• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page
MedVision ad

UNSW Subject Reviews. (1 Viewer)

sirable1

Active Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
709
Location
Sydney, Australia
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2016
MATH1241

Lecturer: 9/10 - Thomas Britz (algebra) was really cheerful and nice. I like his presentations and notes (typed in LaTeX).
10/10 - Bill Ellis (calculus) was the best lecturer I've had in this university, whenever I came there, I understood at least 80% of the stuff he was teaching. This is because he went through example questions which apply the concept.
For Bill Ellis, what did you particularly liked about his teaching? I will be having him this summer (MATH 1231) and would like to know a good hand before. :D
I know Britz though, he's pretty awesome (gave chocolates in the final lecture iirc)

COMP1917
Ease: 3/10 - EXTREMELY difficult if you do not practice coding or rote learn the content
GG, I'm taking that course next year. No programming experience as well :/
 
Last edited:

HeroicPandas

Heroic!
Joined
Mar 8, 2012
Messages
1,547
Gender
Male
HSC
2013
For Bill Ellis, what did you particularly liked about his teaching? I will be having him this summer (MATH 1231) and would like to know a good hand before. :D
I know Britz though, he's pretty awesome (gave chocolates in the final lecture iirc)

Bill Ellis was very eager to answer questions! He went through the notes and explained them (Wolfgang K. Shief's notes, I was meant to have this guy but he disappeared lol), then went through some example questions that applied the concept. His lectures were based off Prof. Schief's notes so... it might be different with his notes :\.

GG, I'm taking that course next year. No programming experience as well :/
Note that semester 1 and 2 for this course is different. Idk how semester 1 is like but semester 2 seems really practical - we had like 2 programming assignments and 3 prac exams

All good lol. It felt really difficult at the start and I hated it because I didn't know how to apply the what I learnt UNTIL I sat down and made sure I understood example codes, then I tried making my own programs. Stay consistent and never accept a single thing, you must understand everything. Good luck!
 
Last edited:

Astro551

New Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2011
Messages
12
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
For Bill Ellis, what did you particularly liked about his teaching? I will be having him this summer (MATH 1231) and would like to know a good hand before. :D
I know Britz though, he's pretty awesome (gave chocolates in the final lecture iirc)



GG, I'm taking that course next year. No programming experience as well :/
I had Ellis for Summer 2014. He's pretty anal about his marking (e.g. notiation of chain rule, squiggly line or arrow above indicating vectors etc), so you might lose some marks there in the Class Tests that other students might not. But he does it with the best intentions, doesn't beat around the bush and teaches really effectively. I assume he's lecturing Summer as well? He's really very thorough and explains what he's doing, and clearly goes through examples (without making mistakes like I've seen a lot of lecturers do).

If he's your tutor he might pick on you though in class so be prepared (or be like me and not know anything, so he picks on me more :lol:)
 

integral95

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2012
Messages
779
Gender
Male
HSC
2013
I had Ellis for Summer 2014. He's pretty anal about his marking (e.g. notiation of chain rule, squiggly line or arrow above indicating vectors etc), so you might lose some marks there in the Class Tests that other students might not. But he does it with the best intentions, doesn't beat around the bush and teaches really effectively. I assume he's lecturing Summer as well? He's really very thorough and explains what he's doing, and clearly goes through examples (without making mistakes like I've seen a lot of lecturers do).

If he's your tutor he might pick on you though in class so be prepared (or be like me and not know anything, so he picks on me more :lol:)
not checking your integration by differentiating your answer = -1/2
 

sirable1

Active Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
709
Location
Sydney, Australia
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2016
Note that semester 1 and 2 for this course is different. Idk how semester 1 is like but semester 2 seems really practical - we had like 2 programming assignments and 3 prac exams

All good lol. It felt really difficult at the start and I hated it because I didn't know how to apply the what I learnt UNTIL I sat down and made sure I understood example codes, then I tried making my own programs. Stay consistent and never accept a single thing, you must understand everything. Good luck!
Yeah I’ve heard that too, the formats are slightly different. In the first session, I’ve that it’s a lot harder than second session because of the stricter marking in first session.

Through the 1917 youtube videos, Pro Richard Buckland seems to be very good and knows what's he's talking about, and this motivated to study the course. I would assume this course would also be competitive judging by people around you having more years experience with programming.

