Unlike high school where you had a limited range of electives to choose from and a couple of eligibility and progression criteria to keep in mind (10 units minimum for the HSC, at least 4 subjects, 2 mandatory units of English, etc.), university has dozens of electives and entire handbooks with enough fine print to make you cry. You’re often left to navigate the waters (of your tears) yourself, since academic advisers aren’t as accessible – there’s hundreds of students in a department or faculty, and only a couple of them to go around.
Not to say you shouldn’t try to get in touch with academic advisers! Certainly, if you encounter any difficulties you should get in touch with them. I’d love to provide a list but there are advisers for different faculties, departments and schools just at Usyd, so you can imagine how long a complete list would be for every major university in Sydney. Besides, advisers often change without notice.
Ultimately, you’re responsible for ensuring you’ve taken mandatory subjects, any prereqs for senior subjects, that you’re not under or over-loading your units, that you’re on track to meet the required number of credit points or units for graduation, etc. That said, not even meticulous planning can save you from the incompetence of uni bureaucracy. That’s just something you’ll have to learn to tolerate.
YOUR HANDBOOK IS YOUR BEST FRIEND
To make life marginally easier, bookmark your degree handbook and always refer back to it before and after semester to make sure you’re fulfilling your requirements.
These are all undergraduate handbooks btw, don’t confuse yourself with the postgrad handbooks. They contain essential information on admission, requirements, attendance, core/compulsory units of study/subjects, etc.
Spot the Difference (or not)
One of the horrible (truly horrible) things about degree planning between universities is the lack of consistent terminology. This drove me through several walls in my planning. A “major” at Usyd is also a “major” at UNSW, though it’s interchangeable with “area of specialisation”. Usyd “units of study” are UNSW “courses”. Aren’t you missing NESA and nice, straightforward Board Approved Courses now.
There are other terms like streams, sub-majors and sub-structures but they’re university-specific and with some digging you can find what you’re looking for. These are just the most common terms you’ll encounter and need knowledge of.
It’s tempting to plan your entire degree in advance, which while showing excellent organisation and foresight, doesn’t account for the messier reality of new and cancelled units, and units that were offered in one semester suddenly being offered in another. Trust me on this. You can only deal with so much administrative bullshit before shorting out. Sure, you can tentatively assume where exchange or internships might go, but don’t assume a unit you had an eye on for 2019 semester 1 will definitely run in 2019 semester 1 (even the compulsory ones can switch around randomly).
It’s also helpful to map your degree in an Excel spreadsheet – maybe do this after you’ve gotten your ATAR and are tossing up between two or three degrees.
It’s not exactly art but it serves its purpose. Down the side you can see I’ve divided my study into semesters and across the top I’ve included the components of my degree. Because I took INGS, I had:
an International Studies core (4 INGS units of study)
a language core (3 language units of study)
a compulsory major (8 units of study, 6 of which are senior units)
a second major (I could have chosen electives but I wanted to double major)
compulsory exchange (4 units of study approved by my departments)
You’ll also notice the purple row and column at the bottom and far right. Those are my total credit points (I know it says “UOC” but that was because my first table was for UNSW B International Studies and they use “units of credit”). It’s vital that you keep track of how many credit points you’ve done!! If you don’t meet the requirements you jeopardise graduation (which is why it’s ESSENTIAL to make sure you get academic approval for any subjects you might take on exchange.)
I returned to this outline after each semester to make sure I was on track, and to confirm how many units I would need to take next semester.
.. or units of study, subjects, courses. This is going to be a more general section since I can’t possibly provide reliable advice on specific units in specific degrees.
The first thing you should ask is: IS THIS UNIT COMPULSORY? It sounds obvious but hey, you need to pass compulsory units to graduate. You should also be aware if those units have prerequisites or are prereqs themselves for senior units, as that will affect the order in which you take them. In first year it’s relatively easy to determine which units you’ll do (starting from scratch), but once you hit second year, depending on your degree, there’s some flexibility.
For example, I have law friends who’ve played around with matching different compulsory law units to make for a more interesting semester. One of these friends, doing a double degree in Commerce and Law, also tried to balance her Commerce and Law subjects to take the edge off reading-heavy law units and keep herself sane.
If you have electives, have fun with them! Shop around, but consult your handbook to ensure your unit of choice will count towards your degree.
Your choice will depend on a combination of factors:
Prerequisites, corequisites, and prohibitions
Availability - semester 1 or 2? trimester 1, 2 or 3?
Quality of lecturer/tutor - consult your network, keep an eye and ear open for the good ones
Timetabling - important for those who have work (also ties in with attendance-as-assessment)
Assessments - units with heavily-weighted exams or several small assessments might not be so attractive
How well a unit complements your major(s) - this one is a bit understated and perhaps more applicable to the Humanities, e.g. my social research units complemented my media politics unit very well
Degree planning can be a pain, particularly for those with 5-6 year degrees, but it’s so important you’re on top of your units to ensure all that hard work and suffering pays off at graduation.
