Wam? (1 Viewer)

[Jonneeh]

Do latter years hold more weight when calculating your graduating WAM?

Or are all years equal?

 

[Timothy.Siu]

equal for com/sci.

 

[Lolsmith]

Latter years hold more weight for engineering

I thought it was across the whole university, but I guess not

 

[Aerath]

Latter years hold more weight for engineering

I thought it was across the whole university, but I guess not

I think each courses have their own rules. Even the same course at different universities have their own rules. I know in Law, in the very first subject (a Foundations of Law subject) does not count towards our Law WAM. I'm not sure whether this is the case across Australian universities, or just a policy at the University of Sydney.

 

[sanctify]

I think each courses have their own rules. Even the same course at different universities have their own rules. I know in Law, in the very first subject (a Foundations of Law subject) does not count towards our Law WAM. I'm not sure whether this is the case across Australian universities, or just a policy at the University of Sydney.

noice. did you vote for mina during election? good bloke

 

[sanctify]

back on topic.

engo is more each progressive year i think (usyd)

 

[unsw-maths-guru]

What's a graduating wam???

The wam that appears on your transcript doesn't weight things differently for different years. In some degrees (eg engineering) they award honours on the basis of a wam, and I think that for some of these they weight the later years higher, but I think that that is different to what the university gives you on myunsw.

btw, the wam on myunsw is often not very accurate as it doesn't cope very well with program changes, exchange programs, courses that run over two sessions etc

 

[Lolsmith]

What's a graduating wam???

The wam that appears on your transcript doesn't weight things differently for different years. In some degrees (eg engineering) they award honours on the basis of a wam, and I think that for some of these they weight the later years higher, but I think that that is different to what the university gives you on myunsw.

btw, the wam on myunsw is often not very accurate as it doesn't cope very well with program changes, exchange programs, courses that run over two sessions etc

...the WAM you get after you've finished all your courses, it's pretty self explanatory

They don't award honours on basis of WAM, they give you a grade based on your WAM. Anyone that graduates gets honours because it is compulsory for engineering at UNSW.

How can you say that the WAM isn't accurate?

 

[unsw-maths-guru]

They don't award honours on basis of WAM, they give you a grade based on your WAM. Anyone that graduates gets honours because it is compulsory for engineering at UNSW.

See http://www.eng.unsw.edu.au/info-about/our-faculty/faculty-policies/honours-policy. I'm not an engineer, but I thought that if you ended up with a WAM of 55 (or 45) then they didn't award your degree with honours. How they apply the algorithm seems to depend on the school eg http://scoff.ee.unsw.edu.au/WAM/weightcal.htm which explains the difference between the WAM on myunsw and the one that EE&T use to hand out honours.

How can you say that the WAM isn't accurate?

An example: if you do maths honours you do math4x03 for 2 sessions, 24 UOC each session. At the end of the first session you get a grade of EC (enrolment continuing). Your final mark only goes against your second session enrolment. In the wam calculation they only weight this mark by 24 uoc instead of the 48 uoc they should use. But I have seen lots of examples where they don't quite get things right, especially when people change programs or degrees.

 

[Lolsmith]

See http://www.eng.unsw.edu.au/info-about/our-faculty/faculty-policies/honours-policy. I'm not an engineer, but I thought that if you ended up with a WAM of 55 (or 45) then they didn't award your degree with honours. How they apply the algorithm seems to depend on the school eg http://scoff.ee.unsw.edu.au/WAM/weightcal.htm which explains the difference between the WAM on myunsw and the one that EE&T use to hand out honours.

Fair point, I haven't actually read about WAM's below 65 for Honours. Yeah I get two WAM's as an Engineer, CSE email my CSE WAM to me after I get my myunsw one. I assume that the school calculates their WAM's with weight to certain courses/years, whereas the myunsw is a general with equal consideration.

An example: if you do maths honours you do math4x03 for 2 sessions, 24 UOC each session. At the end of the first session you get a grade of EC (enrolment continuing). Your final mark only goes against your second session enrolment. In the wam calculation they only weight this mark by 24 uoc instead of the 48 uoc they should use. But I have seen lots of examples where they don't quite get things right, especially when people change programs or degrees.

It'd be extremely difficult to calculated cross-degree WAM's, especially if certain courses are given different considerations, but how do you know they're "wrong", specifically?

 

[unsw-maths-guru]

It'd be extremely difficult to calculated cross-degree WAM's, especially if certain courses are given different considerations, but how do you know they're "wrong", specifically?

Wrong is maybe a bad word. One guy I know transferred from eng to eng/sci to maths. He got credit for lots of stuff like maths 1A he'd already done. His transcript had an several wams on it (for the different programs) but I'm pretty sure he said that the one for science, which he eventually graduated in, didn't actually include all the courses that counted for his degree. The CSE wams are probably more reliable as they are probably programmed better.

In maths there is a wam cut-off for getting in to honours, but they seem to interpret it pretty flexibly. If you have a crappy wam cos you spent first year pissed, but you are doing really well in 3rd year, they'll still let you in. There is also some wam condition on getting a university medal, apparently introduced to stop some schools giving medals to students with poor records.