Honours and doing well in first year.

[100]

Well im basicially screwed for this semesters exams. I should be able to pass all my subjects but barely.
Im doing commerce(in my first year, majoring in actuarial studies) and was wondering what sort of marks you need to end up doing honours? I heard they only take 16% of your GPA in your first year into account. Is this true?
And do you really need to do well in your first year, besides passing? Do employers look at your GPA for your first year or just your 3rd?

Cheers, really stressed right about now should have studied

[relic]

Gosh I'm in the same boat.. can someone clarify this?

Also does it matter if you fail your breadth but get average on your core subjects? 

[mankay]

My understanding is that what's used to compare you to other students is your SGPA (or whatever they call it) and it's explained here: http://policy.unimelb.edu.au/UOM0415

I think how subjects are weighted varies depending on what you're applying for, but if you consider this weighting:
First year - 1x
Second year - 2x
Third year - 3x

You can observe that:
1 / (1 + 2 + 3) == 17% which is probably where that number came from

Regardless of how it's actually weighted, I'm fairly certain that 3rd year subjects will be weighted a lot more than 1st year subjects


As for employment and GPA, Unimelb doesn't actually calculate GPAs (i.e. it's not noted in your transcript or elsewhere)

[banditkeith]

From what I heard, they only take into account your 3rd year scores unless you are doing MD in which case they take each year's GPA
but the first year is weighted the least. That's with Masters though.
I could be completely wrong here but that's what I heard...

[slothpomba]

Many people screw up in first year, its a baptism by fire. It's almost everyone to one degree or another to adapt to how things run in university.

They will focus more on your later GPA.

I know at monash, if you want to do say pharmacology honours, they really focus more on your 2nd/3rd year (especially) pharmacology subjects than anything else, i'm not sure if the same is true for melbourne.

[tram]

Honours is pretty much focussed on how well you do in your third year subjects. You would probably be looking at needing to get 75+ at least to qualify for honours in actuarial, if not a little higher to be safe. I wouldn't stress too much about first year. It's not really that big a deal. Realistically It may effect your ability to get internships as you'll be applying for them in your penultimate year, but three things 1) If you're planning to do honours you'll be applying at the start of third year, not second year so that gives you extra time, 2) you do have one more semester to bring your marks up 3) marks aren't the be all and end off for getting a job, having good extra-currics and being a nice person are just as important

Also don't stress too much, you might just surprise yourself when results come out, for the traditionally insane subjects actuarial kids take like accelerated math will have marks bumped up bigtime.

[TonyZ]

I am in my third year of actuarial studies and I am pretty sure they only look at your 3rd year subjects results (at least H2B to qualify for honour)

P.s. i think around 40-50 students can get into honour and you probably need h1 average in the 3rd year....