Leaving UTS... worth it or nah? (1 Viewer)

[Clara_Oswald]

Soz for the essay but…
I moved from UNSW Science to UTS Games Dev in Semester 1 this year but have so far been unimpressed by their teaching methods. While I coasted through this semester and still did surprisingly well, I’m not sure how difficult future semesters will be. I also checked course outlines for a lot of my future courses and they are all delivered in a similar style to this semester- i.e. ~3 contact hours/wk per course, a lot of online video viewing, probably pointless lectures etc. :/
So I am seriously considering going back to UNSW to study either CS or Med Sci.

UTS
Pros:
- Seems to be easier to maintain a DN or high CR average here
- Some enthusiastic lecturers
- Less courses have final exams
- Less contact hours = more spare time
- Shorter commute
- Great facilities
- More chilled out atmosphere

Cons:
- Teaching style doesn’t really suit me - too many online lectures to view, face to face lectures are pointless and lacking (literally only had 6 programming fundamentals lectures, web systems lectures ran every 2nd wk etc).
- A lot of group work
- Didn't really learn anything in the tutes (but maybe it was just shitty subjects idk)
- Less contact hours = less time delivering content, or spreading the content too thinly
- Didn’t feel particularly challenged in anything this semester and was hence VERY bored
- Some courses were structured quite poorly..i'm looking at you programming fundamentals.

I’m not sure if anything will change in future (2nd and 3rd yr), so if anyone studying IT/CS could enlighten me that would be great.

UNSW
Pros:
- I experienced better teaching last year for all subjects
- Lectures were detailed so we learnt a LOT + they were recorded
- Challenging so I felt like I had achieved something at the end of the semester
- Higher standards expected of students, but also of lecturers
- Could probably maintain a DN or high CR WAM for med sci based on last years results.
- Kinda lame but it was my dream uni for years.

Cons:
- Intense workloads = stressss
- Long contact hours = not much spare time
- Some REALLY hard subjects
- Final exams for practically all subjects worth 50-60% = stressful af
- Harder to maintain a high WAM for CS
- 891 from central/light rail work/bus lines at uni etc…..

Basically for UNSW, I will have to work a lot harder than I have at UTS this semester to maintain a higher WAM / pass some courses since they can be quite hard - e.g. discrete math will probably kill me.

tl;dr:
- Started at UNSW in 2016 in Science Degree
- Moved to UTS in S1 2017 to study Games Dev
- So far unhappy with teaching methods @ UTS, but have likely achieved DN avg this semester (based off the results I got during the sem).
- Want to go back to UNSW for better teaching but not sure whether to do it bc obviously won’t get the same sorts of results as I do here at UTS, also feel kind of bad for ditching UTS but don't know why?

pls some advice, so conflicted.

 

[BlueGas]

What do you want to do as a career? If you do stay at UTS you'll be doing games dev but if you go back to UNSW you'll study CS/Med Sci, so I don't understand what you ultimately want to do as a career.

 

[matchalolz]

I don't think that difficulty should be playing a factor in your decision, I mean nothing worth having comes easy right?

You should make a decision based on what you actually want to do in the future as a career

Also I'm pretty sure that employers are aware that it is not easy to maintain a high wam in comp sci. Credit wam should suffice

 

[Neil_]

I mean it all depends where you passions lie as matchalolz and bluegas said. Do you want to work in a science-related field or be in software/game dev?

 

[He-Mann]

I don't think that difficulty should be playing a factor in your decision, I mean nothing worth having comes easy right?

You should make a decision based on what you actually want to do in the future as a career

Also I'm pretty sure that employers are aware that it is not easy to maintain a high wam in comp sci. Credit wam should suffice

Employers are probably aware that a CR at UNSW is at least a DN at UTS. It's also harder to score high for CS at UNSW because they use harmonic mean to calculate marks which means you have to do well in all assessments.

_______

I don't think you should base your decision primarily on your grades. This is because results don't tell the full story. I'll leave that there for you to ponder.

 

[Clara_Oswald]

Ok to clarify, again soz for essay:
My first preference is to study CS, but if I can't get in at UNSW I'm happy doing med sci because I enjoy that side of science - in actuality I've been torn between science (bio/med) and computing for the past 2-3 years and I still don't fully know what direction I want to go in which is why I'm kind of confused and you probably are too lol. Worst case scenario is I pick up a double degree of science/CS and major in some bio related field so I can still do both (I can't do this at UTS btw).

Basically, I changed to games development as it has a mixture of programming and animation/graphics (which was another thing I was considering, but have decided that I can prob study animation/graphics later on). I just thought games dev would be better than the standard UTS IT degree because the subjects would be more interesting, and also make me a better programmer than regular IT students.
and tbh I probably wouldn't even go into a games related job after the degree.

The main reason I have considered moving rather than staying at UTS and changing to their CS degree is because of the way they taught and structured the courses this semester. I'm reaching out here to see if anyone else has experienced similar concerns or can confirm that courses I may need to take in the next 2 years will be taught in a similar manner, because if that's the case I would probably prefer to leave as I just don't find it very effective.

Contrasting both first year programming courses I have taken
At UTS we had:
- youtube lecture videos that honestly didn't explain much (most people I knew still didn't understand the concepts after watching them)
- 1x 2hr face to face lectures that were pointless (we had 6 lectures in total...)
- 1x 2 hr labs where all we did were mastery tests (to which the lecturer gave us the answers beforehand, and we also never wrote the full programs, just filled in blanks)
- I got a HD for this subject and still don't understand Java concepts properly, and I had a friend who couldn't even work out how we were supposed to create and structure the Classes for our assignment which she started in the second last week of the semester (by which time you'd expect us to understand how to do it)
At UNSW we had:
-2x2 hour lectures a week where we went through some concepts and had programs demonstrated
-1 hr tut where we would go through tut questions and the tutor would further explain the concepts we learnt that week
-2 hour lab where we would attempt unseen lab exercises, writing programs from scratch, on our own.
- Each week we would have our previous week's lab exercises checked by a tutor and get given feedback

One reason I'm questioning my choice to leave is that maybe I'm being too harsh on UTS? Like, I just don't know? Also I feel bad for wasting parents money and time with the application fees for UAC and them talking to me about my problems lol .-.

 

[BlueGas]

I'd say go for UNSW. It seems that you would find learning more fulfilling there and you will actually learn something compared to how you would learn at UTS.