ATAR Notes: Forum
Uni Stuff => Faculties => Health sciences => Topic started by: jmosh002 on July 03, 2012, 04:45:57 pm
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Was wondering how important vce biology would be for biomedicine at Melbourne uni?
thanks
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Was wondering how important vce biology would be for biomedicine at Melbourne uni?
thanks
Well I did bachelor of science and I did pretty crap in VCE biology. I actually did a hell of a lot better in Uni bio (semester 1 at least, with a score of 80). It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
A lot of people did well without VCE bio, but they would have just needed to work harder (getting a grasp of terminology for example)
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Was wondering how important vce biology would be for biomedicine at Melbourne uni?
thanks
Well I did bachelor of science and I did pretty crap in VCE biology. I actually did a hell of a lot better in Uni bio (semester 1 at least, with a score of 80). It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
If i don't study VCE bio, although work very hard in uni biol how hard do you think it would be to maintain H1s?
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Was wondering how important vce biology would be for biomedicine at Melbourne uni?
thanks
Well I did bachelor of science and I did pretty crap in VCE biology. I actually did a hell of a lot better in Uni bio (semester 1 at least, with a score of 80). It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
If i don't study VCE bio, although work very hard in uni biol how hard do you think it would be to maintain H1s?
If you studied effectively, than sure it's possible to get H1.
Without VCE bio, i'd advise you to: Go to tutorials regularly (they are marked for attendance anyway), attend a bunch of topic tutorials (even if you understood specific topics e.g. dna replication, they are still great revision), start exam study early (as the exam for bio is usually in the start of the exam period, so i'd say like 2-3 weeks before swotvac), and the tutors who run tutorials have office hours in which you can ask them questions if you don't understand.
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VCAA exams separate people based on how well people know the content and if they are able to apply the knowledge they learnt. Therefore VCAA exams tend to be a lot harder then uni exams (in terms of biology) because you can know all your information but still not do as well becasue you are not able to apply your knowledge and can only answer the clear cut questions like explain the process of photosynthesis or something. I did really good in VCE biology and thought the exams were a fair way to separate people. I did well in university biology too, but I found that literally anyone can do well in university. As long as you do the work, know all your lecture slides (pretty much rote learning) you will get the H1. In summary it is really easy to do well in university, because the exams test how much you rote learned with small amounts of application.
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It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
Dear God, I'd hate to see VCE bio :|
Anyway, I didn't do VCE bio and quite comfortably managed an H1. An H1 is definitely doable without VCE bio. That said, the sheer amount of content being thrown at me when I had no prior biological knowledge was overwhelming at times. I never made use of the topic tutorials, so I can't really vouch for them, but just try and stay on top of the work as it comes. Study hard for the midsem too; you'll be thankful when SWOTVAC comes around.
I could give more in depth advice, but I don't imagine it'll be particularly important seeing as you're still in year 12 :P The main takeaway should just be - yes, you will be absolutely fine with uni bio without VCE bio, so long as you work reasonably consistently.
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It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
Dear God, I'd hate to see VCE bio :|
umm I don't know about this, i think it is structured really well, I absolutely LOVED it and there is always the study guide to guide you. People find VCE biology harder then uni biology because of the exam, VCAA exams like i said before are more difficult and require you to apply knowledge so you may think that 'when did they teach us this?' but you did learn it you just have to think about it and apply what you have learned. University, also like i said before, is rote learning therefore people like it better because it's easier :)
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It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
Dear God, I'd hate to see VCE bio :|
umm I don't know about this, i think it is structured really well, I absolutely LOVED it and there is always the study guide to guide you. People find VCE biology harder then uni biology because of the exam, VCAA exams like i said before are more difficult and require you to apply knowledge so you may think that 'when did they teach us this?' but you did learn it you just have to think about it and apply what you have learned. University, also like i said before, is rote learning therefore people like it better because it's easier :)
I don't know... the study guide is incredibly vague and I have seen the chuck in a couple of terms to define that weren't studied.