For the first time next year, we won’t be having Buckland as our lecturer anymore, but some person named Prof S Kanhere. I hope he/she is as good as Buckland though! :)

lol cos he's Tisdell's PhD student

- teaches like shit
- boring
- tries to make jokes -> fails
- just no.
Hmm… I thought he was one of the more sociable lecturers (judging by his casual hipsterish look LOL) but yeah ok then.

I had Ellis for Summer 2014. He's pretty anal about his marking (e.g. notiation of chain rule, squiggly line or arrow above indicating vectors etc), so you might lose some marks there in the Class Tests that other students might not. But he does it with the best intentions, doesn't beat around the bush and teaches really effectively. I assume he's lecturing Summer as well? He's really very thorough and explains what he's doing, and clearly goes through examples (without making mistakes like I've seen a lot of lecturers do).

If he's your tutor he might pick on you though in class so be prepared (or be like me and not know anything, so he picks on me more :lol:)
Thanks for the review! Yeah Summer Session starts next Monday, so good to know how is he good as a lecturer.

Yep, Ellis for Calculus and Dennis Trenerry for Algebra! Haven't heard anything about Trenerry though. How is he?
 

HeroicPandas

Heroic!
Joined
Mar 8, 2012
Messages
1,547
Gender
Male
HSC
2013
Yep, Ellis for Calculus and Dennis Trenerry for Algebra! Haven't heard anything about Trenerry though. How is he?
Good luck for COMP1917! (if you are motivated, try to learn a bit of C programming and aim to write a program which computes the area of a triangle)

I had Dennis Trenerry for MATH1081 (Discrete maths) and he was bad, lol. All he did was read off his lecture slides and brought in PREPARED hand-written slides for the old projector which contained extra notes that helped explain the content (and it was best to copy them down). With his lecture slides, you were to print them out, attend lectures and fill in the blanks - extremely important.

He USED to hand-write whatever was on the clear plastic sheet for the projector and explained it as he went along, but now he wanted to see if preparing these slides beforehand would improve his teaching

Good luck!
 
Last edited:

MilkDrinker

Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2012
Messages
137
Gender
Female
HSC
2013
MATH1231:
• Ease: 9/10 to be honest, I didn’t focus on this subject too much throughout the semester because COMP and MMAN were much more demanding, however pushed through before tests/exam and came out with a reasonable mark. Felt it was a lot easier than MATH1141 mainly because I felt like I had learnt a lot of it in 4U maths in HSC (however, others felt the opposite to me :p ).
• Content: 8.5/10 Wasn’t liking the algebra as much as the calculus... maybe that’s just me, but the calculus was quite interesting
• Lecturers:
o Chris Tisdell (calculus): 10/10 Really good :D Get him if you can, makes it a lot more interesting. But even if you can’t get him, don’t worry, all his videos are on Youtube!
o Sharon Stephens (algebra): 7/10 Not as interesting as Tisdell, a bit more boring. However, I might be a bit biased since I did not like the algebra content as much as calculus

MMAN1300:
• Ease: 6/10 you really have to keep up with the content because it does build up on itself. There are 4 block tests (each worth 5%) after each “block” of content. Do not necessarily expect them to be breezy, Prusty’s were ok... but Nicole made it hard on purpose (one had an average of ~30% and the other just under 50%). Nicole also told us that this is one of the hardest subjects in the MMAN faculty (just because they have to put basically two courses in one, dynamics and statics).
• Content: 8.5/10 Some of it is quite interesting and some of it we already saw in Physics previously
• Lecturer:
o G. Prusty (statics): 9/10 He is ok, he is sometimes a bit boring, it is especially bad during 2hr lectures. You don’t want to miss the lectures because he puts up some solutions to question on the board (obviously not recorded on ECHO)
o Nicole K (dynamics):6.5/10 Just reads her notes out, though she does give you answers to the Flying Fish questions in class sometimes :D

COMP1917:
• Ease: 6/10 You really need to keep up with the content, and there is quite a lot of it. From what I heard, the sem 2 course sounds easier and more enjoyable that the sem 1 course (they have different assessment tasks that sound less fair). I really suggest going to consultations in particular for the assignments or before prac tests because these can help you get marks that might have been easily overlooked. Also, DO NOT leave assignments last minute...
• Content: 9/10 Interesting, but there is a lot of it
• Lecturer: Alan Blair 9/10: Quite good I thought, and he uses these cut out bits of paper to demonstrate the fine steps that pointers for e.g. do in a program. He is also really good to have for a tutor.

