1.6 From high school to uni: What’s the difference?

 

“At school, they give you a little bit of information, and then the next day they do it again, and again, and again, and there’s a bit of revision time in class – you just don’t have that at university. So you’ve got to keep on top of the work and talk to your demonstrators, talk to your lab people, talk to your peers and keep checking you’re on track yourself rather than being told that externally.”

James Hucklesberry, BSc (Biomedical science), 3rd year

“At university, it’s all about independent learning because lectures … are just a way to deliver information to you, but a lot of the times you need to go over it yourself. Most lectures are about 2 or 3 hours a week, but the recommended time for you to spend on one course is 10 hours. So all those other times you have to make up for by studying by yourself.”

Shuhuan Pan, BCom, 2nd year

“So in high school (…) our teacher would kind of just give us a textbook and all of our course would be based around that one textbook, but that’s not the case at university. I find that our lecturers provide their own resources that they’ve come up with themselves. So most of the reading you do is to supplement your learning. Say I’m not understanding anything in class, maybe I’ll go to a textbook that they’ve recommended.”

Misha Garg, BE (Hons) (Biomedical Engineering), 3rd year

 

"My reading experience at school was largely based around what the teacher sort of set us to read, whereas at university it’s more, you know if you’re given an assignment question, you have to go out and you have to find the things, the articles or the textbooks or other reading resources that will contribute to your answer in a meaningful way. So I guess it’s become a lot more self-directed in that way."

Benjamin Wedd, BCom/ BSc, 5th year

 

“Research ranges from a Google search to using scholarly academic databases. However, in the university you’ll be doing a lot more of the scholarly searches (...). But it’s actually pretty OK once you get the hang of it because the main thing would be to understand what you’re searching for.”

Yi Xin, BSW (Social Work), 1st year

 

“At university, you need references and they have to be reputable (...) At high school, I could just get something from Wikipedia or someone’s blog (…) and it wouldn’t matter as long as you had any kind of reference to back [your ideas] up, but at university definitely Wikipedia [shouldn't be the source you rely on].”

Mele Tākai, BNurs, 2nd year

“Each course will have different requirements. For courses such as economics and accounting, they don’t really have essays as such, but they’ll have some format that you have to follow (…). And for things like business, you have to make sure you follow the business style of writing. (…) If you do end up doing a course like that make sure you know what the course wants of you.”

Shuhuan Pan, BCom, 2nd year

"[As you enter university], the nature of the expectations that are placed upon you change, and the way in which you respond to them also has to change, and part of the change is about how you communicate. And of course writing is a key part of communication and the style of writing would vary as you make that transition, but it will also vary on the kind of environment that you’re in (...) the Arts, the Humanities, or the Sciences."

Stuart McCutcheon, former Vice-Chancellor - University of Auckland 

“When they give back your assignment through (…) Canvas, they’ll give you a grade and they’ll give you qualitative feedback. So perhaps they’ll say, ‘oh, no, your topic sentences could be clearer’ and then they’re just gonna end there. They [may not] elaborate. So you have to do some deep introspection and critically evaluate your own essays, so maybe they pointed out some blind spots and after reading you immediately realise ‘oh, I should’ve done this’.”

Yi Xin, BSW (Social Work), 1st year

“You will get feedback for your essays, and that can be helpful. However, it’s normally quite short, and if you really want to know how to improve, you’ll need to approach your lecturers and your tutors. Make sure you’re self-directing your learning because no one’s going to help you or chase you up, so you really need to make sure that you’re doing that yourself.”

Charlotte Adam, LLB (Law), 4th year