UNSW Subject Reviews. (4 Viewers)

[Squar3root]

MMAN1300 - good so far
MMAN2130 - pretty good
MATH2019 - straight forward
ELEC1112 - death rip wam

 

[nightweaver066]

ACTL3141
Ease: 7/10. Not too bad, really the only conceptually difficult thing was figuring out exposures (which I still don't get).
Content: 9/10. Content was linked very cohesively and I understood the relevance of each part of the course. Was somewhat interesting.
Lecturer: 9/10. Sherris is a great lecturer. Witty, yet teaches really well. Albeit, too slow at times.
Tutor: 6/10. Mengyi is okay. Goes through an overall summary of the past week, then just lets us "discuss" questions. Don't really get anything out of the tutes.
Overall: 8/10. Interesting course, finals weren't too difficult (though I have no idea how I went.. there was a lot of writing for a mathematical course).

ACTL3151
Ease: 8/10. Content isn't hard, until the very last module on pension mathematics where I still don't totally get what's going on.
Content: 9/10. Extension of ACTL2111 on the life insurance side of things. Pretty fun mathematically, as you've got to figure out how to manipulate expressions then crunch crunch crunch.
Lecturer: Can't really comment.
Tutor: 5/10. Pretty boring, didn't learn much.
Overall: 8/10. Not a hard course, so long as you have mastered the basics of life insurance, you'd be good. Got wrecked in the finals though, which were made a lot harder than previous years.

FINS1612
Ease: 5/10. Content isn't hard. The quizzes were. My god. Did crap in the first quiz, and even crapper in the second quiz. Quizzes are so hard. So much for picking this as a WAM booster. Luckily the finals were very straightforward (though that would probably mean there would be no scaling, not that there's scaling anyway? not sure)
Content: 6/10. So. Much. Content. Handy knowledge I guess, and that's about it.
Lecturer: Can't comment.
Tutor: 8/10 Kevin Liu. Pretty good. Engaging, keeps things interesting and has interesting personal anecdotes on finance related things.
Overall: 6/10. Stay away if you think this course will be a good WAM booster. Don't make the same mistake I did :'(

MATH3901
Ease: 7/10. Coming from doing the actuarial equivalent, this was definitely more challenging. The style of questions are a lot harder.
Content: 8/10. Content is quite interesting, and the lecture slides are very detailed.
Lecturer: No comment. All I can say is that he is a harsh marker.
Tutor: No comment.
Overall: 7/10. So glad I did this right after I took ACTL2102. I didn't really study for the course at all throughout the semester, and only studied the parts that I haven't learnt before, so I spent the least time on this course. However, it really demands a strong statistical foundation. Finals were quite hard imo, however they just use homework questions and lecture slide examples (which I didn't really look at..)

 

[jaechen]

ACTL3141
Ease: 7/10. Not too bad, really the only conceptually difficult thing was figuring out exposures (which I still don't get).
Content: 9/10. Content was linked very cohesively and I understood the relevance of each part of the course. Was somewhat interesting.
Lecturer: 9/10. Sherris is a great lecturer. Witty, yet teaches really well. Albeit, too slow at times.
Tutor: 6/10. Mengyi is okay. Goes through an overall summary of the past week, then just lets us "discuss" questions. Don't really get anything out of the tutes.
Overall: 8/10. Interesting course, finals weren't too difficult (though I have no idea how I went.. there was a lot of writing for a mathematical course).

ACTL3151
Ease: 8/10. Content isn't hard, until the very last module on pension mathematics where I still don't totally get what's going on.
Content: 9/10. Extension of ACTL2111 on the life insurance side of things. Pretty fun mathematically, as you've got to figure out how to manipulate expressions then crunch crunch crunch.
Lecturer: Can't really comment.
Tutor: 5/10. Pretty boring, didn't learn much.
Overall: 8/10. Not a hard course, so long as you have mastered the basics of life insurance, you'd be good. Got wrecked in the finals though, which were made a lot harder than previous years.

