Hey guys...I'm back with more subjective questions.
Difficulty:
As you probably saw in my previous post, I'm looking at graduate medicine, and obviously it needs an extremely high GPA [MU: ~4, UoM: ~6.7]. I was wondering how hard is it to pull off such a feat. I mean, does it require raw talent of the likes of all you guys, or hard work. I'm willing to put in the effort, but is it something only those will pure skill can pull off? At the moment I think I currently sit in the 85 - 95 bracket in terms of ATAR (who knows). I can see that you guys that got 99.00+ are managing to pull HD after HD, but will this be possible for someone who achieves significantly lower?
Yes. Sometimes you'll hear people who got ATARs in the 80s or low 90s smashing every subject they do in university. You'll hear stories of some chancellor's scholars sometimes scraping with a pass or credit. University is a completely different ballgame from VCE. For the most part, hard work seems to the most important factor. But bear in mind that you not only need to put in the effort, but you need to study smart too (just like in VCE).
Time Constriants:
How do people that do 5+ subjects a semester manage time? Are you in any groups? Do you have a part-time job? How many hours do you put in a day?
No idea how people manage overloading but I think they're masochists. lol
The workload is going to differ for everybody. Some days I can get by with only watching 3 hours worth of lectures a day, other times I need to do that and cram for 3 hours...although bear in mind it's not how many hours you put in, but rather what you do in that time, that matters.
Resources:
Are the lecture notes provided by the lecturer sufficient to do well with? Or do they have holes in them. Do you take notes during the lecture, or just soak it in and rewatch/go through the slideshow again in your own time?
For most (if not, all) of the undergrad subjects I've had, the lecture notes are sufficient and are usually the only things you'll be examined on. Since the end of 1st year I've only ever briefly opened a textbook maybe 3-4 times.
You'll experiment and find out which works for you, some people like to listen and absorb whereas I'm a person who annotates everything on the lecture slides and then looks over them a billion times.
The people:
Are people more friendly and outgoing in uni that high school? Could you ask your lecturer questions and stuff?
Of course, lecturers/tutors/demonstrators encourage you to ask questions. You can email them whenever you need something clarified. And more people tend to be more friendly and outgoing (maturity factor) I think.