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Author Topic: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings  (Read 1734468 times)  Share 

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M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #645 on: November 07, 2017, 10:43:35 pm »
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Subject Code/Name: ACCT10001 Accounting Reports and Analysis

Workload:  1 x 2hr lecture per week, 1 x 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment: 
Assignment 1 (Individual) 10%
Assignment 2 (Groups of 3-4) 10%
Online tutorial participant quizzes 5 x 1%
Tutorial attendance and participation 5%
End of Semester 3hr exam 70%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture (However, only released after the last lecture of the week)

Past exams available:  From memory 3, all with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Recommended book is Accounting: Business Reporting for Decision Making which provides a pretty good overview, but tends to drone on, but provides great practice questions which answers are supplied for on LMS.

Lecturer: Noel Boys

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 1

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (80)

Comments: Originally wasn't going to post another ARA review, but I feel it deserves a fresh review given the change in course design and lecturer.

General:
After hearing horror stories about accounting in high school and having never done it before, I was expecting this to be a boring/drag subject. However I was pleasantly surprised :) This was a very well organised subject, and with a consistent effort good grades are definitely possible. Overall, I'd say it gives you a nice introduction and basic understanding of accounting reports and commerce/business in general, plus some of the problem solving/working backwards type questions could be fun. As stated above, there are weekly questions to work through, which really help reinforce understanding and keep your knowledge up to date.

Lectures:
Could be watched at home at the end of the week, but probably best to attend to keep up to date. I think most people would agree Noel Boys was an entertaining lecturer who explained things well and kept it interesting. Just don't take a photo of the slides, lol. Lecture slides were fantastic, providing pretty much everything you needed to know, and were placed on LMS prior to lecture. I actually looked back at the ARA lecture slides this semester in ACCT10002 / IFA

Tutorials:
Usually contained both group work and tutor/classroom discussions, which was a good opportunity to both meet new people and to pick up participation marks. Only con was some of the tutorial questions were a little weird/vague, and didn't seem examinable or like they really added anything (E.g. Estimating what the uni uses as the useful depreciation life for various assets).

Quizzes:
Technically part of participation mark, and pretty much asked basic questions, most of which were pretty easy to answer by reviewing lecture slides. There were 5  assessable quizzes for 1% of final grade each, which you could only attempt once. There were also practice quizzes, which you just needed to attempt to score participant marks (score didn't matter on these), which you could attempt as many times as you wanted.

Assignments:
Assignment 1 was pretty straight forward, and pretty much just required you to complete some exercises similar to ones done in the lectures and tutorials. However, there were a lot of issues with the grading, due to computer generated marking - make sure you read all the instructions carefully.

Assignment 2 was probably the most difficult aspect of the course. You could chose your own groups from anyone in the subject which helped (knowing you have someone you can rely on), and there was an online forum on LMS to help others find group members (I paired with a friend and found 2 others on there, which worked pretty well for me), otherwise you're randomly assigned a group. For part 1, your group will have to perform many calculations/graphs/detailed workings, which seemed a bit over the top (probably would have been better if we only had to do a select few, as this would have been enough to ensure we could calculate them). After this, for part 2 you'll need to really think about the ratios/changes in ratios, and use this to compare two companies and write a 1200 word memo ( memo format important, my group lost a few marks for addressing memo to/from wrong person :( ), which also needs to sound like it's written by the same person. Marking was also kind of subjective, as there's no real right or wrong answer, it's about how deep your analysis is.

Exam:
Was a pretty fair exam in my opinion, where lecture slides and practice questions (from the textbook and past exams) were probably the most helpful to prepare for it. From memory, I think ~60% was calculation/report preparing, and the rest theory questions. I found 3hrs to be more than enough, despite being a little intimidated at the start by some of the long preparing type questions. However, to get the top marks (like in any subject) you really need to understand everything behind it.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2017, 06:20:04 am by M909 »
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myanacondadont

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #646 on: November 10, 2017, 08:33:13 am »
+6
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30002 - Corporate Finance 

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture and 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  20% Mid-Semester Test, 10% Tutorial Participation, 70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Same textbook that is used for Business Finance. If you want to be at the very high end of the bell curve you will need it for the readings, but the tutorial questions are also in the textbook.

Lecturer(s): Sean Pinder

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:
Man, where do I start with Corporate Finance. I think among Finance students that, generally, this is regarded as the easiest 3rd year finance subject. Personally I found corporate finance to be slightly harder than investments (however that may just be due to the people I took it under). Corp fi piles on a lot of content - and while it isn't conceptually difficult, there is a lot of it. The first 4 weeks and final 3 are the major weeks in the subject, and Sean is pretty cool that he calms down the content during the middle of the semester because (well I assume) that everyone is up to their eyeballs in assessments and tests and stuff.

So, for the overall lectures and content. Sean is actually a beast lecturer. He does these 'TAPPS' things in the lecture that he puts up a question and asks you to solve it with the person next to you - 'Think Aloud Pair Problem Solving'. So not only do you get forced to meet a new person, but these questions actually are pretty crucial. They popped up in the exam and potentially the midsem (can't quite remember). The subject itself covers a range of topics from IPO's, Seasoned Equity Offerings, Capital Structure, Payout Policy to some more advanced capital budgeting techniques (i.e. think Constant Chain of Replacement for project evaluation) which extends into some quite conceptual real options analysis and the subject concludes with a few weeks on Takeovers, Corporate Restructuring and Risk Management. A lot of the content early in the course I recognised from Business Finance, there was quite a big focus on the implications of the MM propositions so it helped that I remembered, even just slightly, what they were. However, they don't really get tested and mainly just set the scene for the analysis done in class. Sean does lectures quite well because he also includes empirical evidence to support all of the content. And while to the dismay of some students, this was examinable (and was definitely examined), I thought it added another perspective and really helped me grasp what we're learning. I also do think it's cool that you get to see that managers/management themselves will answer surveys about their job in ways that prove either agency problems (empire building etc) or that they think proven techniques are too complex. Overall the lectures and content I really enjoyed. I'm quite biased towards finance in general so I enjoy most of the subjects, but learning about these things brought a smile to my face. Oh and Sean brings in guest lecturers for 3 weeks for half the lecture. I believe our guest lecturers were from Citi, JP and somewhere else? What they say isn't examinable but, again, it's cool and adds another dimension.

Tutorials were alright. I had Vee as my tutor and I swear if you have the opportunity to get her, do it. God damn she did fantastic mind maps of the whole course and told you what you need to know and didn't mess around, it was awesome. Tutorial participation is worth 10% and just involves handing up a reasonable attempt at the questions - easy enough and most people would have gotten 10/10. The content, unlike some other subjects, and questions covered in tutorials are very similar to the type of questions you'll see on the mid semester and exam so it's definitely worth writing down notes etc to make sure you understand. There's not really much else to say with tutorials, they were actually quite helpful which was refreshing.

Assessment! The mid-semester test was 23 questions held in week 5 or 6 and covered the first 4 topics. Unfortunately these were the really heavy content weeks so it did take a fair bit of studying to make sure you knew everything in and out. I'm not sure what the average was except that it was 1 mark higher in one of the streams so the other stream got their whole mid-sem marked up by 1 - fair enough I suppose, just spewing that I was in the wrong one. There were a few tricky questions simply because a lack of specification but overall I don't think it was crazy and the average would've been quite high. I would say, know your tax systems and implications of the imputation tax system and know in depth of when/why firms may use Private Placements or Rights Issue and what this means for shareholder wealth.