FINS1612
Ease: 5/10. Content isn't hard. The quizzes were. My god. Did crap in the first quiz, and even crapper in the second quiz. Quizzes are so hard. So much for picking this as a WAM booster. Luckily the finals were very straightforward (though that would probably mean there would be no scaling, not that there's scaling anyway? not sure)
Content: 6/10. So. Much. Content. Handy knowledge I guess, and that's about it.
Lecturer: Can't comment.
Tutor: 8/10 Kevin Liu. Pretty good. Engaging, keeps things interesting and has interesting personal anecdotes on finance related things.
Overall: 6/10. Stay away if you think this course will be a good WAM booster. Don't make the same mistake I did :'(

MATH3901
Ease: 7/10. Coming from doing the actuarial equivalent, this was definitely more challenging. The style of questions are a lot harder.
Content: 8/10. Content is quite interesting, and the lecture slides are very detailed.
Lecturer: No comment. All I can say is that he is a harsh marker.
Tutor: No comment.
Overall: 7/10. So glad I did this right after I took ACTL2102. I didn't really study for the course at all throughout the semester, and only studied the parts that I haven't learnt before, so I spent the least time on this course. However, it really demands a strong statistical foundation. Finals were quite hard imo, however they just use homework questions and lecture slide examples (which I didn't really look at..)

ooooft nightweaver thanks again - your reviews are always so helpful and good luck in getting your results ^_^

 

[obliviousninja]

Portfolio mgmt - Henry Yip and Co. Destroyed my WAM

 

[mreditor16]

One semester is done and dusted, so I might get some reviews done! I'll do one subject per post, and probably post a review whenever I get time to do one in the next few days

MATH1151

Ease: 6/10. Not too bad tbh, as long as you paid attention in lectures and kept up to date with tutorial questions and made sure to ask your questions to your tutor - however, only a small portion of the cohort ended up actually doing that haha.

Content: 6/10. Content does get difficult at times, considering how this is the first university maths course being completed by students and the different nature in which mathematics taught. Content was not linked cohesively in Calculus, so that was annoying. Overall, content was somewhat interesting, but I wouldn't do this subject out of interest.

Lecturers: 7/10 for Jonathan Kress (Calculus) - Was definitely the more engaging lecturer and noticeably, way more people attended his lectures. Seemed to have adequate knowledge of the content he was required to teach. Biggest criticisms would be a) how he was not familiar with the lecture slides (he used Tran's slides), so that often created confusion, and b) how he consistently tended to skip many slides and many practice questions, setting them as "HW" which imo is simply not on - if you don't want to cover it, then imo just get rid of that slide.

6.5/10 for Josef Dick (Algebra) - I reckon he got way more shit and disrespect from students than he deserved, to be frank. Yes, he wasn't that engaging nor could control the noise level, which hampered the attention and learning of the few students who did want to pay attention. But his knowledge of the content was top-notch and he went through all the content in the lectures quite well imo. Also, he was very approachable in response to questions posed to him before/after lectures, and his answers to our queries were very good.

Tutors: 8.5/10 for Alexander (Calculus) - Definitely knew his stuff, was a very intuitive thinker, found his quick review of the week's topic at the beginning of the tutorial valuable, and personally liked his accent. Would probably prefer him to be less adamant on class participation to get the class moving along, because sometimes it reduced how many questions we ended up covering in class, and also his strictness sometimes seemed a tad overboard.

5/10 for Mary (Algebra) - Definitely, the major criticism of most was that she only went through a selection of questions that she wanted to cover, and the class was never given the opportunity to ask her how do questions we personally got stuck on. Also, she wasn't too engaging and her marking was at times dodgy. But she definitely seemed to knew her stuff, and students who stayed back after class told me that she gave really good answers to any follow-up questions posed to her.

Overall: 5.5/10. Mathematics is something I typically prefer, so the course wasn't something I didn't like. But at the same time, I wasn't enthusiastic about it, just focussing on keeping up and doing as well I could. Definitely looking more forward to subjects like ACTL1001 next semester.

 

[RenegadeMx]

One semester is done and dusted, so I might get some reviews done! I'll do one subject per post.

MATH1151

Ease: 6/10. Not too bad tbh, as long as you paid attention in lectures and kept up to date with tutorial questions and made sure to ask your questions to your tutor - however, only a small portion of the cohort ended up actually doing that haha.