BIOM1010:
• Ease: 5/10 Its ok... until the final exam
• Content: Looking back on it while studying for final, there is actually quite a lot of content, and sometimes Ross expects you to know some really fine points as well as the major points. You also have to do a major group project on a biomedical device, not too bad if you have a reasonable group... and a reasonable device.
• Lecturer: Ross Odell 7.5/10 Can get slightly disinteresting at times, sometimes better to watch on ECHO (which most of the class ended up doing anyway :p )
 

4025808

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2009
Messages
4,377
Location
中國農村稻農
Gender
Male
HSC
2011
Uni Grad
2017
GEOS3321/1111 – Fundamentals of (Petroleum) Geology

Ease: 7/10 – There’s a lot of content, there’s no understanding required – pretty much you just memorize the shit out of it. If you’re a good memorizer, then it’s a good course to take, otherwise I’d suggest you don’t do it. Even then, if you’re a petroleum student, you have no choice anyway. :p
For 1111 – you get two lab tests, around 15%-20% each, and then you also have an excursion to go to, which is around 15% or so. Take 1111 if you are risk averse. :p
For 3321 - you also get two lab tests, one worth 23% and another worth 27%. That’s a pretty huge weighting and if you get a crap mark, then welp, GG your marks are gone.
The first lab test is a rock test, and it’s marked out of 22. You have 3 minutes to look at each rock and answer questions. You have 6 rocks to get through and thus the time taken for the exam is only 18 minutes. The 2nd lab test is a mapping test, in which you spend the whole hour doing. It’s not that difficult but you need to make sure you know your stuff properly, otherwise you could make a lot of mistakes, like I did unfortunately.
Content: 3/10 -> lots and lots of content to go through. Thank goodness they literally give you the written component of the final exam, otherwise everyone would be screwed. Tbh most of the content is pretty dry, so it’s something you have to deal with if it’s a compulsory course for your major.
Oh and the difference between 1111 and 3321 is that in 1111, you learn about coal and the economic minerals, whereas in 3321, you learn about petroleum related stuff. The first section is in common with each other.
Lecturer: Catherine Chague-Goff -> 6/10. She tries to teach, but she gets boring. Nevertheless puts up the exam MC questions up on the board to encourage ppl to come to lectures. There are other lecturers but I didn’t go to any of the other lectures.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: 9/10 – I found the labs to be very helpful tbh – it’s worth going to get yourself some knowledge of the rocks and skills learned for the lab tests.
Overall: 6/10 – Geology is easy, but tbh it’s not my thing personally. Nevertheless I do know it can be taught better and more engagingly.


PTRL2018 – Introduction to Petrophysics

Ease: 4/10 – Things were all over the place. There was too much content to sort through and a lot of assessment tasks/assignments to do. There’s all these files everywhere and different sources given to us. Unless if you’re a pro memorizer or have photographic memory, then you might have difficulty with this course, as it is pretty much rote-learn.
Content: 4/10 – too much content to learn in this course. Everything is so dry and a lot of it is generally difficult to understand due to lack of context and explanation. Most things are simply just rote-learn and you don’t really get to know why it works, more like just how it works.
Lecturer: Ryan Armstrong -> 6/10 – he’s that typical monotone lecturer, but if you ask him for help he is willing to lend you a hand. He’s actually a very nice person; just that I couldn’t stand his lectures and thus I skipped a lot of them.
Tutor: Ryan Armstrong again – his tutorials were indeed very helpful for the final exam overall – I should have re-did the tutorials to make sure my understanding was solid enough.
Lab: Zhixi Chen – 7/10 – he’s a nice chilled lab demonstrator who values safety first as opposed to being on time for the lab. He doesn’t care if lab reports are similar or same, as long as the information provided from you is correct and accurate. During his lab explanations, it’s pretty boring at times. I’d rather have him speak mandarin to me so that I can actually get engaged with what he is saying tbh.
Overall: 5/10 – too much content, but stuff is marked pretty easily. Plus finals were easy as Ryan Armstrong copied past papers from 2012 beforehand. Also the fact that you have to pass each component to pass the course is a pain, and that actually made me worried for finals as well :/