The exam...The exam...I'm not sure how I feel about the exam (mainly because I performed poorly) - it consists of 20 MCQ, 10 T/F with explanations and 4 Short-Answer questions. I thought it was very fair, and the MCQ weren't designed to trick people (or maybe I just didn't realise any of the tricks). One complication that people may have stuffed up on is that Sean writes all his MCQ with a 'More than one option is correct' or 'No option is correct' option - so you have to read the whole question and all the answers to make sure you get it right. The True and False, again, were generally fair. I don't think there was too much there that if you had studied all the lecture slides you wouldn't know. The key is being able to explain your reasoning clearly (and also note the TAPPS popped up here). The short answer I think is where they tried to separate students - we had a quite long question on a real options analysis which was confusing to say the least. While we did have a lecture on real options analysis, I think we covered the bare basics and you would need to do some additional research (Sean put up an article for that week's reading which substantially helped) to make sure you fully understand it.We also had a long question on Takeovers and share bids; although that wasn't too bad if you knew the takeovers lecture. For the exam, I would definitely say know the intricacies of the takeovers financial evaluation formulas (e.g. what does Net Cost actually signify -> amount paid over the value of the target operating as an independent entity -> which is another word for control premium!) and potentially how real options analysis can be used in different ways. We only received 1 practice exam from Sean but it did give a good insight in to what the exam might look like and it definitely helped. As, I suppose, a reward for the mid-sem only 16 marks of 100 are allocated to the first 4 topics - 4 marks each topic. I think it's a good thing to reward students but it meant that you did have to go back and revise the entire first 4 weeks cause who knows what part those marks will be on. But generally speaking I would just go back and learn the key points (Rights issue v Private Placement, What assets are likely to be leased, Non-tax impacts on capital structure etc etc - all those sort of minor but key points).

Overall I really enjoyed the subject and it has to go down in my books as one of my favourites. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable teaching staff made sure that I understood the content which goes along way to helping your learning.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2017, 01:53:50 pm by K888 »

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #647 on: November 10, 2017, 06:59:33 pm »
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Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003: Chemistry 1

Workload: 3x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week (weeks 2-12), 6x 3 hour practicals throughout the semester

Assessment: Exam 74%, 3x 2% Mid Semester Tests, 20% practicals, 3 Independent Learning Tasks (not worth anything but are a hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available:  Yes, previous 5 years, with answers (except previous year, where students provide their own answers)

Textbook Recommendation:  Chemistry 3 (not necessary, lecturers actually recommend other textbooks anyway)

Lecturer(s): Mark Rizzacasa, Uta Wille, Muthupandian Ashokumar (Ashok), Paul Mulvaney, Brendan Abrahams

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2017

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) H1 92

Comments: I loved this subject. It was extremely stimulating and the content was taught extremely well. The administration side was also run fantastically, with clear communication of what was required of us (such as assessments opening).

I found that lecturers responded extremely quickly (sometimes less than an hour).



Assessments the mid semester tests consisted of approx. 10 multiple choice questions that were aimed at seeing how well you understood the content from the lectures.

Practicals: These were not terrible, however they didn’t really interact too much with the lectures and some of the pracs involved listening and copying what the demonstrator said, rather than learning anything. Overall, they are not difficult, just follow what the lab manual says as well as the demonstrator (as they mark your work) and you will be fine

Exam: A 74% exam can be quite daunting, however if you consistently prepare and study for the subject, you should be able to have a sound knowledge of the content by exam time. You will have to remember the atomic numbers the first 30 or so elements, however the lecturers did give tips on what they expected us to know (it was mainly Brendan, who more wanted us to know the groups so that we could apply trends)



Lecturers

All lecturers were extremely professional in their teaching, and the content was delivered to an exemplary standard.

Mark: Mark took the first two weeks of organic. The content is covered very thoroughly, however he does talk very fast and it was quite a shock during my first chemistry lecture.

Uta: Uta finished the organic topic. Her lectures were quite engaging and humorous. She did make mistakes throughout the two weeks but they were quickly corrected.

Ashok: Ashok took us for gases and equilibrium. Most of his lecture content was for interest only (not examinable). He did an excellent job showing us how different equations were derived (such as ideal gas law). This allowed a much better understanding of these formulas, especially the units. However, he was extremely hard to understand at times due to his quiet voice.

Paul: Paul gave the lectures on thermodynamics. They were easily the worst of the lost. He spoke in a monotone for the entire 5 lectures and was not very engaging (but I feel that anyone who tried to teach the topic would be the same). He was very thorough in his lectures, but at times it felt that he didn’t cover the basics, instead jumping straight into the more complex stuff. It also didn’t help that we only had 5 lectures instead of 6 so some content had to be cut down. His lecture notes did have thorough examples, complete with working out (he doesn’t explain them in his lectures). Although I say that they were the worst, they were still quite good, this just shows the quality of the chemistry department in their teaching standards.

Brendan: Brendan took the entire 4 weeks of inorganic chemistry and did a really great job. He was very visual in the lectures. The content was delivered at a nice pace. The structure of solids, the last section taught, can be quite challenging, however tutorials should take care of any problems. His expectations of the cohort were quite reasonable.

Other
Tutorials: I found the tutorials to be extremely helpful throughout the entire semester, especially for the physical (thermodynamics) and structure of solids. For the organic section I had Chris Donner, who did a really good job, especially with the visualisation aspect. For the rest of the semester I had Sonia (the coordinator) who was absolutely amazing, by far the best tutor I have seen across any subject. She just has this ability to explain difficult concepts in minimal words, I highly recommend attending her tutorials (or Penny) if you can.

Extra help: There are extra help sessions available throughout the semester, usually a couple hours a week. These are great if you want to sit down with a tutor (or a lecturer if you’re lucky) and discuss a specific question or concept. Sometimes Sonia (and Penny) can be found in there, which is brilliant to be able to get one on one help from either of these two.

Molecular model kit: You are allowed to bring this into the exam. In my opinion it is a must for most people. I was able to visualise a lot of the organic content but it is much better to be able to physically model it (especially in a stressful exam).
« Last Edit: November 10, 2017, 07:19:06 pm by K888 »

silverfox

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #648 on: November 10, 2017, 07:14:15 pm »
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Subject Code/Name: MAST10006 Calculus 2

Workload: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week

Assessment: Four assignments worth 20%, final exam worth 80%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:  Yes (5 with full solutions)

Textbook Recommendation:  None required - the lecture notes were sufficient

Lecturer(s): Antoinette Tordesillas, Thomas Quella, Christine Mangelsdorf, Daniel Murfet

Year & Semester of Completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 93 (H1)

Comments:
Calculus 2 is certainly not for the light hearted, however this subject was truly incredible that I had to write a review about it. Christine, the subject co-ordinator, is impeccable in terms of her organisation of the subject and lecturing ability. She made each and every lecture so engaging, and was one of those subjects that I just did not want to miss out on! Just a summary of parts of the subject:

Subject Content
Topic 1 - Limits, Sequences and Series
This topic seems a tad haphazard at first, particularly its relation to Calculus, but not to fear! All will be revealed later on in the course... Anyways, this topic dealt with limit laws, calculating simple limits to indeterminate forms (0/0 or limits approaching infinity), knowing how and when to apply the various theorems and rules such as L'Hopital's Rule, Sandwich Theorem and using continuity. Then the subject delves into sequences and series, where you learn whether they converge or diverge using multiple tests and theorems (Ratio Test, Divergence Test, Comparison Test, geometric series, harmonic p-series and so on).

Topic 2 - Hyperbolic Functions
This was simply an introduction to hyperbolic functions (cosh, sinh and tanh) and how to manipulate these definitions and solve various problems for them. There is also a study of their reciprocal functions (sech, cosech and coth) as well as their respective inverses. No nasty surprises here.

Topic 3 - Complex Numbers
Basically a follow-up from the Calculus 1 study of complex numbers (i.e. De Moivre's Theorem), as well as introducing topics such as using complex numbers to integrate more difficult integrals (instead of using integration by parts) as well as being able to differentiate functions (such as how to calculate the 128th derivative of a function, except without having to calculate each derivative 128 times and just in one go!). I found this section pretty cool and neat. In summary, just know how to manipulate the complex exponential here.

Topic 4 - Integral Calculus
This is also another review of Calc 1 integration (so integrating by substitution methods, partial fractions) and also introduces integration by parts.