Course Conveners hate him, follow this 1 simple trick to add 10inches to your WAM

 

[Squar3root]

Tutors: 8.5/10 for Alexander (Calculus) - Definitely knew his stuff, was a very intuitive thinker, found his quick review of the week's topic at the beginning of the tutorial valuable, and personally liked his accent. Would probably prefer him to be less adamant on class participation to get the class moving along, because sometimes it reduced how many questions we ended up covering in class, and also his strictness sometimes seemed a tad overboard.

if it was Alexander Usac... can confirm he is a good tutor

 

[mreditor16]

if it was Alexander Usac... can confirm he is a good tutor

yep it was him Definitely a tutor I would recommend

 

[Shadowdude]

FINS1613
Content: 7/10. Bland but moderate difficulty, lecture slides were really nice along with substantial amount of practice questions given and it helped a lot. Finals was meh but everything else was fine.
Lecturers: 9/10 for Robert Tumarkin - went through the material very well and comprehensively went through calculations and other questions. His american accent kept me engaged as well as his dry jokes like the Bieber Dog!.
2/10 for Emma Zhang - Don't even bother attending her lectures, voice projection was tasteless and she was utter useless.
3/10 for Donald Winchester - His slides were sadly copied and pasted from the textbook and was not interesting whatsoever. Only good thing I could say about him was I found him better than Zhang.
Overall lectures for this subject weren't that helpful except for Tumarkin.
Tutor: 5/10 Claire, Waste of time, even her slides were useless. No regrets abandoning her for Peter Anderson's class, Peter FTW. I let her pass since she didn't give me a low tutorial mark
Overall: 7/10. I did not mind it but it had no flavour. It's guaranteed a credit even without the scaling but no complaints.

ECON1101
Content: 7/10. Content was straight forward but my god some of the tutorial tests spanked it, I would give thumbs up for new changes they implemented for this subject tbh since the tutorial questions and tests helped a lot for the final exam *cough* multiple choice.
Lecturer: 20/10 for Alberto Motta - It's going to be hard find a better lecturer than Alberto, his character and engagement was sublime.
Tutor: 5/10 Vanessa, Waste of my time attending her tutorials unfortunately, but she tried.
Overall: 8/10. I had a great time but meh. Many consider this subject as a wam booster and I somewhat agree.

so classic

 

[mreditor16]

MGMT1001

Ease: 4/10. 20% of your marks come from class participation and associated ''free'' marks, so all students should aim to get close to 20/20, because then as long as you don't do absolutely terrible in the assessments, you will still pass the course. Personally, I didn't know what I was doing with the first essay, and got an appropriate mark for that (around cohort average). But the frustrating thing is I tried to learn from my mistakes in the first essay and then puts heaps of effort into the second essay, to boost my marks. But it didn't at all and in fact, my mark for the second fell below the cohort average, so I essentially did worse in the second essay, where I was more focussed and put in much more effort. So the course didn't feel like it was really rewarding efforts you put in, and I know it demoralised me and a lot of my peers. You had some students doing essays the night before getting HD marks, and students who put in heaps of effort over the weeks before getting PS marks. Also, with your own tutor marking your essays (which amount to 45% of your final mark), there was significant variance across the cohort, in terms of marking, and that plays a significant role in such an essay-writing based subject.

Content: 6/10. Content sometimes is genuinely interesting, especially when the topic is applied to real businesses or interesting personal anecdotes. But at other times, it just feels like they have made up a theory to state things that are fairly common sense. Trying to read the textbook is a real drag at times, so I ended up only using it for preparing my class presentation and for making notes on the 10 topics being covered in the essay section (70% of the test) of the final exam.

Lecturers: 7.5/10 for Bernard Gan (Weeks 1 to 4) - Personally my favourite lecturer out of the three, but doesn't necessarily mean he was the best out of them. Was very engaging (knew how to relate to students and keep them interested), had very interesting anecdotes from his past experiences, and literally had students coming back for his lectures. However, I feel as if he didn't know the content as well as the other two lecturers, and I think there was a slight overemphasis on the anecdotes and examples, which meant less coverage and explanations of the actual management theories and concepts.