We can always refer back to the lecture notes and everyone's teaching style is different, some teach better than others, and sometimes some are just unreliable.
Our lecture notes are generally pretty reliable.
I really did not enjoy VCE bio at all.
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It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
Dear God, I'd hate to see VCE bio :|
umm I don't know about this, i think it is structured really well, I absolutely LOVED it and there is always the study guide to guide you. People find VCE biology harder then uni biology because of the exam, VCAA exams like i said before are more difficult and require you to apply knowledge so you may think that 'when did they teach us this?' but you did learn it you just have to think about it and apply what you have learned. University, also like i said before, is rote learning therefore people like it better because it's easier :)
I don't know... the study guide is incredibly vague and I have seen the chuck in a couple of terms to define that weren't studied.
We can always refer back to the lecture notes and everyone's teaching style is different, some teach better than others, and sometimes some are just unreliable.
Our lecture notes are generally pretty reliable.
I really did not enjoy VCE bio at all.
haha i guess it does depend on the person :), and it's true that our lecture notes are reliable because that's what they make exams from and it's pretty much rote learn all the slides. With VCE biology you do get a variety of questions but I think that's because VCE is designed that way it doesn't test who has rote learned the entire text book but instead aims to test who understands the content and is able to use it to apply it to a different context. About your statement on having to define terms that weren't studied, they are not allowed to do this, perhaps your school missed it? It depends on how your school teaches the subject as well, I was taught biology by a really good teacher and enjoyed it, perhaps your experience was different?
Anyways lets not deviate from the thread topic, the simple answer to that is you do not need to do VCE biology to do well in university biology and university biology only requires you to know all your lecture slides and you'll be fine :)
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As someone who did unimelb biomedicine biology, this is my take.
There is a lot of cross over. Basically, the first 6 weeks of lectures are just rehashing VCE biol in a tiny bit more depth. This made the first half of the semester really easy for me (having done VCE biol). However, my friends who didn't do VCE biol, still managed to do decently in uni biol, they just had to work slightly harder than I had to as the concepts were all new. At the beginning of the year, we were told that there is no statistical difference in the biology results of those coming in sans VCE biol to those who ended up doing VCE biol, so take that as you will.
tl;dr, You should be fine if you don't do VCE biol at unimelb biomed, but you may have to work a bit harder in the beginning.
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It's structured a lot better than in VCE bio, and there's more indication of what you need to know
Dear God, I'd hate to see VCE bio :|
umm I don't know about this, i think it is structured really well, I absolutely LOVED it and there is always the study guide to guide you. People find VCE biology harder then uni biology because of the exam, VCAA exams like i said before are more difficult and require you to apply knowledge so you may think that 'when did they teach us this?' but you did learn it you just have to think about it and apply what you have learned. University, also like i said before, is rote learning therefore people like it better because it's easier :)
I don't know... the study guide is incredibly vague and I have seen the chuck in a couple of terms to define that weren't studied.
We can always refer back to the lecture notes and everyone's teaching style is different, some teach better than others, and sometimes some are just unreliable.
Our lecture notes are generally pretty reliable.
I really did not enjoy VCE bio at all.
haha i guess it does depend on the person :), and it's true that our lecture notes are reliable because that's what they make exams from and it's pretty much rote learn all the slides. With VCE biology you do get a variety of questions but I think that's because VCE is designed that way it doesn't test who has rote learned the entire text book but instead aims to test who understands the content and is able to use it to apply it to a different context. About your statement on having to define terms that weren't studied, they are not allowed to do this, perhaps your school missed it? It depends on how your school teaches the subject as well, I was taught biology by a really good teacher and enjoyed it, perhaps your experience was different?
Anyways lets not deviate from the thread topic, the simple answer to that is you do not need to do VCE biology to do well in university biology and university biology only requires you to know all your lecture slides and you'll be fine :)
It was about a placebo or something. My bio teacher ran the TSFX lectures lol
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It was about a placebo or something. My bio teacher ran the TSFX lectures lol
oh I heard about that question (I did bio the year b4 in 2010), I guess that one was ambiguous!