UNSW Subject Reviews. (8 Viewers)

[random-1005]

change to 1917, there is still time

lol if you have a death wish.

i swear to god cse are the biggest knobs ever.

the day of the first tutorial they bloody changed the room last minute so i was walking round the uni trying to find them, on my timetable it said one room then like the night before they changed the room. I showed up to the correct room ( which was interesting in itself, one of the rooms has the fukin door covered in the big cse wallpaper and there are no signs or anything directing you to where it is, you go down stairs to some basement looking shit hole and it has a sign pointing to a window on the side of the building, you finally figure it out after like 5 minutes of looking around and then you see a bloody handle sticking out of the wallpaper, bloody smartass programmers ), at the correct time and waited around like 5-10 minutes then i figured they were in the other room which was like 5 min walk away, i get there no ones there, so i back to the first room and they are finally there. Just the start of a semester of hell.

Then to follow from that pain in the ass assignments ( lol the lecturer said "i dont want to make it too easy" and they are looking for every possibility to take marks of for style, one assignment i had functions for everything and i lost 1/2 mark on style and the comment was "use more functions", all i could do was have a function that would call my functions !!!!)

the consultations are hardly any use ( i went to like 4 consults the week before the first assignment was due, and ran out of time for three of them before i could some help) as there are so many people around not knowing what they are doing ( rightfully so, because this is the first time they have done programming) and there are only a few one hour sessions here and there, you end up waiting the whole hour to get to the front of the line (either that or there are no computers left as the consult is packed) , by then its too late and the consult is over .

For the first assignment i had pretty much no idea wtf was going on, the lecturer says use one thing, the people at the consults say use another ( getchar which we had not learnt yet) , theres all this shit we havent learnt yet and its like "int main( int argc, char ** agrv) " learn that shit off by heart, god knows what it meant, you finally find out like 8 wks later.

I went to a consult 4 days before the first assignment was due and i swear to god it was like the most i learnt in the whole semester and to top it off you get smartass lecturer saying shit like "Id rather not answer that question" when someone asks a question even remotely related to the assignment, he knew everyone was struggling with it!!!

they keep bullshitting that they have "no assumed knowledge" but that is total crap for something with no assumed knowledge they go fairly fast, there seems to be two categories of people :

1. people that have been programming since they were born and find it boring ( if u are stop complaining u lucky bastard)

2. people that have no idea wtf is going on.

no one finds this moderately challenging, you are either at one extreme or the other.

CSE can kiss my ass

 

[LordPc]

wow, sounds like you had some serious issues with the course

who was your tutor btw?

 

[ColdBuffet]

I've never done programming before and I found COMP1911 quite challenging but very rewarding, especially when your programs work the way you want them to. Of course I can't comment on COMP1917, but for 1911 just make sure you do all your labs to get lots of practise and start your assignments earlyish.

Edit: Oh but I agree with the previous post about Achim. There wasn't one lecture where I didn't fall asleep and his accent is quite difficult to understand at times. Our 2nd lecturer was much better.

 

[kaz1]

Seems like most of CSE is shit. VBA component of ENGG1811 with Geoff Whale was atrocious.

 

[random-1005]

Seems like most of CSE is shit. VBA component of ENGG1811 with Geoff Whale was atrocious.

seems about right, maybe you should even change it to "all"

 

[random-1005]

I've never done programming before and I found COMP1911 quite challenging but very rewarding, especially when your programs work the way you want them to. Of course I can't comment on COMP1917, but for 1911 just make sure you do all your labs to get lots of practise and start your assignments earlyish.

Edit: Oh but I agree with the previous post about Achim. There wasn't one lecture where I didn't fall asleep and his accent is quite difficult to understand at times. Our 2nd lecturer was much better.

but honestly , when does that ever happen, im more used to the compiler spitting out 20 errors messages which make no sense and are no help at finding the problem

 

[deepalshaw24]

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[ColdBuffet]

but honestly , when does that ever happen, im more used to the compiler spitting out 20 errors messages which make no sense and are no help at finding the problem

Like I said in my previous post, I didn't do 1917...

But for 1911, yeah it was tough but most of the programs I started I was able to finish (some with and some without help).

I got a rubbish mark for assignment 1 as I was still getting used to programming (seeing as I had never done any programming before). however for assignment 2 and 3 my marks had improved significantly. so yeah just keep doing the labs (important) and maybe reading the textbook once in a while and you should be fine

Edit: i wouldnt pick another COMP subject if i had the choice though

 

[henry08]

Seems like most of CSE is shit. VBA component of ENGG1811 with Geoff Whale was atrocious.