7/10 for Lynn Gribble (Weeks 5 to 8) - Definitely knew the content and a lot of anecdotes, which always kept things interesting. However, getting stuff down in lectures was tough, because the lecture slides (both what was put on Moodle and what was put on the projector during the lectures) were extremely limited - they had close to nothing.

8.5/10 for Hugh Bainbridge (Weeks 9 to 12) - Personally, Bainbridge was the best of the three, in my opinion. Only left out tiny things out of the lecture slides placed on Moodle, so not much time was spent on copying down stuff not on the student set of the lecture slides (which was a problem however with Gan's lectures). Bainbridge really did know his stuff, tied different concepts together really well, encouraged student contributions and, most of all, provided really insightful and applicable real-world business examples to all the theory that was covered (that was a massive tick for me). I give him credit for trying to use multimedia (especially videos) in his lectures, but most were quite boring tbh, so I reckon he could have gone without it.

Tutor: 4.5/10 for Joy - She was a nice tutor, but I don't think she was that good, to be frank. She gave very sketchy answers to questions about the content, so her understanding and knowledge of the syllabus didn't seem too good. She, however, was good in facilitating class discussion and group activities (which tbh was the only thing we did in tutorials - imo MGMT tutorials have now been made into a massive bludge, not that I'm complaining )

Overall: 3/10. I sort of get why this course has been compulsory for business students and I think it is a well-intentioned move. It's just that the course has many flaws in its structure and approach, but I don't see this changing anytime soon. Lectures actually got me interested, and I would actually consider doing this subject because of them. But then, when you consider assessments, I personally would never do this subject out of choice.

 

[obliviousninja]

Econ1203 10/10 easy hd
Fins2624 9/10 the 2nd assessment fkd me up lost 5%
Acct2522 6/10 thought i could cruise along for this sub. Never was i so wrong
Tabl 8/10 easy overall just content overload

 

[VBN2470]

ACTL2111 (Financial Mathematics for Actuaries)
Ease 6/10. Definitely one of the hardest courses I have done this semester, lots of notation to cover and it really requires you to wrap your head around concepts that seem pretty confusing initially. The mid-semester exam and final aren't easy either, it's a real test of your speed, so I'd say the constantly practicing a whole lot of past papers and Institute (CT1) papers is the way to go. Having a good foundation in ACTL1101 will also help (especially from the Financial Mathematics and basic Life Contingencies side of things).
Content: 7/10. Interesting to see the mathematics behind the pricing and valuation of financial instruments. Can be quite fun to derive and manipulate expressions but very easy to make mistakes since attention to detail is required when attempting questions.
Lecturer: J Ziveyi (7/10): Engaging and funny lecturer, but sometimes makes things more confusing than it needs to be. He also needs to make his annotations clearer on the lecture slides, since he writes all over the place so it becomes hard to follow what he is trying to derive.
Tutor: J Ziveyi (7/10). Same as above.
Overall: 6/10. A mildly interesting course, that requires a thorough understanding of material and consistent practice of past questions to really do well in. Final exam isn't easy at all, but anyone who practices enough and has a knack for recognising most of the financial and mathematical subtleties described in the questions will surely be on track to excel in this course.

MATH2111 (Higher Several Variable Calculus)
Ease: 5/10. Challenging course, it gets much more abstract this time around especially with topics like Analysis and some parts of Vector Calculus. Although, I felt that the final this year was slightly easier than previous years.
Content: 6/10. There’s quite a heavy amount of content to study, most of it being quite dry but not too difficult. Though some of the concepts that brought forward some neat results were interesting.
Lecturer: Denis Potapov (8/10) & Bill McLean (7/10). Potapov is an engaging lecturer, and always likes to add in that extra depth when explaining concepts. His system of presenting his lectures can be slightly disorganised at times, but since he re-used a lot of material from 2014 lectures (which he uploaded anyways), some structure was maintained. McLean was OK as well, but it would have been better if he had spent more time doing harder style questions and less time going over the more basic/trivial style of questions. His lecture notes weren't exactly great either.
Tutor: Hendrik Grundling (7/10). He is just OK, can answer your questions pretty well to a certain depth, but sometimes takes too long. I also get the feeling he's a strict marker too.
Overall: 6/10. Relatively difficult MATH course. I wouldn't do it out of choice, but I guess to some extent, it was useful learning a thing or two.

