Anonymou5 said:
You fail, as usual, to see beyond the mere superficial aspects of the issue. One's life involves more than just uni, so it's not just a simple matter of more assessments = more of a disadvantage. Otherwise, engineering students must be at a huge disadvantage, continuous assessments plus a heavily weighted exam. You need to take more than just the study load into account when you decided whether or not someone is at a genuine disadvantage.
You fail to see the merits of generalising when discussing a student body of thousands. It's not superficial to say that people who overload will struggle more to get the same caliber of marks than people who don't overload. We don't have to look at external factors, such as work and extra-curricular activities, as these fluctuate too much between individuals and neither you nor I can predict them. However, simply based on how much work an overloader has vs. a non-overloader, the overloader is disadvantaged. Sure, it doesn't apply to every single person in the world, but GENERALLY speaking, it is true.
So you're in your third year as a commerce student. But you can't speak as if you are a third year student of the field you want to get into if you've only begun first year studies (eg. first year accounting) in it.
You're saying that I can't do a first year subject in my third year? I'm taking Commerce (Liberal Studies) and there is a lot of freedom in choosing when and which subjects I wan to take. I decided to take accounting, even though I wasn't intending on taking it at all until i realised it's use in marketing brand management positions. A field that I will likely go into post-graduation.
What's obvious? The fact that marks don't mean much in commerce unless you're failing or just scraping a pass in every subject. I'd like to see more than just one isolated case of someone with great marks in commerce but no extracurriculars or work experience (relevant or irrelevant) get an interview at a big firm.
I interacted with people in such cases very often being part of the Commerce Society. Asian students (especially international) form a lot of these examples. They often (not all of them of course, but it's impossible not to generalise) don't participate in sufficient extracurricular activities or gain relevant work experience, however, they do get relatively high marks in the field of accounting and finance (and a few other business fields). Yet, they find jobs relatively easily upon graduation in Australia.
What do my studies have to do with anything? An accounting textbook won't tell you about the recruitment process. So your constant reference about the amount of time you've been a commerce student (which would be a hugely misleading comment if you've just transferred to another stream in which case you're effectively a first year student - unless you're graduating this year) does not imbue credibility into what you're saying.
I am graduating next year, as I'm in a four-year degree. Originally I studied B Economic and Social Sciences, doing only subjects that I intended to transfer into B Commerce (Liberal Studies), as I had no intention to continue my course. Therefore, my expertise is as valid as a native Commerce student. Furthermore, as I have said, I was very actively involved in the Commerce Society, and have had the opportunity to speak to people from the Big-4, as well as some banking institutions regarding issues such as this (although I didn't go in-depth, as I am not interested in an accounting/finance degree).
Your studies have a lot to do with it. You claim that since I'm a first-year in commerce, who studied another degree in the past (as per your incorrect assumption), I have no credibility. However, apparently the fact that you're not a Commerce student at all leaves you with credibility. Contradiction yet again. And a huge one at that. I'm not going to talk about the engineering employment environments, simply because I do not study engo, nor have I been involved with any relevant societies, or conversed with employees in the field.
Hell, I'm not even going to claim to be an expert on accounting/finance recruitment (although I will claim to be relatively knowledgable on marketing - which is very different to everything I've discussed in my previous posts, as in marketing, marks aren't the most important factor for recruitment).
So, let me make this contradiction clearer, as I find it quite amusing:
- Argument: a student who only starts a Commerce degree isn't a credible source for recruitment information
- Implication 1: Anonymou5 is a MORE credible source for recruitment information than a student only starting Commerce
- Fact: Anonymou5 isn't a Commerce student
- Implication 2: A person who hasn't studied Commerce for long is NOT CREDIBLE
- Conclusion: Anonymou5 by his own contradiction, is not credible, as he has not studied commerce at all.