I didn't mind it actually. The shapes/drawing component was a bit off-track/not useful though in my opinion.

 

[Timothy.Siu]

MATH1081

Ease: 8/10, Most topics in discrete maths are new and totally different to what's learnt in high school which can make this course challenging in a way. However, this also makes this course interesting if you understand the topics and in a way "fun". The class tests are harder than the MATH1141/1131 class tests in general and are much like the final exam questions.
Lecturers: Daniel Chan 10/10, i found him easy to understand, and he engaged with the students, asking questions and rewarding them with chocolates. He also explained the concepts better and his notes were better imo. Jefferies, 6/10. The notes weren't as good and he seemed to teach at a much slower pace than Chan which sometimes made it a bit dull as he kept repeating basic concepts. I didn't feel like i learnt a whole lot from the proofs topic, the logic topic was mildly interesting but i dont think i grasped it too well. Counting was pretty much advanced high school perms/comms questions.
Interest: 9/10 If you like maths, then you should find this more interesting than MATH1141. Even if u don't its pretty interesting as its a new aspect of maths that we didn't really cover in high school.
Overall: 8/10. ps. Note that the finals are worth 80% which is quite a bit...and this years test was pretty hard.

MATH1141

Ease: 7/10. I found calculus to be easier than algebra mainly because what we covered in calculus was mostly high school stuff. Algebra was much harder to grasp as the new topics starts within the first few weeks and it's easy to get lost. If you do around half of the homework sets then you should be fine i guess.
Lecturers: Sukochev 8/10. He taught the algebra component, he constantly made jokes and was generally funny. i sometimes got lost in his lectures though but that might be my problem. Wolfgang Schief 8/10. Calculus was easier to follow because of less new stuff. His notes were pretty much the same as the book.
Overall: 7/10 well, math1141/1131 is compulsary for some courses so you really dont get to choose. It's somewhat interesting but not overly interesting.

PHYS1131

Ease: 6/10. I found the questions hard to do, even with all the formulas and stuff.
cbb writing about lecturers
Interest: 8/10It was kinda interesting how to apply phys to some questions but the fact that I couldn't do lots of the questions didn't spark my interest too much
Overall: 7/10. The final exam was hard...

SCIF1021

Ease: 10/10 This course is only for Advanced Science/Maths students. It consists of mainly groupwork and other stuff. It's pretty much basic skills, e.g. thinking/talking etc. Its kinda like yr 7 english. It's split into a "tutorial" with other adv sci/math students and into a modules, where u can pick chem/matphys/psyc/bio.
Lecturer: N/A
Interest:9/10 for the maths module part. We did random problem solving/modeling problems which was fun and made us think. 6/10 for the phys part. that was kinda boring. 5/10 for tutorials. It was a bit pointless but fun if u had nothing else to do lol.
Overall: 7/10 Its a compulsary course for adv science/maths. Involved quite a lot of group work so be prepared. The tasks weren't that hard though (although it will probably be my worst subject).

 

[missanonymous7]

BIOS2061 Vertebrate Zoology:

Content and lectures: A course full of memory work! There aren't really many 'basic concepts' here to fall back on in terms of trying to explain any aspects of zoology. It covers the evolution of vertebrates (covers extinct as well as living organisms), how various groups are evolutionarily related, and goes into detail about the morphology, physiology, behaviour etc of fish (pretty dull), amphibians and reptiles (much more interesting!), birds, mammals, plus a handful of other lectures on cladistics, human evolution, early chordates, etc. As for the lecturers, most of them were pretty decent: Mike Archer is always good value, though he does tend to get off-track sometimes telling us tales about his adventures in palaeontology which aren’t always related. Iain Suthers, who did the fish lectures, is surprisingly enthusiastic.

Practical work: The basic structure of most of the labs went like this: read the notes in your manual, then go around the room and look at all the preserved specimens (either skeletons or preserved animals floating eerily inside jars of yellow liquid). Take a camera and photograph nearly everything: comes in very handy for revision for the prac exam. For most of the labs, we were also given worksheets with questions to answer. In the first few weeks there were a few dissections (a cunjevoi or ‘sea squirt’, plus a small shark). I found the lack of living animals made the labs a bit boring, though we did have one visit from the Taronga Zoo education van with some (live!) possums and snakes and so on, which was good. Oh and there was also a self-guided trip to the zoo…which most people didn’t do, instead answering the questions in that worksheet by Googling.