MATH2601 (Higher Linear Algebra)
Ease: 7/10. It starts off easy with very familiar first year topics, then increases in difficulty as you hit Diagonalisation and Jordan Forms. There's a lot of theory and proofs to cover so it takes time to actually understand what's going on, but luckily enough the class tests and final were quite straightforward all with very generic questions that you would've seen before.
Content: 8/10. Interesting and somewhat challenging since this is probably ones first real experience with further Algebra. It is very logical in nature and each topic will subsequently build on from the last. Those who found MATH12X1 Algebra interesting will find this course rather enjoyable.
Lecturer: Catherine Greenhill (9/10). Great lecturer, she shows enthusiasm for the course and keeps you engaged throughout most of the lecture. Very helpful as well.
Tutor: Jim Franklin (5/10). Intelligent fellow, but is pretty boring and slow so you don't learn much from him. Greenhill would've been a much better tutor to have.
Overall: 8/10. An interesting and well delivered course, albeit being somewhat difficult at times.

MATH2901 (Higher Theory of Statistics)
Ease: 8/10. Good introduction to Statistics. It starts off with basic Probability as taught in first-year and slowly builds up to the more advanced topics such as Inference & Hypothesis Testing. The course pack notes were also quite good so it made learning the material even easier.
Content: 8/10. Interesting content, nothing is overly hard and the assignments/mid-sem/final were all straightforward (mostly being very similar to past years assignments/tests). Though several topics which require some Analysis can take some time to wrap your head around.
Lecturer: Libo Li (7/10). For someone who just started lecturing this course this year, I think he did a pretty good job. Knows his stuff really well but has a slightly haphazard way of delivering lectures. Still, he is pretty funny and engages with students from time to time. I do like how he released solutions to all tutorial problems at the end of the sem, which was a big plus when studying for finals.
Tutor: W Dunsmuir (10/10). Arguably one of the best tutors I've had to date. Intelligent and insightful.
Overall: 9/10. Interesting and relatively easy and fun course to study for. Great choice for an elective if you enjoyed first-year Probability/Statistics.

 

[Shadowdude]

ACTL2111 (Financial Mathematics for Actuaries)
Ease 6/10. Definitely one of the hardest courses I have done this semester, lots of notation to cover and it really requires you to wrap your head around concepts that seem pretty confusing initially. The mid-semester exam and final aren't easy either, it's a real test of your speed, so I'd say the constantly practicing a whole lot of past papers and Institute (CT1) papers is the way to go. Having a good foundation in ACTL1101 will also help (especially from the Financial Mathematics and basic Life Contingencies side of things).
Content: 7/10. Interesting to see the mathematics behind the pricing and valuation of financial instruments, but actual tutorial problems aren't easy simple to follow. I still don't fully understand some of the concepts especially for some of the ones taught mid-way throughout the course.
Lecturer: J Ziveyi (7/10): Ziveyi is a mildly engaging lecturer, can be funny at times and does an OK job at explaining concepts. He is also a huge troll, likes to troll his cohort with his moderately difficult exam questions (that are probably harder than the CT1 exams) but he is friendly and always willing to help out. He also needs to make his annotations clearer on the lecture slides though, since he writes all over the place so it becomes hard to follow what he is trying to derive.
Tutor: J Ziveyi (7/10). Same as above.
Overall: It's a hard course, that requires a lot of work to get through. Got wrecked in the final though, hoping that scaling saves me.

MATH2111 (Higher Several Variable Calculus)
Ease 6/10. One of the hardest MATH courses I have done this SEM, it gets much more abstract this time around especially with topics like Analysis and some parts of Vector Calculus. Final exam wasn't easy either, but I hear there's quite a significant amount of upward scaling in this course. This course is probably more suited towards Pure Mathematics majors.
Content: 7/10. Interesting to see learn the extensions of single variable calculus concepts to multi-variable but it still ends up being a difficult and a fairly dry course.
Lecturer: Denis Potapov (8/10) & Bill McLean (8/10). Potapov is an engaging lecturer, and always likes to add in that extra depth when explaning concepts. His system of presenting his lectures is OK, but he seemed to re-use a lot of material from 2014 lectures (which he uploaded anyways), so attending lectures, became redundant. McLean seems like a really nice guy, but his lecture notes got too confusing too quickly at times so I wouldn't recommend using his lecture notes to learn the material.
Tutor: Hendrik Grundling (7/10). He is just OK, can answer your questions pretty well to a certain depth, but sometimes takes too long. I also get the feeling he's a strict marker too.
Overall: 6/10. Not a course I would want to do again, but I guess it was nice learning a thing a two. Got semi-wrecked in the final, again I'm hoping that scaling saves me.

