Uni advice

[slothparade]

Good morning, i have been offered multiple offers from different universities, I was hopping to get some different experiences from those that have gone through these unis and uni experiences in general. The course I'm doing is civil engineering. Any tips or advice or just experiences would be much appreciated. Thanks 

 

 

[noelm]

Worked at Wollongong Uni for 25 years, fantastic place, good reputation and very good student facilities.

[Little_Flatty]

Congratulations on the offers @slothparade. The only advice I have is to ask for help earlier rather than later and make good use of the numeracy and literacy centres that your chosen university might offer. They certainly helped me get through some tough courses of study.

[bessell1955]

Which Universities have you gained admission to?  I went to UNE for 8 years and completed three degrees.  I found them very, very helpful BUT it was a few decades ago!

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by bessell1955

[Hoods]

Congratulations on your hard work so far.

In life it is great to have choices. Some people don't get that chance.

The more education you have the greater your choices in my opinion.

I went to an Ag College and had "no choice" being 3rd gen.

If I had to choose i would look firstly at resources at the facility including industry standing/ability to be employed at graduation and nearly as importantly the culture.

It is your peers who will help you through the course and more importantly build those relationships that become sooo important later.

Good Luck

Hoods

PS My Grandfather gave me some advice - The harder you work the luckier you seem to get  and.. Good Players make their own luck

Don't waste it

[slothparade]

On 12/27/2022 at 10:03 AM, noelm said:

Worked at Wollongong Uni for 25 years, fantastic place, good reputation and very good student facilities.

Bosses son is going there. 

[slothparade]

20 hours ago, Little_Flatty said:

Congratulations on the offers @slothparade. The only advice I have is to ask for help earlier rather than later and make good use of the numeracy and literacy centres that your chosen university might offer. They certainly helped me get through some tough courses of study.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks, I wasn't aware of numeracy centres. How do they work?

[slothparade]

19 hours ago, bessell1955 said:

Which Universities have you gained admission to?  I went to UNE for 8 years and completed three degrees.  I found them very, very helpful BUT it was a few decades ago!

 

Macquarie, western syd and UTS. 

[slothparade]

16 hours ago, Hoods said:

Congratulations on your hard work so far.

In life it is great to have choices. Some people don't get that chance.

The more education you have the greater your choices in my opinion.

I went to an Ag College and had "no choice" being 3rd gen.

If I had to choose i would look firstly at resources at the facility including industry standing/ability to be employed at graduation and nearly as importantly the culture.

It is your peers who will help you through the course and more importantly build those relationships that become sooo important later.

Good Luck

Hoods

PS My Grandfather gave me some advice - The harder you work the luckier you seem to get  and.. Good Players make their own luck

Don't waste it

Thanks. Peers definitely make much easier, especially being able to bounce ideas and share the load a bit more. 

Will keep that in mind, thanks. And thanks for your grandfather's advice, it's so true. 

[Little_Flatty]

17 minutes ago, slothparade said:

Thanks. Yeah, thanks, I wasn't aware of numeracy centres. How do they work?

They are like a drop in maths tutoring service. The tutors are mostly maths research students and professors, and they love what they do. They often offer bridging courses which I have done and thoroughly recommend.

Macquarie has an excellent numeracy centre which I have personal experience with. They don’t give you the answers, just a nudge in the right direction and the background theory to a technique or problem if you need it. 

Things can get really out of hand when you get lost in your class, so as I said, make sure you don’t hesitate to get help. There’s no shame in struggling - a good course is often a challenging one.

Maths at university level is much more fun than at school, in my opinion. The reason is that the maths is applied to solve problems, rather than just theory. So you’re more motivated to learn it.

[bessell1955]

2 hours ago, slothparade said:

Macquarie, western syd and UTS. 

Well, it will depend upon where you live.

[slothparade]

21 hours ago, Little_Flatty said:

They are like a drop in maths tutoring service. The tutors are mostly maths research students and professors, and they love what they do. They often offer bridging courses which I have done and thoroughly recommend.

Macquarie has an excellent numeracy centre which I have personal experience with. They don’t give you the answers, just a nudge in the right direction and the background theory to a technique or problem if you need it. 

Things can get really out of hand when you get lost in your class, so as I said, make sure you don’t hesitate to get help. There’s no shame in struggling - a good course is often a challenging one.

Maths at university level is much more fun than at school, in my opinion. The reason is that the maths is applied to solve problems, rather than just theory. So you’re more motivated to learn it.

Sweet, thanks. Would you recommend getting tutoring on top in case things are getting out of hand or just need a bit more explanation?

