Score of 5.5

[Faith-PoweR]

I'm wondering how to get 5.5 for university subjects.
At first I thought the highest mark would be 5.0 as I didn't see 5.5 on the website.
However I then saw that someone getting 5.5 in their university subjects.
How does this work???

[Lasercookie]

The 5.5 thing has been changed from 2012 onwards. 5.0 is the maximum score you can get for uni enhancement now.

edit: Page 2 http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vet/bulletin1-11.pdf

[Faith-PoweR]

Oh so sad 

[satya]

would anyone tell me, whether or not the extension maths from melb uni really hard??

[rife168]

would anyone tell me, whether or not the extension maths from melb uni really hard??

If you are fine with Specialist then I think that it shouldn't be too difficult.
Overall, the biggest issue is probably not the inherent difficulty of the course, but rather how different it is to high school maths both in content and how one should think about/approach problems.

[satya]

hmm, so would u by any chance know wht sort of chapters are there in the extension program, well i am going to do specilist next year and i am preety good with maths.. but i just wanna know the course summary?

[rife168]

hmm, so would u by any chance know wht sort of chapters are there in the extension program, well i am going to do specilist next year and i am preety good with maths.. but i just wanna know the course summary?

Exam 1 topics (1st semester):
Logic & Proofs
Complex Numbers
Lines and planes in 3 dimensions
Systems of linear equations and determinants
Functions of several variables and multivariable calculus (probably the longest single topic)

Exam 2 (Semester 2):
Vector Spaces
Inner product spaces
Linear Transformations
Eigenvalues and eigenvectors

Exam 1 is 3 hours
Exam 2 is 2 hours

Calculators or notes of any kind are prohibited for both exams.
Assignments throughout the year make up 10% of the final mark (we had 9 assignments all up).
The exams make up the remaining 90% of the final mark.
It seems like a lot, but bear in mind the UMEP exams are after the last VCE exams, unless you are doing a language you will have a copious amount of time to study for it. I have 9 days from physics to UMEP exam 1...

[satya]

ohh thank you very much, btw i am goin to do methods, specialist so is it really hard to do UMEP with it or i'll be fine?
and are there are any resources i am look up, just to get an idea of how UMEP is?

[rife168]

If you like maths, do UMEP. The material will be fine just as long as you don't fall behind the class.
You could just search on wikipedia for some of those topics, but to be honest I'm not sure it will be entirely indicative of how well you will cope with the work. I know that I skimmed through the book we got at the start of the year and I was absolutely befuddled by the stuff at the back of the book, but now that we've done all the lead up work, stuff like Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors are actually pretty fun, whereas they seemed so daunting earlier on in the year.
Feel free to ask plenty of questions, I know I did at this time last year.

[satya]

haha well that is a relief, hmm i suppose i can cope maths preety well,
btw when u apply, do u need like an average of B in the year 11 studies or something?

[Jenny_2108]

haha well that is a relief, hmm i suppose i can cope maths preety well,
btw when u apply, do u need like an average of B in the year 11 studies or something?

For UMEP: Average B+, A/A+ for maths and a recommending letter from your school principal or your maths teacher

[satya]

are there any speicifc books that i can buy to head start of the topics?

[rife168]

are there any speicifc books that i can buy to head start of the topics?

I'd say just look up those topics on the internet, I think that getting familiar with lots of them would be more beneficial than getting a head start on a few topics.
Wikipedia is good, sometimes you can look for a 'Simple English' version on the left hand side of the article which I find useful sometimes haha, its more basic and blunt I guess.
Also check out Khan Academy and Paul's online maths notes for some extra material. Khan Academy is good for getting the basics down and then you may need to search elsewhere for more detail.

In retrospect, I wish I looked up more about linear algebra before hand. Nearly everything regarding linear algebra that we went over during the year was completely new to me, so there was I guess a feeling of unfamiliarity which got in the way a bit.

[satya]

so do you guys in the course, use any specific textbooks or anything?

[rife168]

We got lecture notes every 2 weeks or so, and we got given a spiral-bound book of notes and a book of questions on our first class.
Most of us didn't really use the notes book except for some nice diagrams and there was a little bit in there that was outside of the  course but quite interesting nonetheless. I mainly just used the lecture notes and the internet.

It's worth noting that if you do UMEP, then you get a Melbourne Uni library card which grants you lease of any book in the library, and the maths section is immense. There are so many books.