Super random!

[SmartBoy84]

Hi, sorry for hijacking this repo but I couldn't find any other way to contact you \ On your past WACE archive you said you pursued computer science in uni, I was just wondering which degree you were doing that had a pre-req atar that high?

Currently in Year 12

[peter-tanner]

I went for uwa's bphil program which adds some components such as study abroad etc to any existing program, but to be honest go with beng if you are planning to go into engineering since it doesnt have a weird name that you need to explain to employers/get past automated hr systems. also, personally all of that work going into marks was not worth it for me personally, now days i'm much more laid back about my marks (example: I cratered my marks in CITS3002), and i care more about my participation in uni clubs (uwa aerospace for example). to be honest i over studied in atar, i think i would be much better off if i studied less and did other things instead, esp since atar doesnt even matter. you can get a scholarship if your atar is over 99 and u are doing eng but i did overstudy looking back.

Aside: in my opinion comp sci is quite mid, and now i study electronic/electrical eng + comp sci, but work as a mech eng. in short - atar really doesnt matter past hs, and you can branch out into different fields if u have the practical skills. also uni really lacks in teaching practical stuff for industry like cad software (altium, Ansys HFSS, etc, altho now they teach solidworks i heard).

feel free to ask any other questions you have about uni or the comp sci program or other stuff, and good luck in your studies :)

[SmartBoy84]

Would you recommend bhil? Given that, at this point, I'm fairly confident I can get a high enough ATAR. I'm still on the fence about whether I want to do medicine or not. On the one hand, that field has the benefit of job sec, salary and, well, the satisfaction of helping people, I'm significantly more passionate about the sciences and would rather do some engineering degree - your projects seem pretty cool, I wouldn't mind doing something of that sort. Yet, that field has the disadvantage of saturation (from what I've heard/seen) and comparatively lower salaries (in most cases). Is it difficult to find a job in your field, and what do you expect to earn (I'm not sure how advanced into your studies you are, this may not be a consideration yet I guess🙃)?

[SmartBoy84]

Also AoC in C?! You must be insane

[peter-tanner]

Would you recommend bhil? Given that, at this point, I'm fairly confident I can get a high enough ATAR.

i'm not too sure about how medicine works and stuff, but from what i've heard it is already long enough. i think someone i knew was doing medicine (?) and bphil but they quit bphil because it would add another year to an already long program.

engineering is nice, but yes getting vac work at companies can be hard. i tried applying to one of the large companies but that didn't work well, but i am now part time at a company which is getting out of the startup phase. and on the earning bit, to be honest i'm not concerned yet.

Also AoC in C?! You must be insane

hahah, i don't think i finished the later levels, and a lot of the code there is bad practice i'm pretty sure. i was learning C at the time, but after doing a lot of embedded programming I can see there's a lot of bad code there.

[SmartBoy84]

I think I'll do bphil engineering (I've gotten the early offer) since what your work in uni (from what I can tell from your GitHub projects) aligns fairly closely with my interests.

Did you enjoy the things you did at uni, what courses did you select, is there anything different you would've done that I could do now that I'm practically in the same position as you were?

Sorry for so many questions, I appreciate the help 😅

[peter-tanner]

Whoops, sorry I missed this! Hope this isn't too late, wall of text ahead Good on you on getting that offer 🙂 To be honest for me personally I didn't have much choice over what units I selected, since I'm doing comp sci and electronic engineering, so there were actually no free units for me. I think that's the same case for BEng, you might have one or two electives free. In fact, I had to get a waiver (easy to get since you're giving the uni more money) since for BPhil I had to do study abroad and GCRL1000, which means I was over the maximum by two units. The best unit I've done here has to be ENSC3020. It's a hard unit which will suck up all of your time, but it is the most practical unit if you are doing electronic engineering.

I would say you will probably find first year to be easy, probably easier than WACE. For me everything started getting harder into 2nd year. Not sure if you are a perfectionist but for me personally I spent way too much effort trying to keep my perfect GPA. I'm sure for other people it's a walk in the park, but when you factor in career, clubs and other things that are important it becomes hard. As weird as it sounds, uni improved after I lost my perfect GPA and I stopped having that perfectionist mindset - sure it can crunch out a couple extra percent, but at the cost of so much stress. That doesn't mean I don't try, I just don't compare myself to others or try to hit targets. This is post-hoc advice though, so probably don't slack off from the first year 😅. First year units should be easy WAM boosts, especially that python unit since it's designed for engineers who don't know how to program.

Pro tip: if you are doing computer science units, anything on roblab.org or anything hosted on a public facing website, use web archive to find past exam papers. roblab.org used to be robotics.ee.uwa.edu.au, so there are more papers there.