Topic 5 - First Order Differential Equations
Now the real stuff begins! This topic focussed on ordinary first order differential equations, how to solve separable and linear O.D.E.'s, using substitution methods (eg for Bernoulli's equation). The next part of this topic is on population models; how to construct phase plots, types of equilibrium solutions, Malthus-Doomsday model, Logistic model (with and without harvesting) and identifying the transient and steady state solutions of an O.D.E. The other application for first order O.D.E.'s is electric circuits, which deals with using Kirchhoff's Voltage Law to create a first order O.D.E for R-C and L-R circuits.

Topic 6 - Second Order Differential Equations
This topic focuses on solving second order O.D.E.'s for homogeneous and inhomogeneous equations, how to find the homogeneous and particular solutions and hence the general solution of the O.D.E. This section was pretty neat, I was blown away by the fact that complex solutions to an O.D.E. can have real solutions (when real conditions are imposed)! This is followed by an application in springs (free vibrations, Hooke's Law) as well as LRC electric circuits.

Topic 7 - Functions of Two Variables
This topic introduced functions of two variables, that is, z = f(x, y). You learn how to sketch surfaces in three-dimensions by identifying their level curves and cross-sections, then you move on to defining limits for three dimensions. This gives rise to calculating first order and second order partial derivatives of functions of two variables, determining tangent planes, linear approximations, directional derivatives (i.e. what is the gradient in a particular direction of the surface?), how to calculate stationary points using the gradient vector and determine the type using the Hessian function (i.e. is it a local maximum, local minimum or a saddle point) then you finish the topic off with double integrals, partial integrals and calculating double integrals over rectangular domains (volumes of surfaces). A lot of plug and chug here, but you can see where it is useful and how it can be applied to real life situations.

Assignments
There are 4 assignments, each worth 20%. These are quite challenging and the tutors are very pedantic about working out, so please be sure to be thorough and show complete justification of your answers (i.e. 'by L'Hopital's Rule'). Nonetheless, if you put in a decent amount of effort in these, they should be an easy-ish 20%.

Exam
Okay so, I don't know about anyone else, but this semester's exam for Calculus was more on the difficult side. Most of the questions were doable, but Christine decided to throw a few unseen questions in that threw a few of us off (i.e. using the chain rule to calculate partial derivatives in terms of polar coordinates and a weird continuity question). Anyways, I'd say about 80% of the marks should be easily achievable if you do enough past papers, the problem set booklet and constantly revise lecture material. It was long and arduous, but you should finish just within the set time frame.

Other:
The problem set booklet was incredibly useful - I definitely recommend anyone to do as many questions as possible in the following week after you learn about the content. Christine, as I said before, was amazing and I also recommend anyone in the future to attend her lectures as it'll make your Calc 2 journey much more pleasant and easier! I loved learning about all the applications relevant to the subject material, which really made me feel like I was learning something with purpose I suppose? Overall, an amazing subject that would be useful for most science/commerce disciplines!
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 08:19:44 pm by silverfox »
2016: ATAR 99.85
2017-19: BSci (Statistics) @ UniMelb

myanacondadont

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #649 on: November 12, 2017, 03:10:00 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30007 Derivative Securities 

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture, 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  25% Mid-Semester Test, 75% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  No

Textbook Recommendation:  Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (or whatever it's called) by Hull. You can use the previous 3 versions as readings were prescribed for all of them.

Lecturer(s): Neal Galpin for the first three weeks, John Handley for the remainder of the course.

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Derivative Securities is definitely the most conceptual and theoretical subject in the Finance major. It (obviously) relies on the mechanics of options and forwards which you may have experienced in your prior subject studies but not to this degree. I think Business Finance taught the payoff of an option at maturity? Yeah that's definitely assumed knowledge (it’s revised a tiny bit), but this subject takes that so much further. Looking back, I actually found it pretty fun. Derivatives interest me in a number of ways but particularly because while we model the probability and payoffs and stuff, it's sort of interesting to think about the micro component. For a derivative on a stock, that stock still represents part of a company. So we're like two levels higher than the company being the equity component (stock) and then being the derivative on the stock. Anyway that may have been gibberish but I think DS is a fun subject lol.

I think the main reason why DS is coined the hardest subject is because, like I said, it relies a lot on theory and conceptual type understanding. For our semester (and this changes each semester) we begun with options and basic characteristics of options (payoffs at maturity, bounds, arbitrage opportunities on those bounds and some option trading strategies like straddles and strangles) then onto pricing models. Firstly the binomial model is taught which is pretty generally easy and I think most people understand how it works. This model is quite diagram based (i.e. drawing binomial payoff trees) and can be examined in a lot of different ways (currencies, options on forwards, dollar dividends, proportional dividends) so it’s pretty crucial you know it inside out. The second model is the black Scholes model - perhaps the most revered model in finance. This model is more conceptual and less diagrammatic but for our semester there was not much in particular to know (just some certain variations of the typical formulas). After which, we were introduced to forwards and futures, then currencies and hedging. Options are obviously the main component of DS (again, this changes every semester) taking up 6 or 7 weeks in total, but your understanding of options does extend to help with other topics in the class. You also cover some minor theory points like implied volatilities, hedging errors, risk neutral valuation and a tiny bit about the Greeks. Last semester I believe they covered the Greeks in detail instead of currencies – so again, beware it changes. The semester concludes with a lecture on the GFC and how credit derivatives work (which is not examinable, but so many people were keen on it).

So, for the lectures. Neal Galpin took our first 3 or 4 lectures and he was boss. He spoke in that he hated using theory to prove things and preferred diagrams etc - I think that definitely helped my understanding and a lot of my peers understanding. John Handley took the remainder of the course and I thought there couldn't be someone as good as Neal but damn he was boss too. Both of them speak perfectly, at a leisurely pace, with interesting tidbits of information sprinkled in here and there. You could honestly tell they were passionate about what they do and that's awesome. The lectures weren't necessarily jam packed of information but I think it was assumed you revise everything. Generally it is easy to work through the lectures as they are presented - sometimes there's questions in there that can help solidify your understanding. I finished the subject only a couple of days ago, but thinking back about lectures, they were so bland (no formatting, black and white pdf) but it goes to show you that it legit is the lecturer that keeps your attention. I do believe it was important to show up to lectures rather than watching them online, because sometimes John would jot down how the theory works or a little diagram to help understanding (these were boss too).

There were no tutorial marks, so it really was upon yourself to show up and attempt the questions. The questions were legit so much harder than the exam, but it was good to understand how for example put-call parity can be expanded in situations with forwards, or in situations with dividends. Some questions involved algebra and like year 10-12 maths to solve it lol, this irked me to no end because I haven't had to know logarithm transposition rules since high school. I think, if not just for DS, it was actually kind of interesting to remember all this maths stuff that I had forgotten over the course of my degree - these types of questions were never explicitly said to be un-examinable but they weren't examined in our semester. Other things in tutorials just revolve around some easy concepts (matter of fact these questions popped up in the exam....). I had Yudong as my tutor, and he was awesome. He is also the online tutor and definitely knows everything in the course and more. If you ask him a question, he’ll explain it in a couple different ways to help your understanding and even show you how things like this can be applied in practice which was cool. I believe a lot of tutors in the subject were really good though, and I definitely recommend using OLT if you're struggling. It's easy to get side tracked in derivatives when you think what else there could be (e.g. how could we extend binomial approach to american options with dividends) but I would say if it's not in the lecture then its probably not going to be examined.

As for assessment, we had a really easy semester. Firstly the mid semester test was 25% of the grade and for that reason, we were only tested on the first 3 weeks (25% of the course). There was a lot of content in these weeks and especially if you read the book because in the assigned readings there were a lot more trading strategies that weren’t mentioned in the lecture and it was never clarified whether these were examinable or not. However the test itself comprised of 12 questions, most of them being relatively easy. I think the average was about 73% or so, which seems low considering the difficulty. It’s very easy to stuff up on questions if you don’t read it carefully – for example payoff versus profit, or short versus long. There was maybe one or two tricks to do with dividend timing, but that’s it. John said quite early on that he doesn’t like exams and would rather just teach people – I think that was reflected in the difficulty of the assessment.

