Hey Ellen,
So this year I'm completing VCE and I also want to study Arts/Law double degree next year. However, I feel like the ATAR i can achieve is only around 95-96. Which means i'm probably not going to be accepted into the course. So most likely I'm going to have to do the arts pathway. But i'm a bit confused about it.
I know i need to average more than 70% for my units. But I don't get how i enter the course that allows me to have a pathway to Law. Do I just study arts for one year and if i get 70% WAM I'll be able to study Law the year after automatically? Do i need to do anything beforehand, like alert uni co-ordinators or is there a special course specifically for the pathway? And i've heard that the pathway is very competitive, does that mean even if i get more than 70% WAM there is a chance I won't get into the double degree?
Thanks a lot!
Hey
Okay, so firstly I would say: don't count yourself out yet! You haven't sat your exams and you might surprise yourself and get the 98 needed for arts/law!!
Secondly, starting in an arts degree and transferring to arts/law is great and fun and i personally enjoyed it a lot more than i think i would have enjoyed going straight into arts/law. I got to branch out into a bunch of different arts subjects that i would have otherwise never gotten the chance to experience, and met a lot of great friends that i wouldn't have known otherwise! So if you do just get into arts, it might actually be a really good experience for you !!!!!!!
SO the way to get from an arts degree to an art/law degree is:
1. You enrol in a straight ordinary arts degree at monash.
2. You try to keep your scores above 70% (70 is the minimum required, but it never hurts to aim a little higher)
3. In around September of your first year, the university will release the form needed for you to apply for an
Internal Course Transfer. This is the form you need to be able to transfer from an arts degree to an arts/law degree. (and it's also the form you need to change into just about anY other degree). You can find this form by just google searching "Monash internal course transfer".
This is what the page looks like. Of course, this isn't something you really need to even start thinking about at all until like august/ september of next year!!!!!
4. You go and chat to arts student services for like 15 mins in august/september-ish and tell them you want to transfer, they say "ok cool!", you fill out the form and that's it!
5. In December, after semester 2 results come out, you'll get an email telling you whether you've been accepted or not! While it is very competitive, I personally haven't heard of anyone who got a WAM above 70 and didn't get accepted. A very very large chunk of people who do law are transfer students.
Ultimately, at this stage I wouldn't worry about the transfer process. If you just do arts for your first year of uni, then i would only worry about keeping your WAM above 70 for most of the year. You don't need to stress about the transfer process at all until during second semester, and by then, the transfer process will probably become a lot more transparent and easy to navigate than it currently seems.
The transfer process seemed really confusing for me in year 12 and my first year of uni, and i stressed a lot about it, but when it actually came down to doing it, it was just a 15 minute chat with arts student service, and filling out a 5 minute form!
Feel free to ask me any more questions about it, and even come back this time next year when you're in the middle of applying for a transfer to ask more haha