10)

Tutor: 10/10 tutor was chilled af. Heaps of jokes. Gave us hints and tricks.

Overall: 9/10 One of my favourite subjects this semester. Hoping to HD.