MATH2601 (Higher Linear Algebra)
Ease: 7/10. So the course starts off easy for the first few chapters, then gets pretty confusing pretty quickly when you hit Diagonalisation and Jordan Forms. There's a lot of theory and proofs to cover so it takes time to actually understand what's going on, but luckily the class tests and final were much straightforward. Again, it is more suited towards Pure Mathematics kids.
Content: Interesting to see several extensions of first year Algebra, but it is much more theoretical and abstract this time around. If you didn't like MATH12X1 Algebra you will despise this course, otherwise it is not too bad.
Lecturer: Catherine Greenhill (9/10). Great lecturer, she shows enthusiasm for the course and always gives past material to help for test preparation. Sometimes her proofs are a bit overboard, but other than that she's great. She also made the class tests and final pretty straightforward too
Tutor: Jim Franklin (4/10). Smart guy, but writes all over the place making it a mess to follow what he's doing. Greenhill would've been a much better tutor to have.
Overall: 8/10. Well delivered course, despite it being difficult at times. Still, I probably wouldn't want to go near an Algebra course again.

MATH2901 (Higher Theory of Statistics)
Ease: 8/10. It's an interesting introduction to Statistics that is simple to follow as long as you keep up with the work every now and then, but it is still not that easy. The course pack notes were really good to follow and it made learning the material that much easier. The first few weeks also cover first year Probability so it makes it quite easy to transition into this course .
Content: 8/10. It's a good introduction to statistics, most parts of the are pretty interesting, and it helps you realise the importance of statistics and why it is used extensively when applied to real life situations. However, some of the proofs can get quite overboard and become hard to follow. There's also many bits and pieces that seem irrelevant, but I guess that was put in there to make the course seem more interesting.
Lecturer: Libo Li (7/10). Has one of the funniest laughs you will ever hear Does a decent job at lecturing, but you could probably learn the whole course from the course pack notes and still do pretty well. However, I think he tends to overestimate students' abilities and as a result gave out pretty hard assessments and final exam. He also likes to re-use past assignment questions for the final exam.
Tutor: W Dunsmuir (10/10). Really good tutor, goes through tutorial problems quite well and explains fundamental concepts in a way that is easy to understand.
Overall: 9/10. Final wasn't easy, but not something I found too hard, I'd say time was an issue. Hopefully with some upwards scaling I end up with a decent mark. This course is a solid introduction to Statistics, had fun taking it.

AHAHAHAHAH "a feeling" he's a strict marker

he failed half my class

 

[mreditor16]

ECON1101

Ease: 9/10. Arguably, the easiest first year commerce subject. I really reckon that the lecturers-in-charge this year (Motta and Dobrescu) have made ECON1101 easier than it has ever been. 4 free marks from a video game which you can complete relatively easily. 10 marks from 2 hand-in assignments, which you should get full marks if collaborating with friends. I could go on.

Content: 7/10. With the introduction of the textbook written by Motta and Dobrescu, the content has significantly been simplified (won't go as far as saying 'dumbed down'). Those who have completed Economics in Year 11 and/or 12 will have an advantage, as nearly all the concepts that are covered were introduced in the senior economics syllabi. The difference is that all the concepts are explored in a more mathematical, rigorous and graphical manner. However, the mathematics is not difficult at all, computing areas is probably the hardest math you will get.