PTRL2019 – Reservoir Engineering A

Ease: 7/10 – The content itself is easy, as well as the derivations. It’s just that you have so much content to memorize and it’s a pain if you don’t actually remember it on the day of the exam. The hardest content of technical difficulty was pseudo-steady state flow and that required integration by parts. Apart from that, go ahead and just memorize. It used to be harder when Furqan Hussain was the lecturer.
Also finals were easy as it was a repeat of past papers that were previously on the Z-drive until they got rid of it recently.
Content: 8/10 – It’s very well structured, and course notes are more than enough for you to generally answer every single question – just memorize the course notes and you’re more than fine to answer any question that pops up. Effectively speaking, there’s less content in 2019 as opposed to 2018, as 2019 has more derivations as opposed to 2018, which is pretty much pure content.
Lecturer: Peyman Mostaghimi – 9/10 – He’s a new lecturer and replaced Furqan Hussain, and made the course easier. Peyman is a very engaging lecturer and can explain his content well. Sometimes on Monday morning lectures, he would get pissed at people coming in late, and he told me off twice for doing so.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: N/A
Overall: 9/10. Peyman please be my lecturer again and just copy off past papers pls. You literally saved my WAM from that disastrous course below (^^^).
Tbh seeing as people did well in the final and that he was very pleased with everyone in the course, he decided to bump the weighting of the final, cancel the weighting of the 2nd assessment task and in the end, a large amount of the cohort ended up with HD (including myself) for the course.


PTRL3025 – Petroleum Economics

Ease: 4/10. It’s easy in the fact that it’s basically a combination of FINS1613, ECON1203 and a bit of MATH1231 probability and stats. It’s hard in the fact that you have to attend 3x 8am starts every week. You have an 80% attendance rule enforced and there’s basically 2 people monitoring the attendance form to catch out jiggers and to make sure that people don’t sign on for other people. It’s also difficult in the fact that the exams are long and tedious for the time given, and the fact that it gets marked quite harshly.
So btw, if you want to jig, make sure you strategically jig your lectures so you use your skips in the most efficient way possible.
Another note - there are past papers that you can do, but Guy Allinson doesn't exactly copy questions from past papers, so make sure you actually study your content and know it in and out.
Content: 8/10 – the content is interesting, you just have to memorize a lot of it and learn how to apply it as well. Guy Allinson explains his content quite well compared with the rest of the lecturers. It’s not so much of an economics course, but more of a finance course imo. It should be called Petroleum Finance and Statistics instead of economics imo.
Lecturer: Guy Allinson – 5/10 -> He’s better this time round, as he actually takes economics seriously. He’s also very passionate about it, so you can tell he can get pedantic at times when you use the incorrect terminology. The big problem with him is the 8am starts, and occasionally if you jig lectures, leave half-way, arrive late, forge signatures, do bad stuff that is usually tolerated with other lecturers, he will call you out for it and he might choose to do dodgy shit and deduct marks out of you. Also IMO he’s still pretty hard to approach, but if you do approach him for consultation, he’d be quite willing to help you out.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: N/A
Overall: 4/10. Despite Guy Allinson being a better lecturer this time, this course caused a blow to my sleeping patterns, my total sleep time, my gym routine, my happiness, my sanity, my other subjects and ofc, my WAM. I literally lost a week of my AIESEC exchange trip just to come back and attend lectures for this course. I thankfully JUST passed it, so I’ll never have to deal with a single 8am start (unpaid) ever again. So much stuff was lost by doing this course, but thankfully I took it this semester to get it over and done with.


Overall, this semester was pretty shit. Lack of mathematics. Too much content. 3x8am starts. 4x late finishes. Whateven.jpg
Was thinking of just doing straight science (maths, stats) if there's just too much content to learn and if I don't actually learn anything.
 
Last edited:

jaechen

Member
Joined
May 4, 2010
Messages
84
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
I don't usually do reviews but I got nothing to do today so might as well.

