BA Communication (journalism) BA LLB? (1 Viewer)

[Skitzo]

Can anyone specify the aspects of this course as l am interested in it and thus far know nothing opposed from the fact that it is a probable journalism course, borderline law.

 

[charlie_charlie]

I do Social Inquiry/Law, so I can't tell you everything about the journalism side - but first year communications/law are very similar anyway. Basically, you don't start law until 2nd semester, first semester you do all arts subjects which are all compulsory. you do three general arts subjects + your journalism major subject one, which all my journo friends seem to love, even though there are constant assessments in 2nd semester. In second semester you do 2 law subjects and 2 arts subjects, which are again, all compuslory.

What do you mean its a "probable journalism course, borderline law"? is that what you want to do, or is that what you think of the degree? its not a borderline law degree though, and most of your units in the degree are taken up by law subjects. anyway, from what i've heard, journalism @ uts has a great rep amongst those in the profession...the law faculty is great there...but have a look on the online handbook and on the humanities thread there for more info.

hope that helped...

 

[Soma]

Don't do journalism if you're not 100% sure you want to do it.

I did it and then transferred to B.Bus/LLB. I found it far too practical for my liking. Of course this is an advantage if you are into this kind of thing, but I was hoping for slightly more theory as I was more hoping to look for a more general career in the communications industry. I was actually advised heavily against doing communications by a prominent journalist who is a family friend but thought I knew all, only to find that his warnings about the industry were spot on.

Unless you are a very dedicated, pushy person who is willing to go three stressful years of lots of work and end up competing with 1000's of others for Fairfax cadetships where about 1% of people get it and then get given the pitiful salary of $25,000 I wouldn't bother with journalism. Of course if journalism is your passion, then go right ahead.

Doing law as well will mean that you will be able to get a job as a lawyer but I don't see why you would combine it with journalism if you don't actually want to be a journalist seeing as it is such a practical degree, better off doing social inquiry/law which is perhaps the least practical, vocationally-specific communications degree.

Another thing is that arts at UTS sucks penis. Forget your lofty notions of studying riveting history, politics, english literature like the arts degrees of sandstone unis. Arts at UTS consists of learning how white, middle-class men are a curse to society. In your first year you will do aboriginality to death, you will study how roadsigns could be seen as a cultural text, how barbies are racist and sexist, look at bullshit like urban badlands, learn about the female gaze and a whole lot of other stupid postmodern buzzwords that inspires people to go and join the socialist alliance.

Basically if you are not interested in doing Business/Law at UTS as you are more of an arts person I would recommend doing Arts/Law at either Syd, UNSW or if the UAI is too high at ANU, MQ or another uni.

Also please note that this is just a personal opinion of mine, you may find Journalism/Law a great course, I personally found Journalism at UTS abhorrent and many of my friends were equally unimpressed with it. That said, apparently the second year is a lot better as you can choose electives but still, leaving journalism was probably the best decision of my life.

Oh, also note that as communications at UTS is ungraded i.e. pass/fail, you will find it almost impossible trying to transfer to any other course, it is ok if you want to transfer to a course at UTS but other unis won't think much of the references it will take you weeks of hassling to track down from every single one of your tutors.

 

[charlie_charlie]

hey soma,
i want to transfer outta uts communications/law....so you're saying that even if with special consideration from other unis blah blah, i dont really have a chance unless i track down and hassle every one of my old tutors? eeep. but i really doubt they remember me, and besides, all their remarks were marked with 'pass/fail' in mind...blah what a piece of crap...has anyone ever transferred out of uts communications to another arts/law deg?

 

[Soma]

I tried doing it last year but it's pretty hard methinks, because its through the UAC, there's a depersonalised element, they will just pull your marks up from a computer and all the pass/fail subjects will be recorded as passes. You will need to call up the unis you want to go to and let them know you're sending in some references. I found that all the tutors I approached were happy to give me good references stating that I would have D/HD's although one of them had left the uni and I was unable to get one off him in time which meant that subject was recorded as a pass and pretty much screwed up my chances. As to whether a uni such as USyd or UNSW with such a high calibre of applicants would give as much weight to a piece of paper saying you would probably have received a mark in the distinction range as a recorded distinction on someone's academic transcript I am not sure, but if I were to be cynical I would say that you will have little chances of getting into a law course with a higher initial UAI than UTS. You may be fine if you go for ANU, MQ or the like.

Luckily I was still able to transfer into another UTS course, as the uni was sympathetic to my plight seeing as they were the ones that caused it.

It's my theory that the uni realises the whole communications degree is a trumped up piece of shit and instituted the pass/fail system with this in mind, so that there would not be a mass exodus after the first year.

Why are you wanting to transfer out of interest? Is it because of your law or your communications component?

 

[fleepbasding]

ok, so I'm getting more and more turned off UTS. Should I not go there? I want to do as much arts humanities history language as possible and it seems like there's really no framework in UTS to cater for my interests. And psuedo-pomo shit disgusts me so if all the arts units are social science bullshit then I'm really not interested at all.

Although I used to think that UTS was really cool, being right there in the city and all... is UTS cool? Should I still consider going there? In light of my comments, is there any degree at UTS that would be worth my while? I'm uncompromising on what I want to study at UNI and I hate vocationally oriented stuff. I'm thinking USYD B Arts or something similar is the only thing I'll want to do. thoughts?

 

[Jinglebell]

If you want a BA, don't come to UTS. Our Humanities faculty consists entirely of communications, hence the social science focus. And all the courses at UTS aree vocationally oriented, that's pretty much their main selling point, so I'm really thinking that you'd hate the style of degree UTS communications offers - which isn't a bad thing, there's a lot of people like that...I think the way the courses are structured is a love it or hate it kinda thing.