[Little_Flatty]

2 hours ago, slothparade said:

Sweet, thanks. Would you recommend getting tutoring on top in case things are getting out of hand or just need a bit more explanation?

I knew of some very strong students who had tutors. I didn’t have the time, but if you do and you can afford it, it is probably worth doing. A good tutor is hard to find though, I had one earlier but once beyond I got to a certain level, they were no help to me. Advanced maths gets very specialised, a generic tutor often won’t know certain subjects (though a very good one might be able to help you if you give them some advance notice of content that you want to cover).

Wait to see how your classes are and talk to faculty staff first, then decide what to do.

[JonD]

Also consider what the accommodation situation is around the Uni you may be considering. My middle daughter started in Townsville but had a terrible time constantly moving around trying to get somewhere to live and also stressing about the car thefts and violence in some areas there. She ended up moving to Darwin, continued with her studies there and also picked up a pretty decent part time job, wildlife related with the mines.

[noelm]

Yep, (affordable) accommodation is a big issue, Wollongong has multiple blocks of small units all over the place, all rented to students only.

[DerekD]

Hi Mate,

First hope you have an awesome start to 2023.

Before I start, I think you will get a good education out of all 3 options. The courses should be based on the same text books and be structured in a similar way. You will find some lecturers will resonate better with you than others but that is a luck of the draw thing.

As each person's experience at university will be totally different depending on what they want to get out of it and what they put into it I just want to give you some things to think about.

I started my mechanical engineering course from 1989 and graduated in May of 1995. I got hit pretty hard by the HSC scaling system and could only get into the Kingswood campus of the University of Western Sydney but it was set up so I could transfer across to the Broadway campus of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) after the first year. Back then it was set up as a sandwich course which meant you studied for 5 months and then worked in industry in blocks of 22 weeks and then went back to studying. By the end of it you needed 144 weeks of working experience but this was dropped to 90 weeks while I was there. The benefits of this was that you could see how the theory correlated to actually working in industry. You could get long term sponsorship with one company or try multiple industries to see what you liked. You earned some money. You could do an additional subject or two while working. You could come out with multiple references (in my case this included Sydney Water and John Holland) and potentially walk into a job on completion. Downsides were that I had to work my backside off and didn't have time for the social activities which most people enjoy at University. In fact it wasn't till I was three years in that I found out there was an engineering social club which died for lack of members. My course also took 6 years to complete standard. I did come out with second class honours (credit average).

If it comes down to what institution you want on your degree then I'd be aiming at the big 3 (University of Sydney, University of NSW and the University of Technology, Sydney). The other things I'd consider how hard will it be for you to get there each day (I'd drive to the train station and then train in). What sort of of extra curricular options are there for you - part of what you should get out of university is the soft skills (I've just grabbed one example at random but worth reading: https://online.maryville.edu/blog/soft-skills/). If you can take lead in some of the groups at your selected uni this does look good on your CV in lieu of practical work experience. Part of what you will also get is contacts - if you build up a good circle of friends you may find them helping you in industry down the track either directly or through their contacts. Some of these Universities will have partner programs with industry which makes it easier to line up work experience. My company brings in several students each year from one university and several of them have gone on to get a position at my company.

Practical learnings to get through the course. Unless you are super smart and have awesome time management skills and no social life you will struggle to get through the amount of information and assignments which is going to be thrown at you. I ended up with a close circle of friends that helped me complete the course - while I might have done it on my own I certainly would not have done as well as I had without them. At the HSC level you are competing against the rest of the state but at University you are competing against the system 51% is still a pass and will still allow you to work in industry. i fought for every mark to end up with the result I got. For the assignments I checked with the others before submitting. If I really couldn't complete (time restraints or understanding) then I copied and made sure I resolved any issues before getting to the exams. I helped my friends wherever I was able to - we played to each others strengths. Prior to exams we often had study sessions at someone's place (including food) to review likely questions and made sure everyone was up to speed. Get your hands on past exam papers and ideally with worked solutions - the problems will usually be similar with just numbers changing (and not even that at times - had one open book exam where some of the students were laughing as the lecturer had recycled a past exam paper with nothing changed so all they did was copy out the original answers - I wasn't one of those students).

Happy to try and answer any further questions you might have but remember it has been over 2 decades since I was at university.

Regards.

