UNI NOTES: EMPOWER YOUR UNIVERSITY JOURNEY
Your HSC journey is, believe it or not, coming to a close. All the stress, all the worry, and all the hard work; that’s all coming full circle and everything will be done very soon. This is very exciting and is sure to be the cause of a lot of relief and exhilaration! However, the end of the HSC brings about some new stresses, and perhaps the biggest of those is choosing a degree.
Of course, some of us already have clear career goals in mind (and perhaps had them for many years). Those people have known their dream degree all along, and it has probably been a big part of their motivation for the last 12-24 months. That’s fantastic! This article is for the people who are still choosing a degree, who are still a little bit on the fence about where they want to head next year.
I was one of those people until right at the end of my HSC. In Year 11, I had no idea what I wanted to be, and this continued through most of Year 12. Eventually I figured out engineering would be for me, but which stream? That took another bunch of thinking, until I eventually settled on Electrical Engineering after a UTS Open Day. The point being, choosing a degree was not easy for me, and it probably won’t be easy for many of you either.
With that in mind, here are 5 things to keep in mind if you are struggling to choose a degree; be it a stream within Engineering, or between two completely different areas of study.
1. Do Your Research
It’s pretty obvious that if you are going to be choosing a degree, you should know about the degree you are choosing. You’ll be spending 3-5 years at university studying for it, so it isn’t a decision you should make on a whim, or based on hearsay or popular opinion. Make your decision informed. There are a few places to go to for this.
Obviously, the website for your course is a good starting point, but most students will stop at just reading the student material. The handbooks, the testimonials, all that sort of stuff. This is great, but if you can, try to dig deeper.
At UNSW, for example, the course handbook contains a list of the subjects that you will study as part of each degree (here is the example for my degree). You can then look up those subjects, and get a feel for exactly what you will cover!
Admittedly, I didn’t do this when choosing my degree, because I didn’t know it existed! Thankfully, although the subject matter in my degree did surprise me a tad, it was pleasant surprises! For those of you stuck on a degree choice, delving into the courses you will be studying might help!
You can even go to course websites or look up online lectures, simulate the experience! Again, using myself as an example, you can actually look up online lectures for Electrical Engineering courses at UNSW! This is another fantastic tool. Remember, the idea isn’t to understand what is being presented, but to get a feel for what sort of things you will be covering! If you watch a lecture and its full of maths for example (and you hate that), perhaps that is worth thinking about.
Of course, not everything is online. You can also call the student office to talk to someone about your degree and the sorts of options you have. They are always extremely helpful and knowledgeable.
Note that I’m talking about this like you should have chosen a university first, but that is totally not required! You can do this research across multiple institutions, and it might help you narrow down!
Click here for a huge range of university courses.
2. Talk to Current University Students
Perhaps the best source of information though, is students who are actually studying your degree of interest. When going through the process of choosing a degree, make it a priority to talk to students who are studying!
Open Days are fantastic for this. There are literally hundreds of student volunteers, all eager to share the experiences of their degrees. There are still a few of these coming up before the HSC, so try to get along to one or more! Ask about everything; workload, difficulty, subjects, work experience, employment opportunity, postgraduate opportunities. Then, ask about the university itself: Social life, travel, facilities, all that stuff is important to. One of these bits of information might just be what sways your decision when choosing a degree.
Also fantastic for this are ATAR Notes Events. Students who attended our HSC Writing Intensive at Macleay College last weekend got the chance to chat to current journalism students, entrepreneurship students, marketing students and more, and get a feel for their options. At our FREE Trial Lectures in July (sponsored by UTS), we had a bunch of student volunteers who shared their experiences of their degrees. Ditto for our Study Skills event at ICMS in June (and Jemma, the student speaker on that day, has even written about her degree for us!). These sorts of conversations are absolutely invaluable; be sure to talk to as many people as you can when choosing a degree.
3. Prioritise all the Factors
There are lots of factors to consider when choosing a degree. Obviously enjoying what you study is right up the top of the list, as should be the university you study at. But there are other things too.
Employment options upon graduation is something to consider; lest you encounter a nasty surprise when you graduate. This does not mean employment rates and salaries should dictate your degree choice. Plenty of people do that and many of them don’t feel fulfilled as a result. Do what you are passionate about, but you should be aware of what is on the other side of the degree.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is also scholarships, qualification level, whether you want to write a Thesis or not, whether to do a double degree or not. All of this is really important, and it is up to you to prioritise it properly. That said, being passionate about your degree should be at the very top of the list.
4. You Aren’t Locking Yourself in When Choosing a Degree
When choosing a degree, it can feel like you are about to walk down a path from which there is no return. Actually, that is utterly untrue. At a basic level, you can of course change your preferences over the next few months (we’ll be chatting about preferences in a future article). Picking a 1st preference now doesn’t mean you can’t change it later.
Let’s think longer term though. Say you pick a degree, and it turns out that it isn’t for you. That’s okay! I mean sure, it might be a bit of a bummer, but you can transfer to another degree (the details of which are a little different depending on the circumstance). Heaps of people get to Uni, and change to say, another engineering stream. Or slightly alter their degree within the same school. Or maybe change it completely. All are fantastic if it means you end up in a degree that fulfills you. So don’t panic too much if you aren’t 100% sure on your degree! You are never locked in, and there are always ways to get wherever you want to go with your education.
5. We Can Help!
Choosing a degree and making the next step can be daunting. We are here to help! This article is the first in a series that will cover things like preferences, choosing a university, HECS, and all that stuff those of you heading to university/college might need to know.
HSC students, many of you might also be reading our Life After HSC Series! This will continue for quite a while, as we keep getting current university students to offer their perspectives on their degree choices. We’ve got people doing doubles, people who transferred, people on scholarships; people from institutions big and small. Check out all the articles we’ve already released:
Macleay College – Journalism (Patrick Staveley)
Sydney University – Speech Pathology (Steph Azzopardi)
Australian Catholic University – Primary Education (Clair Pirotta)
International College of Management Sydney – Business Management (Jemma Cavallaro)
Western Sydney University – Forensic Science (Jaycee McLaughlin)
University of New South Wales – Electrical Engineering (Jamon Windeyer)
University of New South Wales – Advanced Science and Law (Maddie Wainwright)
Western Sydney University – Nursing (Amanda Walton)
We hope this series continues to be useful to you while you go about choosing your degree. We want to help make it as painless (and exciting) as it can possibly be, so stay tuned for the Life After HSC Series, and the rest of this series, The Next Step!
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