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Things you'll learn when going to UCD
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19-08-2014 11:43AM#1Saw this and thought I'd add to it.
Might be some useful information: there's always a harder way to find this stuff out!- UCD is big; like really big. Know people going into Science or Arts? Prepare to never see them again after the first week.
- The numbers of people on campus up to the 26th of September are not indicative of the general population of the campus.
- There are three levels of administration: schools, programme office and central admin. None has any clue what the other does.
- You are the master of your own ship: noone can find out about your grades unless you specifically give them authority to do so (including
family members). You are free to fail whenever you like; just remember to pay the repeat fee. - Stay in a course you hate for ages before eventually dropping out and you're going to have a bad time.
- The quality of courses vary wildly depending on the people lecturing. Remember: the person lecturing you has set the material, made the
exams and will mark the exams. - Choosing where to sit in a lecture is an artform that can potentially make or break social connections.
- The campus is surprisingly lax (unless it involves alcohol, gambling or sex; it's a Catholic University, after all) - but campus accommodation are semi-prisons.
- Membership of socs and clubs decline by 90% over the course of the year.
- All socs and clubs are run by students - as such a lot of them are so badly maintained it's amazing they even manage to set up shop for freshers'
week. Some are suffocatingly insular, and just have new members sign-up primarily for the grant. Others will turn out to be great. Football and rugby are, of course, special cases. - The money that is exchanged between student and university is crazily different depending on background. Wonder why points for medicine are so high? The presence of non-eu students who have to pay €44K annually in fees is a large part of the answer.
- There are two types of mature student: the ones who are serous about getting a qualification for employment, the other who does it
primarily as an interest. Nether takes any shít, but you may grow to love the former and become weary of the latter.
5 - UCD is big; like really big. Know people going into Science or Arts? Prepare to never see them again after the first week.
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OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »
Hope you don't mind some additions.- The most important study you do all year will be for Module registration. Module difficult and interest varies greatly, an hour of research in July will save you 10 hours in December and May
- People living on campus will usually drink more and have more sex than people living off campus. People living at home will be jealous of this.
- People living at home will eat better and sleep better than people living on campus. People living on campus will be jealous of this.
- 90% of the smokers in UCD do it just so they can stand outside the library and chat during exam time.
- The college newspapers, the SU in general and the sabbatical officers are 3 parts of the same giant circle jerk.
- Elections are exciting in first year, academically interesting in second year, annoying in third year and downright infuriating in fourth year. But they're also a uniquely college experience.
- The type of people who were cool in school, will not be cool in college.
- Girls who were hot in school will often not be hot in college.
- For the next 4 years and never again, hoodies will be acceptable for all events all times of the year.
0 - The most important study you do all year will be for Module registration. Module difficult and interest varies greatly, an hour of research in July will save you 10 hours in December and May
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OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »Saw this and thought I'd add to it.
Might be some useful information: there's always a harder way to find this stuff out!- UCD is big; like really big. Know people going into Science or Arts? Prepare to never see them again after the first week.
- Wonder why points for medicine are so high? The presence of non-eu students who have to pay €44K annually in fees is a large part of the answer.
That first point makes no sense. Very, very easy to meet the same people, over and over in 1st year Science. And you just chat to new people everyday, so eventually you know most people, problem solved. It isn't that hard to spot someone in a lecture theatre and sit beside them the next day regardless.
The second point is also fairly... inaccurate. The Government has a limit on the amount of Irish doctors that the Universities can churn out in a year. UCD can accommodate more than that limit, so they fill up the rest of the spaces with internationals. The Malaysian/North American/other medical students do not continue on as interns here, so UCD (and the other Irish Universities) maintain a constant amount of outgoing medical students each year, within the Government-assigned quota.0 - UCD is big; like really big. Know people going into Science or Arts? Prepare to never see them again after the first week.
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beardedmaster wrote: »That first point makes no sense. Very, very easy to meet the same people, over and over in 1st year Science. And you just chat to new people everyday, so eventually you know most people, problem solved. It isn't that hard to spot someone in a lecture theatre and sit beside them the next day regardless.
Well someone's proud of having quickly mastered the art of strategic lecture sitting.
Nah, really, I entered a course with three people from school; the two that I wasn't close enough to be "friends" with I didn't see from one exam to the next. It really depends on whether the course has hundreds, or dozens of people, whether there are practicals/tutorials and how they are broken up, whether the people in one option you're in are in your other options, etc.beardedmaster wrote: »The second point is also fairly... inaccurate. The Government has a limit on the amount of Irish doctors that the Universities can churn out in a year. UCD can accommodate more than that limit, so they fill up the rest of the spaces with internationals. The Malaysian/North American/other medical students do not continue on as interns here, so UCD (and the other Irish Universities) maintain a constant amount of outgoing medical students each year, within the Government-assigned quota.
... it's not as if we are oversupplied with Irish doctors. :rolleyes: Forgive my cynicism, but I'd look at underlying motivations for such a cap; and monetary incentives are not to be underestimated. It is no coincidence, also, that there is a specifically separate course of undergraduate medicine, dedicated to graduate entry.0 -
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If UCD Connect goes down you can still access Blackboard from elearning : https://elearning.ucd.ie/
If you're in science and you're allocated a tutorial time that you have to wait around all day to go to try to get another time. Most of the time the lectures will be in the morning and labs in the afternoon. You could have lectures ending at 12pm and then have to wait around until 4pm for a tutorial. Find out when the others are on either by asking people or looking it up in the module description on SISweb. I had to wait for a gap of 6 hours on a Friday for a maths tutorial before heading home for the weekend, did it for a few weeks then just went to another one.