FINS1612
Ease: 6/10 - Definitely not the easiest course but also not overly hard. I found it harder than 1613. It helps that the finals only test the last 4 weeks of content though (everything after second quiz).
Content: 3/10 - Most of the course was very qualitative and boring with lots of memorising. The last few weeks (futures and option strategies) were much more interesting. Also it helps if you do FINS2624 as well because these topics overlap so doing it twice really helped me out.
Lecturer: 7/10 - I didn't go to most of them because I couldn't stay awake but from what I've seen, lecturer was okay and had a strong clear voice. Still very boring though.
Tutor: 9/10 - Alvin - Friendly and heaps good at explaining concepts but it still didn't help that the course was extremely boring and I fell asleep in tutes.
Overall: 5/10 - Supposed WAM booster for people but I ended up not doing as well as I liked. Pretty chilled course since there's no homework.

FINS2624
Ease: 7/10 - Probably the most mathematical fins course I've done but this is why I found it easier than other fins courses. We had quizzes this sem and they were generally hard with a very strict time limit imposed - these are where I lost most of my marks.
Content: 8/10 - Really interesting stuff to see the real life applications of maths into the finance world and it (mostly) made sense.
Lecturer: 2/10 - Jianfeng reminded me of Yeongdook from first year accounting. AND he doesn't let you leave lectures unless it's at the hour.
Tutor: 6/10 - Wasn't the best at explaining concepts and homework questions but he prepared nice slides. They release worked solutions to homework anyway which is what really helped.
Overall: 8/10 - Pretty nice fins course that wasn't too hard and had interesting concepts.

MATH2621
Ease: 7/10 - Probably the easiest 2nd year maths course I've done but I still didn't find it that easy.
Content: 7/10 - Complex numbers. Wouldn't say it's interesting but they can be pretty fun questions to solve.
Lecturer: 8/10 - Cowling was pretty good at explaining concepts but those 9am starts didn't help me stay awake. AND lecture notes have unanswered example questions on them which forced me to go lectures.
Tutor: 9/10 - Angell was one of the best maths tutors I've ever had. Good at explaining concepts and very friendly too. But I feel he sometimes went too slow - eg. he would go through 1 tute question using alternative methods which took up the whole tute.
Overall: 8/10 - Pretty solid maths course and finals (for the most part) wasn't too hard if you do your tute questions.

MATH2931 (oh lawd)
Ease: 1/10 - The only thing easy about this course is how easy it is to fail LOL. Assignments were stupidly hard and the final exam... It was a traumatising experience and I don't even remember if I did a quarter of the paper.
Content: 5/10 - I would probably have given a higher rating if I understood the content but from what I could understand, linear models did seem helpful for stats. Probably going to look over the course and relearn the content for 3rd year stats LOL.
Lecturer: 5/10 - Libo. It was his first time teaching/lecturing the course, so I think he did an okay job for such a hard course. I still struggled to understand the content and so lectures didn't help me much. I fell behind and stopped going to lectures about 5 weeks into the course. He has the funniest laugh though.
Tutor: 1/10 - Libo. We had labs NOT tutes, and honestly I would have preferred tutes. In labs he went through R commands too fast and I could never keep up so I ended up bludging and eventually not going to his labs. The tute/lab questions were all pretty hard and most of them didn't have answers which only made the course 10x harder.
Overall: 1/10 - Deadset hardest course I've ever done and Libo set the hardest finals ever (again I think it's because hes new). LUCKILY he saw the error of his ways and ended giving us all an insane amount of scaling LOL so I ended up with a Distinction when I was honestly expecting a mark in the 50's.
 
Last edited:

fizzbylightning

Active Member
Joined
Oct 12, 2011
Messages
367
Location
Sydney
Gender
Female
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2020
BIOC2201 (Principles of Molecular Biology (Advanced))
Ease: 8/10. The notes and lecturers and coordinator of the course makes the course straight-forward and the many revision lectures on lecture and lab material answer all the questions you may have. The tutorial quizzes give you an incentive to consistently revise over the semester. I find that with subjects with regular quizzes, I'm more likely to do better in the finals.
Content: 8/10. This course is pretty much a more in depth study of genetics and you learn about techniques used in this field like DNA sequencing and microarrays. The lecture content ties in nicely with the lab work.
Lecturers: There are two lecturers who take nearly all of the lectures and they are both involved in designing the course. Vincent Murray (10/10) - he's clear and goes over the same content 3 or 4 times which even though seems like overkill, really helps you. His slides are pretty much white background with a lot of Times New Roman text in paragraphs which wouldn't typically be encouraged for ppt presentations but helps in revision. Anne Galea (8/10) - her slides are colourful and she uses that scary gothic font a lot which I don't like but she is clear too.
Overall: 8/10.