Now, for the exam, it tested Lecture 4 to Lecture 10 (i.e. content after the mid sem up to the second last lecture) which wasn’t too much content. It made studying pretty easy. I highly suggest re doing tutorial work because some tutorial questions showed up word for word on the exam. We weren’t given a practice exam too. I don’t know my feelings about the exam – it was 6 short answer questions each work 10 marks to be done in 3 hours. People were leaving after 1 hour; it was that short. The first 5 questions were more or less the same as tutorial questions and the final question was a conceptual approach to using risk neutral valuation on the GBM process. I think this question was the one that was supposed to separate students but it seemed frustrating for me. Firstly because sooo much of the course went untested and all studying went unrewarded. Secondly because we hadn’t seen anything like this in the semester. I’m just hoping I got some marks for it lol, I know I didn’t get it right.

I suppose my overall review of this subject is really high. The 4.5 rating is only because I would’ve liked to see my studying go rewarded – but can I really complain?
« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 07:24:25 pm by K888 »

narn

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #650 on: November 12, 2017, 04:31:28 pm »
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Subject Code/Name: MKTG10001 Principles of Marketing

Workload:
1 x 2 hour lecture
1 x 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
Assignment 1 (1000 word individual essay) - 10%
Assignment 2 (3000 word group report) - 25%
Research Studies - 5%
Exam (hurdle exam) - 60%

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:
2 previous exams available on the library website, no answers were provided.

Textbook Recommendation:
Marketing Principles (2nd edition). The textbook readings weren't 100% crucial for being able to pass the course, but they were good for expanding on the content brought up in lectures (and provided some good examples to help illustrate key points). You can borrow copies from the library though.

Lecturer:
Nicole Mead

Year & Semester of completion:
2017, Semester 2

Rating:  4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Content / Lectures
The course was structured quite well, which made it easier come exams when you had to start linking all of the concepts together. The lecture slides were usually available a day or 2 before the lecture each week, however the lecture slides were mostly pictures with just minimal writing about the main concept that Nicole would then expand on. This means that you can’t just use the lecture slides for revision, so make sure you take detailed notes throughout the semester! Each lecture was split into 2 parts - the second part may or may not relate to the first. There was a 10 - 15 minute lecture between each part, so the 2 hour lectures were definitely manageable.

Tutorials
The tutes were basically going over case study that related to the aspect of marketing covered in the lecture the week prior. There were 1 - 2 articles on the LMS each week you needed to read over, and then in class we’d work in groups of 4 - 5 to go through some questions related to the articles. Whilst there is no tutorial participation marks, I found the tutes really helpful for applying the theory to real world applications (again, helpful for the exam), so I would definitely recommend going to them.

Assignments
The first assignment was relatively straight forward. We had to find an article on a company’s marketing initiative that was related to one of the marketing concepts that had been studied in the first 4 weeks of the course. The essay was 1000 words, and basically highlighted why they needed to implement the initiative and if it was successful. Picking an article with a good depth of information about your marketing concept is definitely helpful, as it gives you far more to write about. Would also recommend getting your tutor to have a look over your article - it helps to make sure you’re on the right track before you start writing!

Research Study Participation
The easiest 5% of the course to get - just need to go to 4 research study sessions (and lots of them are online too). Most took barely any time at all, and they make lots of times available which helps when trying to fit it in around uni timetables.

Assignment 2 was a 3000 word group assignment worth 25% (so again, definitely recommend going to your tutes so you know who you want to work with!). We had to write a marketing report on the introduction of Coke Life to Australia. As a group of 4, we split up the sections we needed to write about (so we only had to cover max of 2 sections each), which definitely made it much more manageable.

Exam
The exam really tests your understanding of the course in its entirety. You need to write 3 essays out of a choice of 7 topics. However, each topic links 2 - 4 aspects of the course (some of which may appear to have quite abstract links). To access the higher marks on the exam, you need to be able to link all of the concepts together. Then, if you want to get a really good mark, you need to tie in an example from the course (which there is plenty to choose from if you look back over lectures and tutorials). This is where having really good notes (and then being able to link the notes together) comes in handy!

Overall View
Overall, I enjoyed the subject. I believe it gives you a really solid base of marketing knowledge as you move into 2nd year marketing subjects, but also would be a great elective for Commerce students or a breadth subject!

dankfrank420

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #651 on: November 12, 2017, 04:46:13 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ECON20001 Intermediate Macroeconomics 

Workload:  2 x 1hr lectures per week, 1 x 1hr tute per week

Assessment: 
One Online MCT: 5%
Two assignments: 2 x 12.5% = 25%
Tutorial attendance and participation: 10%
Exam: 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available: Yep, from the past three years (with worked solutions!!!)

Textbook Recommendation:  I dunno, didn’t bother to buy it. Lecture slides will suffice.

Lecturer: Mei Dong

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Sem 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Content:

Like its introductory predecessor, I found this subject immensely enjoyable and interesting. There are three main models that you’ll spend the majority of the time using:

-   IS-LM model: A set of curves that describe the equilibrium values of output and interest rate in both the goods and financial markets.
-   DAD-DAS model: Basically similar to the static AD-AS model but much harder, this was the hardest portion of the course in my opinion. You have to get your head around a tonne of “building blocks” that go into constructing this model, then conceptually grasp the role of expectations. Almost everyone struggles to get this the first time around.
-   Solow-Swan model: An extension of the one you learnt before, nothing that new here.

You also touch on a few minor topics, including labour market flows, how “growth” is determined and finally a bit of open-economy macro.
Lectures were very useful and paced quite well. Mei takes her time to explain difficult concepts, and often tries to see things from the students perspective, in that she clearly sees what students would find difficult and attempts to clarify. Unlike some other lecturers I’ve had where they would blast through content with little regard for whether the student understood or not, Mei makes explicit the common pitfalls students fall into which I really appreciated.

The math itself isn’t hard at all: the most advanced you’ll get is taking a first derivative and setting equal to 0, the rest is just rearranging algebra and exponents.

A way to make this subject very easy for you is to develop intuition behind what the algebra says (this is something that Mei and the tute sheets harp on about). After you complete a question or as you derive an equation, ask yourself things like:  should y increase as x increases? Why does a change in x not affect y? Why does this change in x increase y more than this change in another input variable?

If you master the intuition in this subject (which is really just applying common sense) then you’ll find that everything falls into place.

Tutorials:

Standard fare: Blue sheet, pink sheets etc.

Lots of the times I found that the pink sheet was too full of material so we’d often not get enough time to finish, and answers to pink sheet questions don’t get put up on the LMS so it was a pain at times.

However, tutorials were absolutely vital at clearing up questions from the lectures and clarifying confusing concepts. I learnt so much from the tutor walking us through the problem and explaining the pitfalls that students fall into, and since exam questions were similar to pink sheet questions the tutorials were an excellent way to develop exam technique (and also a free 10%!).

Assignments:

Assignments were quite difficult. Although most people scored highly (I think), they required a lot of time and a lot of excel number-crunching. Namely, they were all about calculating the “time path” of variables relative to their long-run/steady-state values when conditions in the economy changed. Nothing exciting and lots of it was just arduous excel manipulation that didn’t really aid in developing understanding of the content. The questions weren’t like the exam questions at all, so it wasn’t good for preparation purposes either.
Probably the only disappointing aspect of this subject.

Exam:

Exam follows the same format every semester. 20 marks worth of multi-choice, 20 marks worth of relatively easy short-answer (B), 20 marks worth of harder short-answer (C). A cool thing here is that there are 3 questions in sections B and C, so you only choose 2 out of the 3 to answer. This means you can skip a topic you’re not comfortable with which is always a plus.

As far as difficulty goes, I found that just going through the past papers and pink tute sheets is enough to get you through Multi-choice and section B comfortably. Part C is quite tricky however – it’s an extension of what you’ve learnt in class and you won’t have seen lots of it before. Most people in my semester I’ve talked to barely answered any of one of the section C questions, so you’ve really got to know the course inside and out to conquer these questions.