Assignments: A big essay/report on any aspect of any vertebrate group of your choice (the prescribed textbook is actually pretty helpful for this), a field trip to Centennial Park to study bird habitat usage (the dullest prac ever), and a brutal practical exam. The final examination was only slightly less brutal than the prac exam – frustrating, since the two exams combined to make up 60% of our final mark.

Overall: 7/10. I thought it was pretty interesting, and actually kind of enjoyed the essay/report assignment, since it allowed you to really explore whatever vertebrate group you wanted, in depth. But the level of detail you’re required to know is overwhelming, and there just isn’t enough time to cram in all the knowledge required for the exams.

Wow, that was a long review. I figure no one else has reviewed it before though so I may as well add more detail.

BEES2041 Data Analysis for Life and Earth Scientists:

Content and lectures: Tedious and difficult! I thought it would just be a continuation of the kind of stats taught in MATH1041, but it was like the lecturers were speaking another language. Everyone was confused, I think mainly because of how the lectures and content were presented (i.e., VERY badly and too quickly) rather than the content itself. Covers analysis of variance (ANOVA), multiple linear regression, spatial interpolation, and multivariate analyses. The lecturers varied: Alistair Poore was quite good and easy to understand, but unfortunately the others were confusing.

Practical work: Self-guided computer labs working with Minitab, GIS and Excel (mostly Minitab). These looked simple enough, but there was very little guidance provided when it came to tackling the questions in the lab manual. The lab supervisors were in very high demand. The manual was also full of errors, making it even harder to get through a lab without wanting to destroy something in frustration.

Assignments: One field trip to Maroubra beach to sample marine animals (not dolphins and whales: just sea snails on the rock platform), and then later on writing a report about the experiment with statistical analysis of the data. There were also two assignments which took questions directly from our lab manual, which we then had to write up and hand in separately.

Overall: 3/10. Ugh. Extremely disorganised, difficult and dreary.

 

[jules.09]

We were in the same Calculus tutorial? (I never knew that) I quite liked Wolfgang Schieff. Calculus was harder because I didn't commit the rigorous theorems to memory, whereas Algebra which was all applied, new and more interesting.

PHYS1131 *shudder*, the course was interesting but the final exam was quite difficult... I was somewhat annoyed that despite the exam supposedly being 2/3 on thermodynamics, waves etc, there was a great emphasis on friction and momentum . Apparently the average for the final's consistently low..

 

[jules.09]

@Timothy Siu: We were in the same Calculus tutorial? (I never knew that)

I quite liked Wolfgang Schieff. Calculus was harder because I didn't commit the rigorous theorems to memory, whereas Algebra was all applied, new and more interesting overall. Peter Brown is a wicked algebra lecturer. I liked Ian Doust too, and Sukochev for the few lectures he took.

PHYS1131 *shudder*, the course was interesting but the final exam was quite difficult... I was somewhat annoyed that despite the exam supposedly being 2/3 on thermodynamics, waves etc, there was a great emphasis on friction and momentum . Apparently the average for the final's consistently low..

 

[random-1006]

@Timothy Siu: We were in the same Calculus tutorial? (I never knew that)

I quite liked Wolfgang Schieff. Calculus was harder because I didn't commit the rigorous theorems to memory, whereas Algebra was all applied, new and more interesting overall. Peter Brown is a wicked algebra lecturer. I liked Ian Doust too, and Sukochev for the few lectures he took.

PHYS1131 *shudder*, the course was interesting but the final exam was quite difficult... I was somewhat annoyed that despite the exam supposedly being 2/3 on thermodynamics, waves etc, there was a great emphasis on friction and momentum . Apparently the average for the final's consistently low..

i dnt think i did that well, but i think i did alright on the momentum and friction questions, we were given hints at the last lecture ( or you would have if you turned up to lectures), they said to concentrate on rotation, momentum, ideal gas and friction, you were obviously skipping lectures and paided a heavy price. DONT SKIP LECTURES lol

i didnt really like wolfgang, i had him as my calculus tutor and he was like always trying to get out of doing too many questions lol

 

[Timothy.Siu]

@Timothy Siu: We were in the same Calculus tutorial? (I never knew that)

I quite liked Wolfgang Schieff. Calculus was harder because I didn't commit the rigorous theorems to memory, whereas Algebra was all applied, new and more interesting overall. Peter Brown is a wicked algebra lecturer. I liked Ian Doust too, and Sukochev for the few lectures he took.