PATH2201 (Processes in Disease)
Ease: 6/10. This was the most challenging subject this semester for me. The lecture slides give you the bare minimum and a lot of microscopic and macroscopic images and it's up to you to fill in the gaps through extra readings. Even though the coordinator stated that they were "extra", implying that they weren't compulsory, I found it hard to get a comprehensive overall picture of each disease process without opening the suggested textbook. So there's a lot of extra independent work that goes into this subject and it consumed most of my time. I also didn't do well in the big independent research project which was graded 20% which was a let down. The subject wasn't that easy because you were given a case study and a micro/macroscopic image in the lab and museum sessions (held at the Museum of Human Disease) and were expected to identify the disease process and correlate the visual abnormalities to the pathogenesis of the disease process.
Content: 9/10. I think there are 5 main topics that are covered in this subject: acute inflammation, chronic inflammation, regeneration and repair, atherosclerosis/thrombosis/embolism/infarction and neoplasia (you get to learn about cancers!). You then learn about different examples within each, such as tuberculosis for chronic inflammation, which are guided by weekly case studies introduced in your tutorial and museum/lab sessions and I loved this subject because we learned a holistic view of each disease such as epidemiology, aetiology, pathogenesis, signs and symptoms and treatment which gave me a better insight into what practicing medicine would be like.
Lecturers: Kumar (7/10) - I still find him scary and intimidating. Nick Hawkins (9/10) - my fav. Gary Velan (8/10) - I found that his explanations were advanced and it was hard to keep up with the note taking. The puns are good though. Betty Kan (5/10) - her slides were very minimal and made me laugh (when I noticed how minimal they were) when I was revising for exams. Patsie Polly (7/10). My tutor was really good and inspiring in how smart he was. It's important to prepare for tutorials each week to get the most out of them, though I did slack off many times.
Overall: 8/10.

PHAR2011 (Introductory Pharmacology and Toxicology)
Ease: 7/10. There is some overlap in content if you are taking the medical science degree outline which helps connect the dots faster. For example, I knew everything there is to know about peptic ulcers because it was covered in 3 subjects this semester. A common complaint with this subject is having to learn all the drug names which takes a lot of effort.
Content: 7/10. Also pharmacology, though it was a wreck with all the drug names was personally satisfying as you recognise different conditions and the drugs used to treat them. For example, my mum had to take proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics as she was suspected to have high levels of H. pylori (the bacteria that causes peptic ulcer) after a trip to Singapore. They performed a urease breath test on her before and after her treatment and it was really cool to apply your personal experience to subject matter. Also, there are a lot of drug names like Claratyne on television ads and it's good to know what they do exactly. This course gives you a good holistic overview of pharmacology if you are interested in majoring in it.
Lecturers: Trudie Binder (8/10) - very nice woman. Angela Finch (4/10) - she was a bit mean. Lu Liu (7/10) - alright if you understand her heavy accent.
Overall: 7/10.

PHSL2201 (Physiology 1B)
Ease: 7/10. Same structure as PHSL 1A so there's no reason to lose easy marks in the lab quizzes (even though I did).
Content: 5/10. Reproduction and the gastrointestinal system were the only topics I was awake for. Respiratory and kidney is a drone.
Lecturers: Nicole Marden (9/10) - clear. Kluggman (7/10) - funny guy but I know even he wasn't interested in what we had to say. GIT system woman (8/10) - she had a nice Northern Ireland kind of accent and nice slides. Kidney woman (8/10) - good at explaining but worst lecture content.
Overall: 6/10. My least favourite subject of the semester because I just wasn't interested, particularly with the kidney and body fluids topic. That was tough.
 

erckle999

Active Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2012
Messages
132
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2018
COMP1921 (Computing 1B)
Ease: 8/10. More conceptually challenging than 1911 but moves very slowly so should be fine.
Content: 6/10. Again, slightly more interesting than 1911 but labs are less interesting and more tedious so yeh.
Lecturer: Michael Thielscher 8/10. Pretty good, slightly drone like voice but reasonably interesting. Lectures very theoretical though.
Tutor: Iris Uy 7/10. Pretty solid, nothing stands out as good or bad.
Overall: 7/10. Good WAM boost if you do the work. Theory part of the final was annoying.