As Ash and I always say, don't do communications unless you're sure it's what you'll enjoy, because if you don't have that to look forward to when you have to do wacky subjects in first year, then you'l just hate every minute of it.

 

[Sweets]

UTS Journalism is deffinetly a love or hate thing. My sister does Law/Journo and she loves it. It is deffinetly the place to be if you actually want to be a journalist, the journalism faculty = the best, although they do have a tendency to become obsessed with certain students *cough* Jano Gibson *cough*.

If you just want a theoretical, philosophy filled arts degree its better to elsewhere though. I'm torn, myself, i'm not sure if i want to go to UTS or just do a sexy Usyd arts degree. Asethically I can't stand UTS, it freaks me out.

 

[Soma]

ok, so I'm getting more and more turned off UTS. Should I not go there? I want to do as much arts humanities history language as possible and it seems like there's really no framework in UTS to cater for my interests. And psuedo-pomo shit disgusts me so if all the arts units are social science bullshit then I'm really not interested at all.

Although I used to think that UTS was really cool, being right there in the city and all... is UTS cool? Should I still consider going there? In light of my comments, is there any degree at UTS that would be worth my while? I'm uncompromising on what I want to study at UNI and I hate vocationally oriented stuff. I'm thinking USYD B Arts or something similar is the only thing I'll want to do. thoughts?

If that's what you want definitely don't come to UTS.

I have friends doing Arts at USyd and it sounds awesome, the amount of subjects available to you and their quality is fantastic.

As for UTS being a 'cool' uni I'm not too sure what you mean.

If you're talking about it having a very social atmosphere and lots of events then no it doesn't have much in the way of a social life.

 

[fleepbasding]

If that's what you want definitely don't come to UTS.

I have friends doing Arts at USyd and it sounds awesome, the amount of subjects available to you and their quality is fantastic.

As for UTS being a 'cool' uni I'm not too sure what you mean.

If you're talking about it having a very social atmosphere and lots of events then no it doesn't have much in the way of a social life.

I just meant "cool" in the very general sense, as in "good". Thanks for the help everyone... I'll think about it but I doubt UTS will be on my preferences much longer (I have journalism on them).

 

[charlie_charlie]

Why are you wanting to transfer out of interest? Is it because of your law or your communications component?

communications. i think the law faculty at uts is fantastic. or i have no current complaints. I just dont like the structure of the communications course, its kind of contradictorary that a vocationally geared course is trying to teach arts, the least vocational of all subjects. and basically, social inquiry is social research, which pisses me off, because i want to do learn about stuff, not learn how to do stuff.

but when i went to usyd, they seemed pretty positive about it, like they didn't go "oh...well...see this person here", they seemed prepared with the special consideration crap. but yeah, im hoping that i get my tutors to write me good references...is that what i have to do? chase all my pass/fail tutors up? all of them? i was thinking just trying to submit my 2nd semester marks in (im geting graded in 3 of them), but hmm. i was only 0.15 off into getting UNSW anyway...so hopefully my UAI will have a strong influence into the unis.... :S

 

[charlie_charlie]

ok, so I'm getting more and more turned off UTS. Should I not go there? I want to do as much arts humanities history language as possible and it seems like there's really no framework in UTS to cater for my interests. And psuedo-pomo shit disgusts me so if all the arts units are social science bullshit then I'm really not interested at all.

Although I used to think that UTS was really cool, being right there in the city and all... is UTS cool? Should I still consider going there? In light of my comments, is there any degree at UTS that would be worth my while? I'm uncompromising on what I want to study at UNI and I hate vocationally oriented stuff. I'm thinking USYD B Arts or something similar is the only thing I'll want to do. thoughts?

in that case, go to USYD and do the BA. do you want to do law? cant remember if you did...but anyway, even if you do want to do law with the arts, or something, even if you dont get straight in, just do the BA and study your ass off in first year and transfer. if you want history humanities language, DON't go to UTS.

 

[prosaic]

but when i went to usyd, they seemed pretty positive about it, like they didn't go "oh...well...see this person here", they seemed prepared with the special consideration crap. but yeah, im hoping that i get my tutors to write me good references...is that what i have to do? chase all my pass/fail tutors up? all of them? i was thinking just trying to submit my 2nd semester marks in (im geting graded in 3 of them), but hmm. i was only 0.15 off into getting UNSW anyway...so hopefully my UAI will have a strong influence into the unis.... :S

you mean that you're getting special consideration this year for the transfer (as opposed to last year)?

 

[Soma]

Yeh I though USyd and UNSW only allowed transfer into law after the first year anyway?

 

[charlie_charlie]

i didnt try to transfer last year; I'm only a first year. I meant i was only 0.15 off the uni, UAI wise. so annoying how usyd and unsw only let you transfer in first year.

 

[prosaic]

i didnt try to transfer last year; I'm only a first year.

Yep. Figured that one out thru the "HSC:2004" thing in ur profile thing on the left. But, I meant the woman I asked at USYD stand last yr said they don't take special consideration for 1st year-uni transfers, only for HSC kids. Admittedly though, she was quite haughty and not very amicable, and had an ugly mole...

So I'm just wondering if mole-lady was wrong and special consideration actually is given to first-yr uni ppl.

 

[Meldrum]

Not at all. My friend's brother was vomitting in his finals and despite his 98 UAI and prior HD average no consideration was given to his failure.

 

[charlie_charlie]

I have no idea. Usyd people were quite haughty and rude to me at the beginning of the year too when I saw them during the uni day. They were "you can do B Arts...and try to transfer....or do grad law..." but this info about special consideration came from the Special Admissions Office. I guess I'll probably put it in, but won't get any hopes up about it.

And Meldrum, did your bro have the med cert and everything? Or were they just completely unreasonable?