Engineering at UTS or UNSW

[infinityandbeyond]

Hey guys,

I cannot decide which uni to do mechatronics engineering in. I received a great scholarship from UTS but UNSW is more academically well. I heard that UTS does not have good teaching practices. One of my friends at UNSW said it would be better to meet like-minded and competitive people like myself at UNSW (I am academically well myself). I value employment opportunities as well. Any thoughts?? I am conflicted!!

[RuiAce]

You really shouldn't be viewing the university itself as something for employment advantages. And I don't believe UTS's teaching practices are poor; in fact, I've never been told of this at all. It seemed pretty hands-on at first glance.

(On the other hand, for example travel time may influence one decision over the other.)

Sure, UNSW's engineering is world-class level. And I did actually have a friend who gave up the scholarship in favour of UNSW. So I don't think your train of thought is completely unjustified. Perhaps, if you're heavily set on working outside of Australia, the added name-value of a Go8 university is useful.

But otherwise, universities are not something that affect employment prospects greatly at all. If anything, I'd wager the only time it would matter is if there's a difficult-to-break tie in candidates left, and their university was the last thing they had to distinguish them.

I don't think UNSW's engineering teaching is perfect per se either. For the most part I am hugely in favour of it, but some bad apples in the engineering faculty hurt a lot.

So whilst picking UNSW over UTS is perhaps somewhat safer, you really should check if it's worth. You should also consider if giving up the scholarship is something you're not gonna regret deeply down the road. Scholarships can save your financial situation a lot, if they pay out a lot. (I had to make sure my friend was certain of that, before they picked the UNSW option.)

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,

I cannot decide which uni to do mechatronics engineering in. I received a great scholarship from UTS but UNSW is more academically well. I heard that UTS does not have good teaching practices. One of my friends at UNSW said it would be better to meet like-minded and competitive people like myself at UNSW (I am academically well myself). I value employment opportunities as well. Any thoughts?? I am conflicted!!

Hey there,

I can't say much about UTS but what I can say is that UNSW is generally known for their engineering department and I think the culture in UNSW is that students tend to emphasise more on practical experience over academics. Like academics is good but because there's so much emphasis on student-led projects here, students have recognised how important it is to have more experience outside the classroom. A great example of this was when I visited Qantas and spoke to the representative that toured us around the cockpit, he was saying how he noticed that amongst the batch of Qantas interns they get, the majority of them are UNSW with maybe 1 or 2 from USYD and UOW (?) and talked about the big culture difference between UNSW and USYD (he mentioned how he noticed that USYD students tend to prioritise getting out of uni first before going out and getting experience).

One thing I will say upfront is that UNSW transitioned to the trimester system this year and I found it stressful transitioning to uni and then realising how big of an impact trimesters did on my studies and trying to manage extracurriculars and work, especially since we're given like 10 weeks to build, say, a small autonomous vehicle or a vertical displacement pump.

Hope this helps!

[blyatman]

But otherwise, universities are not something that affect employment prospects greatly at all. If anything, I'd wager the only time it would matter is if there's a difficult-to-break tie in candidates left, and their university was the last thing they had to distinguish them.

I second this. I've reviewed many CV's for engineering grad positions, and I couldn't care less about which school they went to. As long as I've heard of the uni and it's not too bad, I move onto other things like related research/work experience.

If you graduated from somewhere like MIT/CalTech or any of the other top tier US schools, then yeah that would definitely stand out from the pack. However, UTS, UNSW, and USYD, are all more or less in the same league, so it doesn't have any impact in terms of job advantages.