Derek

PS. Very little of the subjects I learned at university got directly used in my work. For example, we learned about pump selection and pump curves and pressure drops but all I do now is call the pump supplier and tell them what I'm pumping, how much I need to pump and at what pressure. I need to know enough to talk to the experts in their field but not to know every detail. University taught me how to think logically and gave me opportunities to work with others to solve problems. In fact our team worked so well together we got to represent our university in the Warman Design and Build competition. https://warmandesignandbuild.org.au/

Edited December 31, 2022 by DerekD

[noelm]

The above is pretty much spot on, Uni can be tedious and hard work, for others it seems like a never ending party. Some people are just natural learners and join in with activities easy, others are more reserved (me) and need a different approach to learn, but, hopefully by now, you're well aware of your learning method! Lots of Unis offer part time work for students, so,  look into that side too.

[big Neil]

Errr, what's a Uni?

Dumb bn

[noelm]

Uni....versity! = University.

[Green Hornet]

19 minutes ago, big Neil said:

Errr, what's a Uni?

Dumb bn

Same here mate. 
It’s a knot for tying on swivels and hooks as far as I’m concerned.

[Fab1]

7 hours ago, DerekD said:

Hi Mate,

First hope you have an awesome start to 2023.

Before I start, I think you will get a good education out of all 3 options. The courses should be based on the same text books and be structured in a similar way. You will find some lecturers will resonate better with you than others but that is a luck of the draw thing.

As each person's experience at university will be totally different depending on what they want to get out of it and what they put into it I just want to give you some things to think about.

I started my mechanical engineering course from 1989 and graduated in May of 1995. I got hit pretty hard by the HSC scaling system and could only get into the Kingswood campus of the University of Western Sydney but it was set up so I could transfer across to the Broadway campus of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) after the first year. Back then it was set up as a sandwich course which meant you studied for 5 months and then worked in industry in blocks of 22 weeks and then went back to studying. By the end of it you needed 144 weeks of working experience but this was dropped to 90 weeks while I was there. The benefits of this was that you could see how the theory correlated to actually working in industry. You could get long term sponsorship with one company or try multiple industries to see what you liked. You earned some money. You could do an additional subject or two while working. You could come out with multiple references (in my case this included Sydney Water and John Holland) and potentially walk into a job on completion. Downsides were that I had to work my backside off and didn't have time for the social activities which most people enjoy at University. In fact it wasn't till I was three years in that I found out there was an engineering social club which died for lack of members. My course also took 6 years to complete standard. I did come out with second class honours (credit average).

If it comes down to what institution you want on your degree then I'd be aiming at the big 3 (University of Sydney, University of NSW and the University of Technology, Sydney). The other things I'd consider how hard will it be for you to get there each day (I'd drive to the train station and then train in). What sort of of extra curricular options are there for you - part of what you should get out of university is the soft skills (I've just grabbed one example at random but worth reading: https://online.maryville.edu/blog/soft-skills/). If you can take lead in some of the groups at your selected uni this does look good on your CV in lieu of practical work experience. Part of what you will also get is contacts - if you build up a good circle of friends you may find them helping you in industry down the track either directly or through their contacts.

Practical learnings to get through the course. Unless you are super smart and have awesome time management skills and no social life you will struggle to get through the amount of information and assignments which is going to be thrown at you. I ended up with a close circle of friends that helped me complete the course - while I might have done it on my own I certainly would not have done as well as I had without them. At the HSC level you are competing against the rest of the state but at University you are competing against the system 51% is still a pass and will still allow you to work in industry. i fought for every mark to end up with the result I got. For the assignments I checked with the others before submitting. If I really couldn't complete (time restraints or understanding) then I copied and made sure I resolved any issues before getting to the exams. I helped my friends wherever I was able to - we played to each others strengths. Prior to exams we often had study sessions at someone's place (including food) to review likely questions and made sure everyone was up to speed. Get your hands on past exam papers and ideally with worked solutions - the problems will usually be similar with just numbers changing (and not even that at times - had one open book exam where some of the students were laughing as the lecturer had recycled a past exam paper with nothing changed so all they did was copy out the original answers - I wasn't one of those students).

Happy to try and answer any further questions you might have but remember it has been over 2 decades since I was at university.

Regards.

Derek

PS. Very little of the subject I learned at university got directly used in my work. For example, we learned about pump selection and pump curves and pressure drops but all I do now is call the pump supplier and tell them what I'm pumping, how much I need to pump and at what pressure. I need to know enough to talk to the experts in their field but not to know every detail. University taught me how to think logically and gave me opportunities to work with others to solve problems. In fact our team worked so well together we got to represent our university in the Warman Design and Build competition. https://warmandesignandbuild.org.au/

Great write up and advice.I make Warman pumps and parts among other things.