Lecturers: 9/10 for Alberto Motta - A good lecturer and a visionary educator, but to be very honest, I think he is slightly over-rated in terms of his lecturing. Yes, he did know the content back to front, and was very engaging and kept the audience laughing. But sometimes, I felt like we wasted a bit too much time on unrelated stuff. And that sometimes meant a) it was easy to zone/tune out and lose your concentration b) it got hard to control audience noise level c) we rushed some content, because we had lost too much time due to "stuffing around". However, definitely a good lecturer, just prefer if he reduced time wasted on the "LOLs"

7/10 for Peter Nichols - Watched a few of his lectures online. Picked up concepts really well when listening to him - I like how Nichols draws things out and provides relevant, real-world examples (it does freshen things up especially for an economics course that isn't as easy to draw links to current economics). However, at times, he seemed to confuse himself or contradict himself. Also, an annoying thing was that with some topics, he significantly deviated from the lecture slides or said something which contradicted with the set textbook. But a good lecturer overall!

Tutor: 9.8/10 for Mohamad Mourad - An exceptional tutor, arguably the best I had this semester. Outstanding knowledge of the content, answered our questions (no matter how hard or complicated) exceptionally. Sometimes, went a bit beyond the syllabus to show why certain things were what they were, and that really helped a lot (although it might have confused other students a bit). Was a very very fair marker of our hand-in tasks and class tests. Responded quickly and provided thorough (multiple-paragraphs-long) explanations to any emailed questions. Can be a tad strict with the "no phones" rule, but I don't think that is too unreasonable. Honestly, no complaints and I would love to have him as a tutor again.

Overall: 8/10. If you keep up (which isn't too much of an ask tbh) and just stay relatively diligent, this course (as it is now) should be an easy distinction, at an absolute minimum. If you math skills and the background knowledge of Prelim & HSC Economics, then to be frank, consistent effort should land you a HD. I have a bad feeling they may scale down marks though, because from hearsay, it seems that there's going to be heaps of HDs this year. But we'll see how that goes.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Grundling is retiring. He was actually a very nice person to talk to once you are past the accent.

 

[Squar3root]

MMAN2130: Design for manufacture

Ease: 8/10

fairly easy course, make sure you learn how to use CAD early and pay attention when you're drawing and stuff don't over dimension etc. the tafe bit is easy too just learn how to use all the machines and pay attention when they are setting it up

Lecturer: 9/10

pretty solid lecturer I like him. You don't really learn much content in this course but his experience and etc are pretty good to hear about and offers good advice

tutor: 9/10 (all 3 of them)

taught really well, sometimes they go a bit too fast but you can always catch up and they come around and give you a hand

overall: 10/10

probably the best course I have done at uni so far

 

[Squar3root]

MMAN1300: Engineering Mechanics 1

Ease: 6.5/10

I found it to be a tough course, you do learn a lot and it is very interesting. Get easy marks from PSE's and adaptives

Lecturer: 9/10

there were 2 this semester mark and nathan and they were both really good. it is worthwhile to go to lectures because they aren't recorded and they do example problems which really helped me understand it

Tutor: 8/10

we had a different number of tutors because they were always changing etc but they were all really good. they went through the problems well and I learnt a lot from going to them

Overall: 9/10

good solid engineering course

 

[Squar3root]

MATH2019: Engineering mathematics

Ease: 7/10

was alright but I didn't dedicate enough time to it I could have done a lot better.

Lecturer: don't know didn't go

tutor: 5/10

really just did questions didn't explain them and skipped a lot of steps and went through things really quickly

Overall: 7/10

alright course

 

[Squar3root]

ELEC1112: Electrical Circuits

Ease: -infinity/10

by no means is this an easy course. if you can do 1111 then do that instead. the final exam was gg and yeah generally a difficult course

lecturer: 7/10

epps is a nice guy, he replies to your emails answers stuff on moodle, can explain things well

tutor: 7/10

fletcher nice funny guy. goes through the problems really slowly (I like it, others may not) and explains each step carefully

lab: 8/10

easy marks make sure you know what you are doing or try to find AD to come and help you

Overall: 6/10

it was an interesting course and I enjoyed some parts of it but I wouldn't do it again

 

[Recondit]

MATS1101: Engineering Materials and Chemistry
Ease: 7.5/10
The majority of the chemistry component was a rehash of HSC and preliminary chemistry, with more depth added to say acid and base equilibria, bonding, redox reactions and organic chemistry. This should be a breeze and you can get away with not going to the majority of lectures here if you previously did chemistry and you are competent in your own knowledge. Only issue I found was completing the labs in time, definitely go through the labs beforehand so that you have an easier time in the lab itself.