The saving grace is that if you scored highly in assignments and multi-choice/section B, you won’t need that many marks from C to get a high score.

Conclusion:

Inter Macro is a challenging yet interesting subject that extends on what you learnt in first year. The tutorials and the quality of the lecturer made it an enjoyable subject, but it was let down a bit in my opinion by the arduous  and unnecessarily difficult assignments which is why I didn’t give it 5/5. The exam is always fair – there is enough easy stuff to make sure everyone passes but scoring very highly is a challenge. Probably my favourite subject I’ve taken throughout my time so far at uni.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 04:38:15 pm by dankfrank420 »

narn

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #652 on: November 12, 2017, 04:53:24 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: MUSI20206 The Business of Music

Workload:
1 x 2 hour 'seminar' per week (basically a lecture)

Assessment:
10 x online quizzes (4% each, 40% total)
Final Essay (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:
Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available:
No, don't need them though.

Textbook Recommendation:
No recommended texts

Lecturer(s):
Andrew Watt

Year & Semester of completion:
2017, Semester 2

Rating:
3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Content / Lectures
The course covered a wide range of topics, from the basics of copyright law through to entrepreneurism. The content could get a little dry and boring, but Andrew tried to make it interesting by adding in quotes and examples from the real world. Barely any of the lectures went for the full 2 hours, and they could easily be done from home.

Quizzes
The quizzes were a very straightforward component of the course. Each quiz was comprised of 4 questions, all of which were usually taken directly from the lecture slides (and occasionally from something the lecturer had said). For me, each quiz took less than 5 minutes, which I found was plenty of time (especially given the tests were untimed so you could really take as long as you wanted). It is very easy to score highly on these quizzes, assuming you do the lecture and can get a basic understanding of the material.

Final Assessment
The final assessment was a 2000 word essay. You could pick any topic, as long as it was somehow related to relationships within the music industry and some aspect of the course. I personally found this a little challenging, as there was such a broad scope of things you could talk about (and so knowing if you were on the right track got a bit tricky). I did quite a bit of research to help find the connections to both my topic and the course, which I found helped as my essay started to come together.

Overall View
This subject was enjoyable, and could almost be treated as an online subject as you didn't need to attend the lectures and all of the in-semester assessment was done through the LMS. The only reasons I didn't rate it higher was the slightly boring nature of some of the lectures, combined with a very broad end of semester assessment task! I did it as a breadth subject, and would recommend it as a breadth for people interested in gaining some understanding of how the music industry operates.

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #653 on: November 14, 2017, 07:22:23 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ACCT30001 Financial Accounting Theory

Workload: 
1x2 Hour Lecture
1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment: 
20% Midsem;
10% Group Assignment; and
70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1

Textbook Recommendation:  No

Lecturer(s): Bo Qin

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  3 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: TBA

Comments:

Uhmmm jeez. I’ll start out by saying that I’m generally quite biased against accounting subjects. Not too sure why I chose to major in accounting but too late now. Surprisingly however, the content in FAT is actually half decent.

FAT is much less application based than previous accounting studies. It’s accounting theory (obvious, yes I know) and takes it to another level. It separates the subject into two predominant accounting objectives. Essentially; is the purpose of financial accounting information to reduce moral hazard (by aligning incentives of managers to shareholders and debtholders) or to reduce adverse selection (provide the most relevant information to investors so they assess the true fundamental value of the firm)? That is the whole subject in a slightly long sentence.

The semester begins by understanding what actually is information asymmetry and looks towards value relevant accounting information. This answers more of the valuation objective (reducing adverse selection) as it looks at what information the market responds too. This covers a few weeks and you look at the benefits and limitations of Historical Cost, Fair Value, and Current Cost Accounting (CCA you would never of heard of, it’s a purely theoretical standpoint). I wouldn’t say these are too complicated but the lectures are quite disorganized in my opinion and it made it much more difficult for my own learning. This trend, unfortunately, continued all semester. In the next 4 weeks, you cover the basics of valuation of a company based on accounting numbers. This involves reducing accounting distortions of earnings management, condensing financial statements and looking at discounted dividend models including abnormal earnings and NOPAT. These 4 weeks are calculation based and the main application bits of the semester and being quite number-orientated I enjoyed. However, they require essentially a lot of memorization because you are not taught the reasoning behind them – rather just “make sure you can add these numbers in the exam” type of thing. The final 4 weeks focus on the moral hazard problem and how can you use debt contracts and managerial compensation contracts to align manager incentives and reduce contracting costs. I have to say here the lectures, for me anyway, were so disorganized I had to keep asking friends what the hell was the lecture even about. This involves things like non-recognition of internally generated intangibles (goodwill) and conservative accounting. The final lecture contains a bunch of info on economics of voluntary disclosure (this for me was the hardest lecture of the lot to follow, I had no fing idea how things linked together).

Now, for the lecturer; Bo. I think this is his 2nd semester taking the subject. I also had him as a tutor. I don’t necessarily recommend it – his teaching style did not resonate with me and I felt I was sitting through just purely reading off slides. I would recommend for him to at least try to look at it from the students perspective because I believe he’s a very very intellectual person and just takes it for granted that we are making connections. There were also a few things that disgruntled me with this subject. One of them was that word-for-word we ‘should probably not used words that are not in the lecture’ because he doesn’t know how other markers will mark. Fair enough, I suppose, but I never thought that I would attend university to be told to limit my reasoning to memorization. The tutorial questions were quite long and arduous. Bo will put up answers after each week – there are no tutorial marks so its not necessary to do all of them before the tutorial. It DOES help your understanding, but I’d focus on revisiting the uploaded answers early in the semester because at the start you honestly don’t even realize that they’re drawing in different parts of the course before you’ve even learnt it – I definitely liked this because I knew some of the content by the end weeks before even going to the lecture.

Sorry for this review dragging on lol, now for assessment. The midsem comprises 25 questions (9 true/false and 16 multi choice). It wasn’t hard, generally required common sense (how does this random situation link to something we learnt in class) and the average was 72%. It was one of the weirder midsems though just because those random situations really were random lol. I don’t think it required too much study but definitely know what’s going on and being able to understand and contextualize what actually adverse selection or moral hazard is. That was worth 20%. We also had an assignment worth 10% focusing on that valuation before – this involved a valuation task similar to one you’ll face in the exam, and then one on a company of your choosing. This was pretty extensive, required to be done in excel and creating our own assumptions. Again, not too hard but requiring a lot of time. At the end of each lecture we were given an example exam question. This was from either an exam he uploaded from 2016 when he didn’t take the subject or ones from last semester. Now, guess what the exam was. Word for word these questions. They were heavily theory based, required a lot of time but very little brain power because we had seen them before. I have very little words for what I thought of the exam (here’s a hint – it was crap) but it was easy and I can’t complain.

So overall, while the content in this subject has the potential to be interesting, due to the inexperience of the staff it was very disorganised. The assessment was, on the overall, very easy and this means – potentially – there may be an abundant of high scores and thus downward scaling (I’ll try to remember to update after scores come out). I imagine the subject won't stay in this current form very long so take what you will from this review.


« Last Edit: November 14, 2017, 07:28:56 pm by K888 »

Shenz0r

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #654 on: November 15, 2017, 09:37:59 am »
+6
Subject Code/Name: Principles of Clinical Practise 2 (MD2)

Workload: Will outline in further detail.

Assessment:
35% end of year OSCEs (5 stations)
20% SAQ Written Exam
15% MCQ Written Exam
20% x3 Long Case Assessments
10% x6 Mini-CEXs

Lectopia Enabled:  Depends on which clinical school you go to, but generally, assume that you don't.

Past exams available:  Recalls from UMMSS are available from previous years.

