What is Arts at Uni like? (1 Viewer)

[Simorgh]

Does anyone know what sorts of exams or projects are there in Arts? Whether its easy or hard? Lot of writing and reading? Lots of memorisation?

I am keen on doing Arts as a double degree and I want to do in particular International Relations as a major. My first preference is Medicine/Arts at UNSW (only Uni that offers that combo) and if I don't get into Medicine at all at any other Uni then Commerce/Arts at UNSW/USYD/MQ.

 

[Shadowdude]

Arts - and I think IR is the same - has low contact (class) hours, but you'll be "expected" to keep up with readings and stuff to make up for the three or so class hours per week per subject

 

[sida1049]

Arts is very broad. You can study anything from language, philosophy, film, psychology to economics (the latter two are offered as Arts majors in USYD), and as a result, your experience in the degree is dependent on what you study.

Like Shadowdude mentioned, contact hours is low (typically 3 hours per unit), though there are usually more readings than science units.

Some Arts units don't even have final exams, and instead have take-home essays. Naturally for those units, no memorisation is required. But for the units with exams/quizzes, you may need to memorise quite a bit (e.g. languages, case studies, et cetera).

The difficulty of Arts really depends on the units, and yourself. The writing style demanded for literature is completely different to that of philosophy, and unlike the former areas of study, economics involves mathematical modelling. I personally think that Arts is better conceived of as a "miscellaneous" category, which explains the inconsistency in the styles of each discipline under Arts.