what is ucd really like?

conbob

i thinkin of goin there next year but i've heard its way too big and that the courses are just thrown together. i.e. read an article in the newspaper sayin that students didnt know anything about there exams and it was only 2 weeks before they should start! seems like a waste for the amount of points you need to get into the college

Paul Tergat

I've a feeling that you are going to get very mixed responses.... some people love it, some loathe it, just really depends on how you approach it!

you picked up on the exams problems - admin in ucd (paticularly around exam time) is pretty awful, thinks being left late etc.


if you do go for UCD id advise you to go for campus, as even if you are on a course where it may be hard to make friends there'll be plenty of opportunity for you to get to know some people

incidentally, which course(s) are you looking at?

conbob

commerce. maybe with french maybe with italian maybe neither. havent decided yet but definitely commerce anyways

Paul Tergat

well just commerce on its own is a very big class but commerce international tends to be much smaller classes and so you have to think which one will suit you best.

i do business and law and find a lot of the commerce subjects to be...errr..bullshítty to be honest (just my opinion).

i dont know the situation with horizons but im sure that you can pick subjects to do with your degree so maybe you could do commerce but say chose and italian elective?

conbob

yep but what if i wanna do both of em. then id pick commerce with whatever and language elective. are bigger classes not better. more peple so theres more people your get on with?

Paul Tergat

conbob wrote:

are bigger classes not better. more peple so theres more people your get on with?

I think that would be very person dependent, personally id prefer it as like you say there are more to get on with but others may see it as daunting and become more isolated than in a smaller, closer class.

i dont want to sound all doom and gloom though, if you want to do commerce go for it in UCD (i take it you've seen the Quinn School?) and im sure you'll make friends etc. even if you're not keen on the people on the course (which again is dependent on what you make of it) there'll be people who live around you and also there are so many societies to take part in.

i would say if you choose UCD get involved in as much as you can from the start!

TheVan

I just finished B&L on monday and....

I don't think UCD is too big. I wouldn't say I know huge amounts of people but if I walk from Quinn down to arts, I'll meet someone I know 90% of the time

B&L is split into 3 groups of 50 which is much better for getting to know people! You start with your group and work your way out until you get to know the year.

Admin can be a pain in the ass but you'll survive. A lot of the rants in the media and in this forum (I'm guilty of this!) are borne out of frustration at a stressful time.

I would reccomend you do a course with some specialisation. Think about it. 300 graduates with Commerce, 10 (??) with Commerce and Italian....

I loved my 4 years in UCD and I would recommend you go there. Like any college, it is what you make it!

Good luck in the leaving cert!

maxi-twist

conbob wrote:

are bigger classes not better. more peple so theres more people your get on with?

Commerce has around 300 people in it,but these are divided into lots of classes.Cant remember how many? 5-8 i think,so in actual fact your class is quite small,i think theres around 40 in every class.

But then there are the lectures in economics,accountiong etc. with about 500 people in them.So really you get both.

Pride Fighter

UCD is a big place. The best way to make friends is in smaller classes. In the bigger ones I see a lot of cliqueiness ,ie, people hanging out with their pals from their old school. This is conservative and is not what University is all about in my view. In smaller classes you can make friends easier, it is less cliquey. Society involvement is also a good way to make friends. On the whole if I was to sum up UCD in a sentence I would say it is a big place with the potential to tailor your needs as a student, if you have the will to get involved.

Stabshauptmann

conbob wrote:

commerce. maybe with french maybe with italian maybe neither. havent decided yet but definitely commerce anyways

I just finished (more or less) a BCOMM in UCD, and I loved it.

Classes are around 40 people, as said before. There is a lot of group work, presentations and just general ice breakers in first year so it would be impossible not to get to know everyone in your class.

The courses, in commerce you do 3 years. The first is basically a recap of LC Business, accounting, maths, and economics. There is some expansion but you could probably pass the year by just going on what you did in LC (if you did well in higher level papers in these subjects).
In second year you do a wide range of subjects, Human Resources, marketing, Finance, etc etc that will mostly be new.
Then in third year, you specialise in one of these areas. So, new people in every class.
There are some wishy washy subjects, but each mode is 10 subjects (plus two electives).

Though there might be 300 commerce graduates this year, only about 50 of them are in my mode and its your specialisation employers will be interested in.

singingstranger

Hi Conbob, I'm in 3rd Year Commerce & German, currently on exchange in Passau in Germany. Commerce Intl is a really nicely knit group, it's very similar to Commerce but because there are only 80 people in the year across the four languages you will be in a single Commerce-style group of 40 students, many of whom you'll see again for your own smaller language classes and stuff (you take these directly alongside the Arts students doing your language of choice so you get to make good friends with some of them too). This way you make really close friends in your language group and still get a lot of interaction, as Kaptain said, with the rest of your year.

Most of the subjects are quite similar to the BComm degree so you get some of your lectures in the bigger theatres with a few hundred people aswell if that's more your thing.

valor

its ****, dont go there

Stabshauptmann

valor wrote:

its ****, dont go there

What a great post, so articulate and convincing.

princess-sprkle

valor wrote:

its ****, dont go there

wow, his mind is made now!

seriously - UCD is no better/worse than any other college.
The admin dept however has to be the worst part of ucd, complete mess.
its what you make of it really, theres plenty of oppertunities to meet new people, do new things and that.
personally, while i don't love it here, i far from hate it either.

fatal

valor wrote:

its ****, dont go there

....someone's exams didn't go to well;)

Umaro

And in 2nd Year of Commerce you can do Study Abroad for one semester.. I'm in Sydney right now and loving every second!

tywy

If you want to go into business and you want to do a business degree, pick Commerce in UCD. I know a few people in business and they say if they got the exact same student with the exact same marks, same everything, the only thing that set them apart was the fact that one did a BComm in UCD and the other did BESS in Trinity, they'd pick the UCD student, supposedly it's more highly regarded than the Trinity one.

From what I hear of Commerce too, it sounds like it's really easy to make friends if you want to, as was said before, loads of group projects and assignments.

Admin are pretty **** but I'd say they'll have to pull themselves together for next year, I bet someone got a bollocking for what happened for the summer exams. I wouldn't let that make your decision.

funky penguin

You really shouldn't let the exams thingy affect your decision. Its only a small slice of UCD life.

Paul Tergat

I disagree to be honest

exams for me are a massive part of going to uni and the way that UCD approaches them really pisses me off

Garret

i had no trouble with the exams at xmas or summer

well microeconomics left out my CA when giving me my grade but that was fixed after a while

Stabshauptmann

Garret wrote:

i had no trouble with the exams at xmas or summer

well microeconomics left out my CA when giving me my grade but that was fixed after a while

there used to be a nice handy way of checking what portion of your grade was CA and what was from exams. But after the xmas hack they removed the function.

Garret

Kaptain Redeye wrote:

there used to be a nice handy way of checking what portion of your grade was CA and what was from exams. But after the xmas hack they removed the function.

they got rid of that?!

if it werent for that i wouldnt have realised their mistake and had to settle for a pass by compensation

and i was the only one who had the same problem

banana-were-cat

hey conbob, im thinking of goin there next year too. i'll be your friend.