Textbook Recommendation: 
Talley and O'Connors is a must have for learning clinical medicine. Learn all your examinations from here. Not everything in the book is required for OSCEs and sometimes they dwell into more physician level exams.
Examination Medicine by Talley and O'Connor is also useful for long cases - it's again aimed at BPT level but gives some good pointers on what you need to focus on in your history and examinations.
ECG Made Easy and other ECG textbooks are great for getting a basic handle on ECGs, but I never used them more than once.
UpToDate and BMJ are probably the best resources you have for learning about Core Conditions. UpToDate is quite dense and full of word-vomit. BMJ, in my opinion, has an easier and neater format to scroll through. However, you should be aware that UpToDate is an American source, while BMJ is British, so use Therapeutic Guidelines when learning about management in Australia.
BMJ onExamination (free subscription) and PassMedicine (requires fee) were question banks I used to fill out holes in my knowledge. Use the final-year medical student resources because you need to be exposed to a wide variety of conditions anyway.

Lecturer(s): Varies by clinical school.

Year & Semester of completion:
2017

Rating:
5/5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A

Comments:
MD2 is far better than MD1, It's much more interactive, practical, and relevant, but it's also far more challenging because not only do you realise the overwhelming amount of information you don't know, you also have to use your clinical reasoning, rather than just regurgitate facts. Learning is no longer restricted to lectures, but you will need to go out of your way to find things to look up out of curiosity, to speak to patients, and actually discussing cases with other students or doctors.

The year is split into four rotations. Foundation lasts for 4 weeks and is basically an introduction to learning in a clinical environment. Depending on your clinical school, you may be front-loaded with lectures during this time (my school had done 40% by the time we were finished). The next three rotations are Medicine, Surgery and Emergency/Ambulatory. You'll spend 8 weeks in each, and 1 week in each rotation is dedicated to reviewing and debriefing how the rotation went.

Medicine is the most content heavy rotation. People will be allocated to different wards, but generally you'll get a dip into Cardiology, Respiratory, Renal, Endocrinology, Rheumatology, Gastrointestinal, and Neurology. Surgery term is a bit lighter, while Emergency/Ambulatory is the most chill.

So how do you actually learn in your clinical year, aside from the lectures you're given (a significant number of which are case-based discussions)? The faculty gives you a whole pile of Core Conditions, Presentations and Drugs you need to know by the end of the year, and you're expected to learn about these conditions (on your own, or by seeing patients). It's pretty freaking daunting. I think there needs to be a balance from learning on the wards and also studying out of textbooks.

Going on Ward Rounds is a hit or miss. I went to as many ward rounds as I could in Medicine rotation and my attendance slowly slid off and I think the last ward round I went to was a surgical one in my second term. It really depends on the team - if you strike a good team, you'll be able to get involved and the doctors will actually bring up some critical points for you to know, and sometimes they'll suggest for you to see certain patients if you want to see some signs or take a history. Otherwise, you might feel like you're doing nothing and you're in the way. Don't feel discouraged, it's a natural part of being a medical student. Don't bother going to surgical ward rounds because they go through their whole list in 30 mins at 7am, unless you want to go to theatre. I found them pretty low yield because they usually spend 1-2 mins with each patient. I found theatre to be incredibly boring - hours and hours of standing on your feet not really knowing what's going on, but there's always a chance that you can scrub up and be involved. If you can, get there 45 mins before schedule so you can meet the anaesthetics team and watch them intubate the patient.

The same can be said with clinics. Some were incredibly good, others were notoriously boring. Try and sit in with a consultant if you can because generally they will always teach you a lot. One of the fellows encouraged some of us to see patients by ourselves and present back, so while you might freak out a little and not really know what to do (because you know nothing), it's good experience anyway.

During your ED rotations you'll be rostered onto a few ED shifts and again they are hit or miss. Try and find a registrar or consultant to buddy up with and ask if you can follow them around, see their next patient and present back to them before seeing the patient together later. Generally most doctors will be happy with this arrangement and it's valuable seeing what further information you missed. You'll also have the opportunity to do lots of procedures - suturing, plastering, and lots of cannulations/venepunctures. You'll also get 4x weekly GP visits during the rotation. Luckily I got to see a wide variety of conditions as well as see my own patients and do procedures, but it really depends on what practise you get yet again - some people just sat in with a doctor the whole day and observed.

To get the most out of rotations, you are going to need to take initiative and ask for opportunities. Sometimes there is an extent of luck involved, but you are not going to get to do much unless you ask for it. Ask nurses if you can practise a cannulation. Ask if you can suture the next patient. Ask if you can scrub up and help out in theatre. Don't expect everything in a giant platter - it's up to you to make as many learning opportunities for yourself. That being said, you do not need to go all out because you will burn yourself out if you end up staying in hospital until from 7am-10pm each night. You'll hear stories of some gunners being that crazy but you really don't need to be in hospital for that long! A lot of medical students also get freaked out hearing about what other people do on their rotations but try not let that get to you - run your own race, as long as you're satisfied with what you've learnt, then you should be ok!

Long cases and Case Presentations are great learning tools, and you should ideally practise at least one a week. Basically, you need to take an appropriate history and examination of the patient, then present the patient back and synthesise everything together to form several management issues and perhaps some differential diagnoses as well. This is usually followed by a barrage of questions by your examiner, and often each case raises great learning points. You'll have three assessed long cases, one in each rotation. You're allowed unlimited time with the patient and access to their notes in Rotation 1, only 24 hours in Rotation 2, and then only 60 mins with no access to notes in Rotation 3, Your first few will be terrible - use them as an opportunity to experiment with your format. By Rotation 3, you should really be practising what you'll do in terms of timing and organisation of your manilla folder before your final assessment. Practise is critical. After each patient, try look up their condition so that you'll become familiar with it - the biggest challenge is when you don't really know what's going on. In the final long case, patients are recruited by the hospital so they may have extremely complicated histories - which is why it's critical that you read widely and see many patients before then.

MiniCEXs are basically an OSCE station done in hospital. Find a patient beforehand, consent them, then undertake a supervised 6 minute examination or history of the patient. You'll get some useful feedback after!

During the year there will also be 3 optional Progress Tests that you can sit. They're essentially a NAPLAN for medical students. The university pools questions from USLME papers (aka final-year medical student level) and you're able to see where you stand in the cohort. I recommend sitting them to see if your study technique is working or not. I got a huge wakeup call when I realised I was in the 30th percentile for my first one (because I had no idea how to study), then began to actually write notes and there was a pretty dramatic difference. So while they're difficult, it's definitely useful to gauge how effective your study is.

Now, onto OSCEs. You don't really need to practise for these until maybe halfway through Rotation 2. They're worth a big chunk of your grade so don't forget about them! In MD2, the main aim is to not only have a working diagnoses by the end of your history/examination, but to also rule out other diagnoses you cannot miss. It's different from ticking off a checklist of things to ask, as was the case in MD1. Again, practise a wide range of conditions and presentations regularly. It's a good idea to form an OSCE study group and meet up on the weekend and go through some stations. There are also some combined stations where you will need to first take a history from the patient, and then perform the appropriate examination. You should be actively synthesising during each OSCE station you're in - you need to not only practise automating your questions and examination technique, but also interpreting what you are actually seeing and going out of your way to look for red flags. You'll generally be asked a few questions about what further investigations you'd like to perform (and perhaps need to interpret them as well). Just remember the golden rule of not just rattling off a whole bunch of investigations for the sake of it, but to say why you'd like to perform each one and to say what you're actually looking for.

The written exams are a huge pain in the butt and can pretty much test anything. Even things that are not on your Core Conditions. Some questions are repeated from recalls but the vast majority are usually new. These test your clinical reasoning as well as your steps in management. Always read the question carefully because there are usually multiple answers that would generally be ok, but you're usually asked "what is the NEXT step you'd do" or "what's the BEST investigation to do". So read the question damn carefully!

