University of Melbourne - your website SUCKS.

[agoodwinsmith]

I am completely, but completely annoyed.

I am trying to find out how long a University of Melbourne bachelor's degree is in either time or credits - the equivalent to BC degrees of course, but any website that has the type of information I am looking for will also have the type of information I need in order to compare their credits/units/points/whatever to our credits.

If I want to find out what I need to do in order to complete a Melbourne degree, I need to have applied to the University and have a student account so that I can log into the portal where their grad audit info is kept.  Grad audit for students is excellent; I wish my school had it, but it doesn't help me compare UofMel to my school if I can't see a simple grid saying something like: student needs a total of 120 credits with 48 credits at the upper level and 6 credits of science and 6 credits of social science and blah blah blah.

They have something new that they call The Melbourne Model.  The only way I can find out about that is to watch a freaking video.  I don't have time to watch badly made smugly delivered advertising crap.  I am a fast reader with the ability to skim very rapidly, and if you give me words - printed words - I can find what I am looking for immediately.  With stupid boring horrible videos I have to listen to absolutely every futile piece of slobber in the whole thing - and *is* there something to print to put in an applicant's file? No.

Although it may seem that I have spent more time whining here that I have on the UofMel's website, that would be a wrongo-bongo assumption to jump to.  Being print oriented, I can also type really fast, and even though we are all the way down here already, I have spent less than a tenth of the time I spent fruitlessly clicking linkies on the UofMel's website.

ARRRRRRRRGGHGGHGHGHGGHHGHGHG!

Thank you.  I feel better now. 

Comments

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

I suppose an Official Communication requesting equivalency/transfer credit information from one institute to another cannot be done due to time constraints or some such other bureaucratic reason?

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

The kind of rough and ready information I need should be on the website in plain view. Would you start a degree program without knowing whether it is going to take you three years or four? Is each class one semester long (four months) or one year long (eight months) or some other unit of length?

The biggest problem with a web site is that you can't riffle through the pages letting words catch your eye. I know that there is going to be jargon difference between Canadian Education and Australian Education, but I haven't the least chance of getting a quick handle on the language I should be using in my searches.

And, to return to my original RANT, *really* the information I need should be front and centre, easy to find - it should force itself upon my attention.

For pity's sake - I can find this information on university websites that are in a language that I do not speak - with the help of google translate, of course - but still.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a pretty useless website. What's the point of having a site about if it doesn't tell you anything about ? Eejits.

Course duration

[melbourne university (from livejournal.com)]

Hi agoodwinsmith,

I work for The University of Melbourne and just saw your comments here. I'm not in the admissions team, but I do work in the online space for Marketing, so I'd love to help if I could.

The course search website (http://coursesearch.unimelb.edu.au) is an index of the courses we offer, however there is duration information available - just mouse over the calendar icon for the course you're interested in and it should appear like this http://d.pr/20wV.

If you need more detailed time information about points, either check out the course website (click the green link to the course your after in course search) or visit the handbook at http://handbook.unimelb.edu.au - there appears to be quite detailed information in there about points required for Bachelor degrees.

If you still can't find what you are looking for, you could call or email the Office of Admissions - their contact details are here - http://futurestudents.unimelb.edu.au/contact

Hope this helps.

Paul Tagell

Re: Course duration

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you; this is useful. I find it interesting that this is so easy to find now, and when I was looking, a week ago, every link dumped me into the Student Handbook - a pdf, no less. This is much better. Thank you.