ECON1102 (Macroeconomics 1)
Ease: 8/10. Most of the content was easy enough, so to make up for this and to just be general dickheads they cooked up some of the stupider assessments possible. They test speed, not understanding and all tutors were very inconsistent in the time given for the in class test and in their marking of tutorial questions.
Content: 8/10. Mainly interesting, mainly straightforward if you have done HSC Economics and have basic algebra skills.
Lecturer: Louis Zieme 6/10. I watched from home – she explains thigns slowly and reasonably clearly but apart from this particular course seems to be an idiot (thought China had 3 billion people and lots of other stuff)
Tutor: James ? (can’t really remember) 2/10. Showed up, read answers off the sheet, could not answer any of our questions properly. Shows you what happens when you get 3rd and 4th years as tutors.
Overall: 7/10. I had always heard this was a WAM killer but with the all multiple choice final (and perhaps some scaling) it seemed to be quite fair or even a bit of a WAM booster this last semester. Some hints: they say only write 500 words for your tute handins but I wrote 900 for one and got 10/10. Write everything down and you will probably get the marks. The marks for the inclass test are pretty easy to get if you just put in a bit of effort.
Anyway, it’s a relatively basic course with half interesting material that is torn to bits by a terrible tutorial and assessment system.

ECON2101 (Microeconomics 2)
Ease 9/10. The course resembles year 11 3 unit maths in that you spend about 90% of your time maximising and minimising stuff. They brush over any mathematical difficulty and the final was very, very easy. Straight from the workbook without any of the difficult questions in it at all.
Content: 8/10. Sort of interesting in that you derive most thigns from Micro 1 from first principles, and I much prefer this mathematical approach to the relatively ‘qualitative’ Micro and Macro 1. If you were interested in Micro 1, you will be interested in this course. If you are reasonable at maths, you will be good at this course.
Lecturers: Simona Fabrizi and Elena Capatina both solid and unexpcetional. Knew their stuff. Rex Vowels still smells dodgy though. 7/10.
Tutor: Lyla Zhang 8/10. Can answer all your questions. Has a strong accent.
Overall: 8/10. All homework marks are giveaways since the answers are freely avaialbel on the internet. Very quantitative. Better than first year eco overall.

MATH1251 (Actuarial Maths 1B)
Ease7/10: probably easier than 1151. Algebra is slightly less computational although there is still a lot of row reduction. The calculus on the final was harder than the algebra (although I did the algebra first so maybe that helped).
Interest: 9/10. Algebra was much more interesting than 1151, calculus probably as well. All the obscure financial applications (time sereies, van der monde matrices or something) were the least conceptually interesting and most tedious.
Lecturers: Josef Dick 7/10. Uninentioanlly funny. Lecture notes are really good though. In lecture examples are generally the easiest questions though.
Denis Potapov: 7/10. Very engaging lecturer. I would give him a higher score except his personal system for delivering lectures is not that great in my opinion. Helps for revision, but I would prefer some lecture notes instead of just doing everything by example and in a slightly odd order sometimes.
Tutors:
Jonathan Kress 9/10. Absolute champion. 10/10 for the pink highlights. Generally doesn’t like to do the harder questions but he will if you ask enough.
David Crocker 9/10. He is not the warmest tutor you will ever have and some people dislike his abruptness and how much he shouts, but if you shut up and listen his teaching is brilliant. Every answer is rigorous and he shows you connections between questions and areas.
Overall: Obviously don’t do this course unless youhave to. You can do better in 31/41 with less work. They should probably scale it more since there are people in 31/41 getting the same marks as people in 51 who are clearly much less capable. Actuarial department like weeding out the weak though it seems.
 

4025808

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2009
Messages
4,377
Location
中國農村稻農
Gender
Male
HSC
2011
Uni Grad
2017
COMP1921 (Computing 1B)
Ease: 8/10. More conceptually challenging than 1911 but moves very slowly so should be fine.
Content: 6/10. Again, slightly more interesting than 1911 but labs are less interesting and more tedious so yeh.
Lecturer: Michael Thielscher 8/10. Pretty good, slightly drone like voice but reasonably interesting. Lectures very theoretical though.
Tutor: Iris Uy 7/10. Pretty solid, nothing stands out as good or bad.
Overall: 7/10. Good WAM boost if you do the work. Theory part of the final was annoying.