Wrapping up, MD2 was probably the most challenging year of university so far, but I've learnt so much. It was amazing seeing how much me and my peers had progressed in just a year's time, even though we still don't know much at all! You realise that there's so much to learn in medicine in the clinical years and it's such a great thing to actually see things you're taught be applied in the real world. That being said, it is also a very overwhelming year. It's vital that you have a good support network of other medical students to lean on, and to remember to have a life. Gunners usually come out in the clinical years, but don't get too psyched by them. Worry about your marks less - as long as you know what is going to make you a safe and competent doctor, you'll be on the right track. It's infinitely better than the preclinical years!
« Last Edit: December 06, 2017, 11:35:59 am by Shenz0r »
2012 ATAR: 99.20
2013-2015: Bachelor of Biomedicine (Microbiology/Immunology: Infections and Immunity) at The University of Melbourne
2016-2019: Doctor of Medicine (MD4) at The University of Melbourne

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #655 on: November 22, 2017, 03:25:45 pm »
+3
Subject Code/Name: ACTL10001 Introduction to Actuarial Studies

Workload:
2 × 1hr lectures per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
Group (4-5) Assignments, 2 × 10%
Mid Semester Exam 10% (45 minutes)
End of Semester Exam 70% (2 hours)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 past exams and 1 sample, all with solutions. There was also 1 sample with solutions for the mid sem exam

Textbook Recommendation:  An Introduction to Actuarial Studies, Second Edition, 2011 Atkinson and Dickson.
Probably not 100% vital (especially if you're doing this subject as a breadth), but provides very clear explanations of the theory, and many more questions with worked solutions, which are set in addition to weekly tutorial questions.

Lecturer: Shuanming Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating:  3.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments: Overall, I really enjoyed the content in this subject, and felt it definitely confirmed for me that I chose the right major (although I'm sure the later ACTL subjects will be much harder  :P ). Apart from a few admin type issues, I felt it was a well taught subject, and would recommend to anyone intending on or contemplating doing the actuarial studies major, or anyone who likes maths and needs a breadth.
Started out with the very basics of simple interest/discount and compound interest. Then annuities were introduced, which felt like a much more complicated and difficult extension of the stuff learnt in FNCE10002/Principles of Finance, with actuarial notation. Next major topic was demography, which was relatively straightforward once you took the time to get your head around everything, and included some (in my opinion) pretty interesting probability type stuff. This then lead into contingencies, along with some theory on insurance. The maths in contingencies was initially intimidating, but once you really took the time to understand the formula, wasn't too bad.   
Also, it's important to note you're expected to memorize almost all the formulae presented for the exams, but this becomes much easier to do once you understand it.

Lectures:
I'm just gonna be straight up honest here and say due to the lectures being timetabled in the afternoon, and on the one day accelerated maths 2 didn't have a lecture, I attended exactly 1 lecture in person. Luckily, I found there was virtually no difference, and in some regards actually found watching at home to be a better method due to the ability to pause/try questions myself, rewind ect. This years lecturer was new to teaching this subject. It was obvious he knew his stuff and I found his explanations pretty good, only complaint was that he didn't really time it well (some content had to be skipped), and focused too much on reviewing weekly expectations which I found a bit "spoonfeedy".

Tutorials:
As many of the other reviews have said, the tutorials seemed pretty pointless, as you get the full worked solutions, and the tutorials themselves aren't really interactive (expect the tutorial you get your mid sem exam to inspect, definitely attend this one). To my tutor's credit, she added a few extension type questions in, however after around the midway point of semester, I stopped going (it was pretty much a case of MC>MB hahaha). That being said, I still worked through every weekly problem set, and I felt this was a very important component of my learning.
Something in particular I'd like to point out was that the week 0 set had many "proofy" type results, which it said you were expected to know. However coming from the VCE spesh/methods -> accelerated maths pathway, I had never seen it before, and found this quite discouraging. Looking back, while it helps to know the proofs, what's most important is that you know the standard results, especially the geometric sum.

Group assignments:
Groups could be chosen, otherwise you'd be placed in a group. Since assignments basically took the some of hardest aspect of actuarial exams out (formula memorization, time pressure), average scores were very high (Almost 100% for assignment 1, and 85% for assignment 2), and as long as you/your group know the very basics of excel (e.g. creating graphs, set up recursive formula with copy & paste), they're not too difficult, and also provide a good illustration of how the concepts/formula work. However, personally I found group of 4-5 to be a little too big, as it became a bit difficult to get a time that suited everyone.

Mid Semester Exam:
45 minutes with no reading time meant you had to go fast, and didn't have much time to check answers, making this exam more difficult that final exam. I personally did worse than expected (70%, somewhere in between median and top quartile), and was quite disappointed, but based on my mark I'd say it's more than possible to come back if you're disappointed with your mid semester exam score, so just do your best on this one and don't let it get you down :)

Final Exam:
As mentioned above, this one felt easier than the mid sem exam, despite having all taught content. I personally found my cohorts exam easier than the practice papers, and due to hurdle requirement, first few questions were pretty much basic PV calculations (think principles of finance standard). Ultimately, if you learn and understand all content and formulae, doing well on the final exam is very possible. There may be a proof type question, but the proofs in this subject were much easier than say, the accelerated maths 2 proofs.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2017, 06:15:50 pm by M909 »
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?

Orb

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #656 on: November 22, 2017, 06:48:32 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: FNCE30002  Corporate Finance

Workload:  1x2 Hour Lecture and 1x1 Hour Tutorial

Assessment:  20% Mid-Semester Test, 10% Tutorial Participation, 70% Final Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes, 1 available.

Textbook Recommendation:  Same textbook that is used for Business Finance.

Lecturer(s): Sean Pinder

Year & Semester of completion: 2017 Semester 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments:

Having had results for Corp Fi released pretty early, was pretty delighted to see Pinder giving us a solid scale-up of the subject by 10 marks. Incredible.
This is often regarded as the easiest subject in your finance major, and i'd highly recommend students to give it a crack in your second year. You finish a 3rd year subject, and hopefully it'll be a bit of a WAM boost for future years.

Starting off, the lectures were pretty informative and I felt Pinder gave a pretty good overview of what Corporate Finance is. It extends on the theory we've learned in Business Finance and is a good toe-in-the-water subject of what investment bankers do on a daily basis. We had three guest lecturers from well respected bulge bracket banks (although I only turned up to one) I found it gave a pretty good insight on the banking industry. Definitely can watch the lectures at home, although if you turn up in person you'll be able to take part in the TAPPS (think aloud paired problem solving) exercise, where Pinder helps you go through an application question (or two) involving what you're learning. I found them quite useful, although fell behind at times throughout the semester which didn't help.

Tutorials were phenomenal, I had a very chill tutor. Basically you just need to do all the pre-tutorial work (even if you get them wrong) and submit it before the tutorial starts every week. This implies forced turning up to class, unless if you want to lose the 1%, which sucks a bit.

Mid-sem was very standard, but they're structured in the sort of very tricky multi-choice question style, where there are three statements A,B,C and D asks you whether "one or more of A,B,C are wrong" and E asks you whether none of them are wrong, or something like that. Basically eliminating the possibility of fully using process of elimination to get the answer. I found that understanding the content (which was, in a lot of parts, rote-learning) helped the most in terms of preparation.

Final exam was a bit hard, hence the scaling up of everyone's score by 10, which was the biggest blessing and completely unexpected.

All in all, it was a great subject and definitely did not regret learning it :)
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 12:11:27 am by K888 »
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M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #657 on: November 22, 2017, 07:33:01 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: MAST10009 Accelerated Mathematics 2 

Workload: 
4 × 1hr lectures per week
1 × 1hr practical per week

Assessment: 
Written assignments 2 × 5%
Mid Semester Test 10% (45 minutes)
End of semester exam 80% (3 hours)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture of slides, but without screen capture of blackboard where examples were written

Past exams available:  10, without solutions (2 were discussed in last lectures)

Textbook Recommendation:  MAST10009 Lecture notes from Coop, written by the lecturer - a must, contains notes of all theorems, definitions, explanations, background and some examples

Lecturer: Barry Hughes

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2A (79)

Comments:
I had a love-hate relationship with this subject, or more accurately hate that turned into love. Initially, I struggled with this subject more than I have ever struggled with anything academic before, but with a lot of effort and persistence, this subject has taken me from someone who hated anything to do with mathematical proofs to applying to do the concurrent maths diploma with complex analysis in my plan (although finding out about HECS exemptions may have helped that too :P ). If you immerse yourself, you’ll see how truly fascinating and beautiful maths is.
It seemed harder than AM1 for most of the semester, but I ended up with a higher grade than I got in AM1, so good grades in this subject are definitely possible with a lot of hard work and understanding.
Content is essentially most of real analysis (a second year subject) and calculus 2 (minus some stuff done in AM1), meaning it's meant to be hard for first year students, but that taking it will give you more options for the rest of your degree. You cover sequences, functions, many theorems and definitions associated with these, Riemann integrals, integration, differential equations and infinite series. You’re expected to be able to remember and reproduce any formula or definition in lecture slides/notes, so aim to understand as much as possible to achieve this.
I think Barry was the primary coordinator who ran this subject, and he did a fantastic job at it. It was pretty clear he truly cared about what people got out of his subject, rather than just seeing it as a box people have to tick.