Also if you're doing science don't bother with a parking permit for the paid carparks. You'll have lectures starting at 9am at least 4 out of 5 days per week so if you're coming in at that time there is loads of free parking.
As soon as a textbook is mentioned go and find it in the library. Even if you have no intention of using it that day. UCD only have a few copies of books and in science a few hundred people could be after them. You can get it and renew it up to the point someone requests it and when that happens just photocopy the relevant sections.
Look for a pdf of textbooks if it's something that you'll be using for just one module.
The group study rooms are newer in the Health Science library but you have to be more quiet.
If a lecture ends early use the time to skip lunch queues, this is especially important in Pi (Science Building), Readers (Library) and Pulse (Health Science). You could spend half of your lunch break standing in a queue. Lunch in UCD is generally 1pm - 2pm. That's when you'll find the longest queues.
After lunch around 2 or 3pm the car parks will start to free up again. I was never left without parking after coming in after 1.30pm for my afternoon labs. If you have an appointment and you could be back in UCD for 11am forget coming back. You'll just be driving around until the spaces free up after lunch. Absolute nightmare, just write off the morning half of your day and come in after lunch. Best thing for science students is if it's a local appointment come in for your 9 and 10am lectures, leave at 11am and come back from your appointment at about 1pm to get parking.
Sometimes the UCD wifi network can be useless. Set up Eudoroam as an alternative, the instructions are on the UCD IT site.
You will get found out if you plagiarise. You have to submit assignments electronically via blackboard and Safe Assign scans the document and it lights up anywhere you've pulled something from the web with the exact location given. In first year it'll be a warning but later it won't be.
If you are ill, family bereavement etc. get some supporting evidence (a doctor's note) and fill out an extenuating circumstances form for whatever practical, assignment submission date or tutorial you missed. Usually in science if you miss a tutorial worth something or a lab then the marks allocated for that one will be spread across the remaining ones so if you had 5 tutorials worth 10%, 2% each and you miss one for a good reason then you'll be left with 4 at 2.5%. If you need more time for an assignment for a good reason you may be able to sort this out with the lecturer directly and not fill out an extenuating circumstances form.
Some lecturers in science ask you to print the lecture notes they put up on Blackboard and bring them to the lecture. There's a good reason for this, there are black spaces in your notes that need to be filled in
. You do not want to discover this during revision week.
The lecturers can see usage statistics on Blackboard for their modules. They know if you've only been on it a few times the first week and again in revision week. This may come into consideration if you're on a borderline grade.
Some lecturers take attendance but don't allocate any marks for attendance. It's so they can get an idea of numbers of people attending lectures and correlate attendance with pass rate. Even though there is nothing going for attendance you can bet that if you're on a borderline grade that they'll check.
If you are unfortunate enough to have a lecture scheduled in Newstead you're going to be late for it if your preceding lecture is in the main area of campus and you're going to be late for the subsequent one. It's way out by the water tower by the Clonskeagh entrance.
Join L&H during Freshers Week because the card they give has good discounts.
If you're in science stay in contact with your fellow peer mentees. At least you recognise someone to sit beside in lectures and some of my best friends were found via the people I met that first week. I still talk to most of the original group weekly and whenever we bump into each other on campus we'd still recognise each other. You'll find that after second year the science course breaks up to give smaller classes for designated degree programmes and it's really at this point that you'll become closer to people. Science is great for making friends because we spend so much time in the labs and usually it's with the same group of people because it's done alphabetically. It's not like you go to lectures and then disappear.
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Ilyana 2.0 wrote: »You'll get so much more out of college life if you make a big effort to attend class nights out or events, even if you're not a big drinker and only want to stay for predinks. There's a big difference between chatting to someone in class and becoming friends with them outside of class.
Commit to engaging in only a couple of societies/clubs, as you'll get more out of it than subscribing to all of them and participating in none.
The canteen food is actually nicer than you'd think. The staff on the tills are pretty stern though...
Centra is always packed at lunchtime. Avoid unless necessary. And if you live on campus, try to find somewhere off-campus to do your food shopping.
Election time is incredibly annoying. Tell them you've already voted or, if necessary, resort to b*itchy resting face and earphones.
Going on at least one class trip is definitely worth it.
If your degree is split across two faculties (e.g. law with history), don't expect either faculty to engage with the other at all. Also, you're in for some rotten timetables.
If you want favours from your classmates (notes from missed lectures etc.), it's probably best to be willing to do the same.
Don't freak about exams. You'll get through them.
The RDS will be roasting for Christmas exams and freezing for summer ones. Dress accordingly, and, for the love of god, don't forget your student card.
wow last exams I sat in RDS were with a profession body - ACCA. Didn't realise UCD didn't have enough space on it's campus to host all its own examinations. That being said, I never studied at UCD 0 -
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where off campus can you do food shopping? i.e. where is the nearest supermarket?
Dundrum or Merrion Shopping Centre if you want a long walk, or Blackrock if you want a long wait for the 17 bus. The options aren't great in all honesty.ZeroThreat wrote: »wow last exams I sat in RDS were with a profession body - ACCA. Didn't realise UCD didn't have enough space on it's campus to host all its own examinations. That being said, I never studied at UCD
Hardly any exams take place on campus ('cept Smurfit... which is off campus for most...).
O Reilly Hall would be the only place big enough to accommodate several thousand students... but far too pleasant a place for exams.
~
Oh one last one- Before you do group work you'll highly anticipate it.
- After you do group work you'll realise there are three types of people in groupwork. The person who disappears, is uncontactable and does nothing. The obnoxious type who thinks of themselves as a Project Leader and will feel they own everything related to the group (and may ignore/reject work done by other members). The quiet people who do most of the work and get little credit.
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