PHYS1131 *shudder*, the course was interesting but the final exam was quite difficult... I was somewhat annoyed that despite the exam supposedly being 2/3 on thermodynamics, waves etc, there was a great emphasis on friction and momentum . Apparently the average for the final's consistently low..

dont think so, wolfgang was my lecturer
phys...yeah friction was annoying i got them both wrong...hopefully we still did okay...we'll see.

 

[miaowsha]

From Semester 1, 2010

Econ1102 - Macroeconomics 1
Ease 6/10 If you keep up with the homework, the ease of this subject goes up to about 10/10. The concepts are easy to grasp it's just about remembering graphs and formulae and stuff. If you hate graphs like me, just memorise them and you'll be okay. They tell you most of it.

Interest 0/10 I used to be into economics until I did this course.

Lecturers
Nigel Stapleton 1/10 This is probably why I stopped doing my homework for the subject. I used to love economics and I was looking forward to doing this subject until he killed it for me with his monotone voice and boring explanations even of the more interesting stuff. Honestly, killed it for me. Reading the textbook is more interesting than listening to him. He gets a 1 because he made a good joke once, otherwise it'd have been a 0.

Lisa Magnani 10/10 This lecturer knows her stuff and has a passionate european possibly italian, spanish or south american accent (she kept mentioning Argentina and Brazil so that's why I figure that) and actually kept people awake for the 2 hour lecture on a Tuesday night. Unfortunately she started late in the semester so I was already jaded about macro due to Nigel's crap.

Tutors Rose just talked the entire way through except for during the submission questions. That was shit and boring. There were no participation marks so she just talked in her monotone voice. /Cry. Nice lady though.

Overall 2/10 Don't do this subject unless you have to for your major. As in choose another commerce elective if you can for your core electives. I know it gets better as it goes on with other subjects in economics. Basically, they tried to make pseudo-mathsy content that wasn't really maths and the final exam focused mainly on about 1 or 2 chapters instead of the 14 or 15 we covered. This subject only gets a 2 because of Lisa being so awesome. It's a shame they waste her on Econ1102. Seriously. Microeconomics was more fun than macro. How disappointing. Can't wait til the later Macro subjects, I hope economics redeems itself in my eyes.

Fins1613 - Business Finance
Ease 8/10 If you do your homework, it is easy.
Interest 8/10 This is all dependent on personal preference. I liked this course and found it interesting because I wanted to know how that stuff works.
Lecturers
Donald 2/10 This guy just read off the slides. He also kept apologising for going slowly when he was going quickly. You may as well just read the textbook and lecture slides unless you're pedantic like me and must attend all lectures.
Kyung 10/10 Knows his shit, checks if students understand, teaches very very well. Seriously, go to this guy's lectures.
Overall 8/10 I liked this course very much. Keep in mind though, that if you don't like tests, 90% of the assessment is in tests. 4 x 10% quizzes (Quiz 1 was not enough time for anyone, Quiz 2 was easy, Quiz 3 had an average of 4/10, and Quiz 4 was easy too). 10% participation (hand in 1 page of homework for 5 weeks for 5% and attend the tutorials for the other 5%). 50% final exam - completely multiple choice. Considering that it's been proven that males are better at multiple choice than females, it's a bit unfair. It's not the easy kind of "jumps out at you" multichoice either, you have to do calculations and the answers are often a, b, but not c. C, d, but not e and all that. Interesting and challenging course though. The quizzes keep you in line and make sure you do your homework.

Sesc2001/Sesc6001 - Safety, Health & Environment
Ease 10/10 If you do your homework, it's awesomely easy.
Interest 10/10 Explosions, asbestos, cancer, oil spills, environmental damage... What's not to love? Pew-pewness and its effects!!!
Lecturers N/A - by distance, making the course even more awesome.
Overall 10/10 This course was probably the best subject I've ever done in my entire time at university. Ever. I am taking Sesc3801 (Toxicology) this semester because of how awesome this course was.