The materials component was all new to me and was very interesting. Luckily enough, Daniels provided a condensed set of course notes for the entire content covered in lectures as well as self-questions and answers for each topic - This will REALLY help you when you are revising since the questions are similar to those in the exams. The materials labs were quite practical although they were all demonstrated and all I did was observe - The purpose of these in my opinion were to allow us to understand the application of significant mechanical principles involving mathematical analysis. Honestly, they pretty much lay you with a plethora of resources and if you can go through and understand each piece, you're set to go. My major qualm about this was the group assignment which is worth 15% of the course - Split into three submissions, a preliminary report, a peer assessment report on another group and a final revised report of the original preliminary report. This task is also peer-assessed between members so GIT. My best advice is to pick your desired topic ASAP and also use googledocs, make a template beforehand with a defined report layout so that you can edit simultaneously - This also helps determine the extent of contributions for each member in the edit history. Needless to say, I annihilated this dropkick in my peer assessment.

Lecturer (Chemistry): 8/10 (Colbran) 6/10 (Aguey-Zinsou)
Colbran's lecture slides were simplified, informative and engaging. Colbran covers the whole chemistry course except organic chemistry. Did not go to lectures for that reason.
Aguey's lecture slides were quite amateurish with lots of holes (to be covered in lectures). I attended a few lectures since I am poor in organic chemistry and they were quite poor. There were only 50 to 100 people that attended after a while out of around 350. You are better off looking at notes here https://www.facebook.com/year1mech which are devised by a student representative. I feel the poor engagement with the students may be due to the low attendance rate of his lectures.

Lecturer (Materials): 9/10 (Daniels)
Very informed lecturer, responds to your emails promptly as well. Provides a load of information in a succinct manner which made it a easy to understand and supplement the material labs. Goes through self-questions as well and explains why each option is correct or incorrect, thereby reinforcing exam technique. Strangely, there is a tutorial component for materials as well on your timetable, but it is pretty much a lecture. Make sure you attend the majority of these.

Tutorial (Chemistry): 7/10
I forgot who my tutor was (you only have 5 weeks out of the whole semester) but she was a short female Asian, middle-aged with a slight accent. Nothing stands out as terrible or as good either. I don't think it is absolutely necessary, but try going through all tutorial questions before attending the tutorial - They will give you all the answers, explain each of them briefly, or to an extent if someone asks.

Labs (Chemistry): 7.5/10 (Kharazmi)
It is important that you go to every one of these, and that you don't go in them blindly but at least with some knowledge on the practical at hand so that you can build on it as you do the lab. I can't comment on the ease since although I felt comfortable, I was always the last person to finish and this was pretty much on the dot when the lab finished. Kharazmi is quite informed but I feel expresses his knowledge somewhat poorly when helping. Make sure you ask as many questions as you can regarding areas you are uncomfortable with and also regarding with the lab work, it is generally hard to get 10/10 for each lab.

Labs (Materials): 9/10
Very informative, a lot of the times you get to go home early as well since you don't really perform the lab but you observe the lab demonstrator doing it. You will have several demonstrators who specialise in different topics at different locations. Make sure you know where your lab is beforehand, I attended my first lab 1/2 hour into it and missed the bulk of it. Likewise with the chemistry labs, go into the materials lab with some knowledge (you should have done this by doing the online materials tutorial before each lab) so you can actually understand the processes being demonstrated.

Overall: 8/10
Very bulky course for a 1st year course, reaps like 10 of your weekly contact hours. There are a lot of assessments as well which are split 50/50 into a chemistry and materials component, make sure you maximise your marks in the online quizzes and the materials and chemistry lab reports. That being said, if you process and understand everything as you go, you should definitely feel good after your mid-exams and final exams. Both are 80% to 90% MCQs (A fair few are quite specific on content) with only 3 to 5 short answers for the materials component which are quite similar to those in the self questions. Persevere here and you will be greatly rewarded.