Lectures:
Involved Barry talking through slides and writing examples on the blackboard, meaning you pretty much had to be there to copy them. While this was quite a pain, the purpose was so that students could absorb as much as possible. I personally only missed a few towards the end of semester and don’t think that really impacted my score, but if I didn’t attend most I think I would have scored much lower. In all honesty, most of the written examples are much harder than the standard expected, but the more you understand, the better position you’ll be in to do as well as possible. Lectures seemed intimidatingly difficult at the start (you’d notice the number of empty seats increasing), but looking back it really just takes a while to get your head around, so don’t give up if you’re feeling this way at the start of semester :)

Practicals:
Involved working with groups of usually 3-4 on lecture note questions on whiteboards (unfortunately unlike AM1, no extra questions or worked solutions). However, attendance was still very important, as tutors provide what will be for most, much needed assistance. Most people including myself had pretty much no idea in the first couple of weeks, so again, don’t be too discouraged if you’re initially feeling this way. I had mixed feeling about different tutorials based on how much I felt I learnt, so I’d recommend making sure you’re with people who want to discuss and work through questions, otherwise it can feel like a waste of time.

Assignments:
The first is on sequences, and will most likely feel much more difficult than second on calculus 2. But both will probably require a substantial amount of effort (recommendation is 8 hrs each). For the first, you must really read over and understand the definitions and proofs. The second will mainly focus on mechanical calculations.

Mid Semester Test:
For most including myself, this was the lowest mark received in the subject, but looking back wasn’t insanely difficult or unreasonable. Requires a thorough understanding of all theorems/definitions covers so far, and the ability to apply them to simple proofs as well as application type questions (ect. Find limit). Many marks in this one for being able to correctly state definitions and theorems.

Final Exam:
Required what was mentioned for test, as well as knowledge of all the calculus techniques/applications (you’re also not supplied a formula sheet, in a sense making this section harder than it would be through doing calc2) and series. I found it to be a pretty fair and reasonable exam – nothing overly difficult or tricky, meaning through working hard to get the basics of what has been taught, good(or better) grades are more than possible.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2017, 07:35:30 pm by M909 »
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?

M909

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #658 on: November 22, 2017, 10:23:24 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics 

Workload:
2 × 1hr lectures per week
1 × 1hr tutorial per week

Assessment:
Tutorial Participation 10%
Online Quizzes 2 × 5%
Group Assignments 2 × 10%
End of semester exam (2hrs) 60%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 2 with solutions

Textbook Recommendation:  Principles of Macroeconomics, 4th edition, Bernanke, Frank & Olekalns - provided a good overview but I think lecture slides would have sufficed

Lecturers: Lawrence Uren (9am, 11am) and Nahid Khan (2:15pm, 4:15pm)

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (83)

Comments:
Quite a few people said that this subject was harder than its predecessor ECON10004, so I was a little worried due to finding the micro exam very difficult. However, I personally thought that the content difficultly was comparable, and actually found taking this subject to be a more pleasant experience, due to the use of lecture capture and not being terrified by the end of semester exam.
Major topics/concepts are the GDP, inflation/real interest rates, labour market/unemployment, Keynesian models of GDP, fiscal and monetary policy,  AD/AS curve models of output and inflation, growth/Solow-Swan model, international trade, exchange rate and accounts.
Ultimately, it was an enjoyable subject, that felt more relevant to real life than micro. As Lawrence pointed out, most of the concepts are relatively straightforward, hence with a consistent effort to kept on top, good grades in this subject are easily achievable.

Lectures:
Unlike in micro, the lecture capture recorded everything, so it wasn’t a problem if you missed a lecture, and the capture could be effectively used for revision. I had Lawrence, and found him excellent – he explained and illustrated things really well and seemed genuinely interested in the subject. While I can’t really talk about Nahid as I didn’t attend or watch her lectures, I’d say based on what everyone said, Lawrence was the clear favourite.

Tutorials:
Pretty similar to micro in that you’d attempt a pre-tute sheet before class (which you’d later get solutions for), then attempt and discuss another sheet in the tute, which your tutor will take everyone through. Personally, I found some questions to be a lot more helpful than others. While I don’t know my participation mark, I’d say as long as you attend most classes and contribute something you should be pretty much guaranteed that 10%.

Assignments:
Could be done individually, or in groups up to 3 within your tutorial class. They pretty much tested the very basics, and most people scored very highly on them. They were also a lot shorter than the micro ones, despite being worth the same amount.
Quizzes:
Again, tested mainly the basic concepts, and should be fine if you’re on top of everything. I personally didn’t do too well on the second as I skipped over some of the earlier stuff when reviewing for it.

The median score for assignments and quizzes was over 80%, so apparently there was some scaling of final results.

Exam:
Due to the exam hurdle, exam literally just tested the basics. While it was good not to be stressed by an overly difficult exam, I felt it needed at least some challenge questions so that one could pass if they knew the basics, but nothing had to be scaled down due to high assignment scores.
VCE, 2015-2016
BCom (Econ) @ UniMelb, 2017-2019
MCEng (Elec) @ UniMelb, 2020-?

sweetcheeks

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Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings
« Reply #659 on: November 23, 2017, 03:08:33 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: HPSC10001: From Plato to Einstein

Workload: 2x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment: 3x analysis tasks making up 50% and a final essay worth 50%

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  N/A

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader

Lecturer(s): Kristian Camilleri

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2 2017

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional) 66 H3

Comments: I picked this subject as a breadth (BSc student).

The subject looks at famous philosophers throughout history, starting with the Ancient Greeks and progressing to individuals that we now refer to as scientists (Maxwell, Faraday etc.). The historical shifts in views on physical concepts (light, gravity etc.) was thoroughly discussed. I found it very interesting to learn about theories that different individuals proposed about the concepts, especially when comparing them to what we know today

The lecturer showed great enthusiasm about the subject and was very well researched. Students were given plenty of opportunities to ask questions, especially after he discussed concepts that were tricky. If he didn’t know the answer he wasn’t afraid to say so, and would go and research the answer.

In the tutorials we would read and discuss both primary and secondary sources related to the current lectures. There is a compulsory 75% attendance, however they don’t seem too worried if you miss more than that. The lecturer would occasionally join in tutorials, allowing questions to be asked. Usually this happened just before the assessments.

The semester assessments consisted of looking at 3-4 paragraphs and analysing them (200 words each). Both the meaning and the historical significance needed to be looked at. Often the information was covered in the tutorials. Examples were posted on the LMS to give a rough idea of how an analysis should be written. They went out at 5:15PM on the Wednesday and were due 11:59PM Sunday. This was a reasonable timeframe.

The final essay topics were released at the start of the semester. There was the option to pick one of the first five topics (related to the first half of the semester) and submit it before the exam period or opt to complete the essay on a later topic and submit it during the exam period. The topics were fair and reasonable (10 in total) and there is at least one topic for everyone. The lecturer spent a lecture explaining what he wanted from us in the essay and gave us a comprehensive list of books that the library had access to .

Overall I found this subject to be intellectually stimulating and would definitely recommend it as a breadth for BSc students, especially those who are knowledgeable on physics.