MATH1251 (Actuarial Maths 1B)
Ease7/10: probably easier than 1151. Algebra is slightly less computational although there is still a lot of row reduction. The calculus on the final was harder than the algebra (although I did the algebra first so maybe that helped).
Interest: 9/10. Algebra was much more interesting than 1151, calculus probably as well. All the obscure financial applications (time sereies, van der monde matrices or something) were the least conceptually interesting and most tedious.
Lecturers: Josef Dick 7/10. Uninentioanlly funny. Lecture notes are really good though. In lecture examples are generally the easiest questions though.
Denis Potapov: 7/10. Very engaging lecturer. I would give him a higher score except his personal system for delivering lectures is not that great in my opinion. Helps for revision, but I would prefer some lecture notes instead of just doing everything by example and in a slightly odd order sometimes.
Tutors:
Jonathan Kress 9/10. Absolute champion. 10/10 for the pink highlights. Generally doesn’t like to do the harder questions but he will if you ask enough.
David Crocker 9/10. He is not the warmest tutor you will ever have and some people dislike his abruptness and how much he shouts, but if you shut up and listen his teaching is brilliant. Every answer is rigorous and he shows you connections between questions and areas.
Overall: Obviously don’t do this course unless youhave to. You can do better in 31/41 with less work. They should probably scale it more since there are people in 31/41 getting the same marks as people in 51 who are clearly much less capable. Actuarial department like weeding out the weak though it seems.
Where is aya-chan :p
http://community.boredofstudies.org/members/1610914765/aya-chan/

Anyhow, MATH1251 needs to be scaled with the 31 and 41 streams. I remember getting a 69 in MATH1251 unscaled and missed out on 2nd year higher courses simply because I needed 70 regardless of which stream I was taking. :(
 

sirable1

Active Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2012
Messages
709
Location
Sydney, Australia
Gender
Male
HSC
2012
Uni Grad
2016
MATH1251 (Actuarial Maths 1B)
Jonathan Kress 9/10. Absolute champion. 10/10 for the pink highlights. Generally doesn’t like to do the harder questions but he will if you ask enough.
Yep, I have Jonathan Kress's MATH1231 notes and they are terrific. Easy to understand and comprehensive at the same time.
 

unsw181

New Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2015
Messages
6
Gender
Male
HSC
2013
ECON1203
This has to be one of my favourite first year Commerce courses. Unfortunately many students struggle needlessly. You will be fine if you accept that stats is easy and don't let the symbols and terminology scare you. This is not a very mathematical course as many students like to believe; they don't care to test your mathematical ability. They want to test your understanding of the content so watching YouTube videos walking you through certain calculations is a waste of time. Try to enrol in Lei Lei's class; my subpar tutor made the course seem more difficult than it actually was. PASS is helpful, too.

ACCT1511
This was a fair jump in difficulty from ACCT1501, but manageable if you keep up with the homework and seminar questions every week. Much like ACCT1501, the PASS classes are a waste of time.

MGMT1001
This course wasn't exactly stimulating and I felt it was a waste of time. Not only was the content boring and irrelevant to my goals and interests, the time invested in assignments and memorisation yielded absolutely no return. The probability of you scoring an HD is the same whether you study for the final or not.

ECON1102
The assessment schedule was a little disorganised but we were provided with sample MC questions, a mid-sem question pool and tutorial solutions so I can't really complain. Many students struggled with the mid-sem's time constraint but I had no such trouble. Students who prepared were able to identify the relevant concept, know which formula to use and shoot through the questions easily. I enjoyed the course material but we were just learning the first principles of macro, with no real world application. Of course, Macro1 lays the groundwork for further Economics courses, which I am looking forward to (particularly Kriesler's). All of the lecturers were pretty good but Peter Kriesler was my favourite; a very intelligent and insightful lecturer.

MARK1012
It is very easy to score an HD in this course if you keep up with the lectures. There is a large group work component but it's fairly easy to do the project yourself as it is just a research project. If for whatever reason you can't afford to get a bad mark just pick a group of people who will let you complete the project in peace - you do not want any power struggles.
 
Last edited:

mreditor16

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2014
Messages
3,169
Gender
Male
HSC
2014
what. come on, the only better lecturer was Per Tronnes because he put surfing music in breaks and made it interesting.

Lim was awesome. I thought his accent kept me engaged in the material.
not sure if serious
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top