Gent1508 - Managing Stress & Anxiety
Ease 6/10 for getting marks, 10/10 for concepts.
Interest 1/10 If you have any sort of general knowledge about stuff like how stress can affect the body and all that, you will find this course boring. It was very vague. I'm pretty sure the only thing I learnt from it was that some dude proved that people in nursing homes with pets actually do live longer.
Lecturers 7/10 Deborah Chadwick - She was a very nice lady. Oh and if you get her as your tutor, don't be late - she will mark you as absent. Faculty of Education are apparently anal.
Overall 2/10 Course tried to be too biological and psychological. A couple of bio and psych students were extremely pissed off with the lecturer's at times incorrect application and use of "facts". I found it to be very wishy-washy and vague... That and she changed the assessment from a take home exam to a multiple choice in-lecture test. She said everything was from the slides and lecture notes. I went to every lecture in hope of learning something. I learnt nothing but also, there were questions in the test that weren't exactly in the lectures or the slides, but from the textbook. She told gen ed students to not bother getting the textbook.
Do NOT do this as a gen ed.... It's pretty useless unless you want to be bored all semester or have no clue about things like "being a teenager can be stressful". The only difference between the gen ed and the 6uoc subject is that there essay got to be longer and they had one 1hour workshop to go to. Fail.

 

[Revacious]

lol tim, sif give PHYS1131 a 7/10!

PHYS1131

Ease: 2/10 - you will be SO thankful that the final is only worth 40% for this course. I never studied physics in high school but apparently it doesn't help at all; everyone finds it equally as difficult as you do.

Lecturers 6/10: Joe Wolfe is a great guy and does interesting experiments except his notes are impossible to follow. It doesn't help that there are often a million different variables/subscripts on the page so if youre not into pronumerals, prepare to be gangbanged by them with no lube.

The other dude, burton or something, doesn't do as many amusing experiments but still has his moments. Heaps of guys only went to wolfes lectures just to see him do experiments and were pretty disappointed with burtons ones in comparison.

Interest 7/10: The syllabus is pretty interesting, (mechanics, thermodynamics, waves etc) but i stress it is difficult. Knowing how to do the tutorial questions is pretty much useless without understanding FULLY how each answer is derived because one concept can be applied in literally bajillions of different ways.

Overall 5/10. Do NOT skip lectures, you will never catch up lol.

 

[lyounamu]

MATH1151

Ease: 1/10, I found it really hard. I struggled alot.
Interest: 9/10 I found most of the stuff quite interesting while studying them myself
Lecturers: Dr Jie Du 5/10, I seriously had no idea what he was on about. But then again it wasn't really his fault. It was my fault for not preparing for lecture.
Dr Tran 6/10 same story but at least he helped me with some extra questions.


ECON1101
Interest: 7/10 VERY APPLICABLE to real life. I remember how my day-to-day communication started to involve the use of "benefit", "cost", "marginal benefit" and etc. (all those economics terms) but it is not very fun
Overall: 6/10. it's ok. i didn't like it tho
Lecturers: Nichols is alright (7/10). He is sometimes lost but he is ok. But I don't really go to lectures so yeah.
Ease: much easier than maths. around 8/10?


ACCT1501

Ease: 9/10. I found this subject quite easy. Just playing around with numbers.
Lecturers: Yeongdeok Lim (10/10) Legendary Lecturer. He even has his own appreciation society with over a hundred fans. He is one of those lectuerers who make you an independent thinker and student.
Overall: 9/10 one of my favourite subject
interest: credit and debiting stuff wasn't too bad. 8/10

MGMT1001 OTHERWISE KNOWN AS COMM1001 (COMMON SENSE)

Ease: 10/10. it's just common sense with some jargons
Interest: 5/10 games we played were ok. but it's boring.
Overall: 6/10 final exam GG
lectuerer: WE HAD LECTURER FOR MGMT?

 

[jules.09]

i dnt think i did that well, but i think i did alright on the momentum and friction questions, we were given hints at the last lecture ( or you would have if you turned up to lectures), they said to concentrate on rotation, momentum, ideal gas and friction, you were obviously skipping lectures and paided a heavy price. DONT SKIP LECTURES lol

Overall 5/10. Do NOT skip lectures, you will never catch up lol.

Hahaha yeah I did skip quite a few physics lectures (how did you know lol), and didn't do much external studying either, except right before mid sem cos I freaked out when I learnt it was worth 20%. Didn't have time to study for finals cos Higher Chem 1A was worth 60%, I still think it was the most challenging course in S1, but:
T1 PHYS1131 Higher Physics 1A................83 DN.

 

[xxxx8888]

MGMT3702: International Human Resource Management

Ease: This subjects requires a LOT of reading and analysing. Therefore I liked it and found it enjoyable, and it was easy as a result (if that makes sense to you?). Some people found it really hard, and failed assessments. This subject REALLY weeds out people who don't do their readings and research adequately.

Interest: 8/10

Lecturer: Forgot his name, but he knows his stuff and makes it interesting. Also, he marks attendance at every lecture.