I think I mentioned the importance of getting involved in uni clubs. I got involved in aerospace from the start, but I should have gotten involved in other faculty clubs from the start as well since they are good for networking, even if it is awkward at the start of uni when no one knows each other.

My main thing I would do differently is plan way ahead for exchange and internships. If you want to do a semester long exchange, then you need to be 1 year ahead. I did a short-term exchange over the break lasting 5 weeks, and it has to be the highlight of the year, since I did more partying than studying (Well, yeah don't do exchange and just study all day, especially because of ungraded pass so it doesn't contribute to your WAM or GPA as long as you pass). However, I think I would have gone for a semester long exchange since this was just a great experience (I went to NTU Sinagpore). For internships with the large companies, they usually take them start and end of year. I didn't have much success at the big companies, in the end I and most of my friends are working at startups or SMEs. I think at the big companies you might end up doing more excel and powerpoint than engineering (from what I hear), so keep that in mind. At a consulting company you will certainly be stuck doing excel and powerpoint.

[SmartBoy84]

Hi again! Thank you for sharing your experience.

As it stands, I'm currently doing BPhil with a double major in EEng + Comp sci - quite literally the same as you. However, off your words as well as a bit of research into the composite units, comp sci does seem quite mid; it doesn't pique my interest as much as I thought it would. SQL, Ajax, and Java do not seem fun to study. Conversely, practically every single EEng unit sounds interesting, so I'll probably stick with it.

So, if you were to do uni all over again, would you do comp sci again? If not, would you even do a second major and, if so, which major would you opt to do? I am looking to switch to frontier physics but I imagine the workload will be absolute hell over there and maintaining the required 75 WAM may become quite difficult. Luckily my sem 1 units are purely from the EEng major so I have some time to make the decision.

Everybody always says "so what interests you" so honestly frontier physics sounds awesome while comp sci does sound quite tedious and slightly outdated. However, I'm also wary of not wasting money doing a major/units that won't be relevant to my career; frontier physics seems to be mostly for academics and scientists.

Fwiw, my ideal career is working in development at some semiconductor lab; ideally, developing new tech rather than helping maintain existing tech, as seems to be the fate of most electrical engineers.

I apologize for constantly pestering you with this lmao, I know you're not a career adviser but you're the only graduate I know who's interests align pretty closely with my own. I appreciate the help

[peter-tanner]

Nice! Yes in my opinion the computer science units are hit and miss compared to EE. Knowledge rep was my favorite, probably because it covered stuff I haven't seen before like logic programming and knowledge graphs. I was not a fan of secure coding or the AI unit to say the least. And there are run of the mill units like SQL, data structures and stuff which are useful and relatively straightforward (The SQLite unit when I did it was an easy WAM booster). With that said there are some EE units I didn't like, the 3rd year semi unit was pretty poorly taught but they have broken it up into two units apparently. But yes there great units in EE like DES, by far my favorite unit.

Not sure what I would do if I had to do it again, I think CS was alright. Not like there are many other options I think for second majors with engineering without adding many units (I think?). I would have still stuck with a second major just from a "value" perspective, if I was going into this again I still can't see myself doing a bunch of other units with no path to another major. I know a bunch of EEs who do finance as a second major but I would never, it just doesn't interest me personally.

Yeah honestly I have CS as a backup in case I get tired of EE or I want more money, to be blunt. It's kind of interesting but I'm sure frontier physics is much more interesting.

Semiconductors is cool, to be honest I think after doing the undergrad units I'm more confused than anything. Definitely going to have to continue in masters to understand how they actually work lmao.

Tomorrow is EMS expo, if you are coming I might see you there. Still haven't graduated, so I'm going to be repping aerospace again :)

[SmartBoy84]

Alright, thank you again! For the time being, I'll stick with computer science. It's probably the safer choice if I, like you, ever get bored of EEng; if that happens, I don't imagine physics would even have more competitive jobs to warrant the switch!

By the way, how did you deal with the incompatibility between cits2401 (eeng) and cits1401 (cs)? I've currently opted to go with cits2401 in sem 1 this year.

Also, would you recommend doing AI over CS? Have you heard of cases where employers looking for CS students (outside AI-related jobs) favor it more strongly over the "typical" CS or does experience ultimately trump the technicalities of the actual accreditation. I am very reluctant to do it as it'll add another year mostly due to the honors project at the end nor do the other additional units seem particularly interesting.

Also, have you had to use software that isn't available on mac natively? I'm considering getting a m2 mb air after its price drop following apple's march event (and supposed m3 mb air announcement) but am scared there may be tools I'll require that won't be supported.

I'll definitely be checking out aerospace, along with robotics and competitive programming!