UoM General Chat

[SuperCell.27]

I did EDDA last year, make sure you spam the pink book questions - do all of it if possible. For this subject, its as important to know the principles as it is to get exposure to a wide range of questions. The crux of most questions is basically understanding what the question is asking for, knowing the distribution and making sure you don't screw up reading off the tables at the back. The 'summary notes' at the back should be your bible...if you're not using them, you should.

[Ruffini]

Does anyone have any experience with special consideration and supplementary exams? How long do they take to process applications? Do you find out before the exam. My mother just passed away and the BIOL10004 exam is in two weeks. Do you think they will grant me a supplementary exam? I haven't been to any tutorials, but my grades are stellar—do you think it will matter? Sorry for all the questions. Shits fucked.

[Rod]

Does anyone have any experience with special consideration and supplementary exams? How long do they take to process applications? Do you find out before the exam. My mother just passed away and the BIOL10004 exam is in two weeks. Do you think they will grant me a supplementary exam? I haven't been to any tutorials, but my grades are stellar—do you think it will matter? Sorry for all the questions. Shits fucked.

Firstly I'm so sorry for your loss. I really do not know what to say but hang in there buddy, I wish you and your family the best, this will be one of the hardest times of your life. If you need anything feel free to PM me.

As for special considerations, I have not had any experience but relax, considering your circumstances I am sure you will get a supplementary exam (which happens near the end of July). Just make sure you get it done, processing will take time but you WILL be granted special consideration. Also Dawn Gleeson is usually very good about this stuff. The fact that your grades are amazing is another reason why they will have no hesitation to grant you a supplementary.

Wishing you the best of recoveries mate,
Rod

[asianguy22]

Does anyone know anything about taking on a subject during the winter break? I'm thinking of studying a breadth subject during the winter break so I can study 3 subjects instead of 4 the following semester. I'm struggling to find information online about this. Is such thing possible? Is it too late to enrol?

[spectroscopy]

Does anyone know anything about taking on a subject during the winter break? I'm thinking of studying a breadth subject during the winter break so I can study 3 subjects instead of 4 the following semester. I'm struggling to find information online about this. Is such thing possible? Is it too late to enrol?

yes its possible and no its not too late. just look around in the handbook for a subject you want. the arts faculty has a pretty goood list of possible winter subjects here http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/students/undergraduate/intensive-subjects  (note: they arent all arts subjects, theyre from every faculty )
just change your study plan such that youre enrolled and thats it

[uoiea]

Anyone else doing / has done Principles of Immunology & Microbiology? How do you study for it? I don't think writing notes is very effective for such a content heavy subject.. regret not dropping this subject, 40-50 slides per lecture is such a huge pain in the arse.

[squidgee123]

Anyone else doing / has done Principles of Immunology & Microbiology? How do you study for it? I don't think writing notes is very effective for such a content heavy subject.. regret not dropping this subject, 40-50 slides per lecture is such a huge pain in the arse.

I do handwritten notes for this subject, as I do with all my subjects. And though my hand kinda hurts after I'm done writing, I think I retain the content better. I suppose I'll just study for the subject the same way I study for any other subject. Going over notes, googling shit I don't get until I do get it and then doing practice questions. Seems to have worked so far for the past few years...

[asianguy22]

yes its possible and no its not too late. just look around in the handbook for a subject you want. the arts faculty has a pretty goood list of possible winter subjects here http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/students/undergraduate/intensive-subjects  (note: they arent all arts subjects, theyre from every faculty )
just change your study plan such that youre enrolled and thats it

cheers

[Rod]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if anybody can give me some information on how to go about reporting a coordinator for unfair marking of assignments?

So what has happened is for one of my subjects we received an assignment back (worth 15%) and pretty much the whole cohort performed poorly in the assignment. Although I believe it was really harshly marked, and furthermore the coordinator who marked it gave us the wrong instructions, lead us to the wrong answers and confused us a fair bit. I have never encountered this before but I am sure I can provide several very strong arguments to how the assignment was unfairly marked.

We did not even receive a criteria (although his this common with a lot of second year assignment based subjects?) and the coordinator did not even use a criteria, it felt like she randomly gave us a mark after reading it.

I can keep going with how faulty her marking of this assignment was

[literally lauren]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if anybody can give me some information on how to go about reporting a coordinator for unfair marking of assignments?

So what has happened is for one of my subjects we received an assignment back (worth 15%) and pretty much the whole cohort performed poorly in the assignment. Although I believe it was really harshly marked, and furthermore the coordinator who marked it gave us the wrong instructions, lead us to the wrong answers and confused us a fair bit. I have never encountered this before but I am sure I can provide several very strong arguments to how the assignment was unfairly marked.

We did not even receive a criteria (although his this common with a lot of second year assignment based subjects?) and the coordinator did not even use a criteria, it felt like she randomly gave us a mark after reading it.

I can keep going with how faulty her marking of this assignment was

Ahh that sucks! I'd try your student centre first, since they'll probably be the ones to put you in contact with the relevant people.

You could try emailing the coordinator if you're careful and polite about it, but I probably wouldn't recommend this given that it sounds like she's the one at fault here, and it's tough to word that nicely. Unless she seems like the kind of person who'd be like 'oh yeah cheers good point, mea culpa, I'll remark everything!' then your student centre is your best bet.

But you can give an honest appraisal on the SES since it's anonymous, and in the Subject Reviews thread for the sake of future cohorts

[Ruffini]

Wishing you the best of recoveries mate,
Rod

Thanks Rod, I appreciate it. :-)

I've since spoken with student admin and been to see a counsellor at Psychological Services. She was incredibly professional and super helpful. She helped me work through some stuff and gave me documents to back up my special consideration application. She also told me to contact her if the university is uncooperative. I feel so much better now that I can give my situation the emotional attention it deserves without stressing about uni.

The only problem is that you are not allowed to apply until four days prior to the exam. That means that I probably will not receive the outcome until after the exam, so I will have to sit it just in case. That will not be much fun. :-/

Anyway, if anyone is reading this and is going through a rough situation, please go and speak to someone at Psychological Services. Everyone there was insanely helpful. I cannot praise them enough. Lovely, compassionate people. We are lucky to have services like that available, make use of them!

[Rod]

Ahh that sucks! I'd try your student centre first, since they'll probably be the ones to put you in contact with the relevant people.

I have just spoken to a lot of the students of the cohort and everyone is very angry about it, so I think student centre is the best to go. I will make a subject review to warn everyone, I have never experienced a situation where the coordinator has given incorrect instructions and then caused the whole cohort to do so poorly. In her defence she gave ALL students an extra 1/15, but the amount of incorrect instructions/contradictions she made during that assignment does not make up for it.

Cheers Lauren!

EDIT
And the worst thing about it is we did not find out about these poor instructions/contradictions until we received our marks and feedback.

[Rishi97]

EDIT
And the worst thing about it is we did not find out about these poor instructions/contradictions until we received our marks and feedback.

Yeh normally subjects give us some sort of indication of what they expect but this time we got nothing! No criteria or even iirc any clue as to where the marks were allocated....very poorly marked >.<

[Russ]

You should contact the coordinator to discuss it before you make a formal complaint, if only so you can demonstrate you've attempted to resolve the issue prior to escalating

[Shenz0r]

Registering for the MD student conference is literally more painful than timetabling for undergrad. lmao.