This is the transcript for the video Info Day 2022 – Starting your journey at UTS Business School
Dr Amanda White
Hi, everybody, and welcome to those people who are coming in Welcome. Welcome. Get yourself comfy. It’s lunchtime; so I hope everybody’s having a good day so far. Patricia, what are going to be your plans for lunch today?
Patricia – UTS Business School
Actually I just had lunch? Made some I don’t know if you know this, but tomato and egg with rice.
Dr Amanda White
Oh, yes, my favorite love tomato and egg
Patricia – UTS Business School
Made that really quickly. So yeah, ate that before this.
Dr Amanda White
Nice I’ve been making that a lot, my garden has so many fresh tomatoes that I just can’t eat them fast enough. So tomato and egg my kids are like, are you gonna make something else other than tomato and egg? But yeah, they’re on to eating sandwiches. So I hope everybody’s having a good day. We’re just going to give it a couple of minutes. My name is Amanda. I’ll be hosting the webinar today. And we have Patricia with us as well. She’s one of our students doing a Bachelor of Business and a Bachelor of Law and we hope to answer all of your questions in relation to all things Business here at UTS. Our number is sort of stabilising so we might get started.
Hi, it’s good to have everybody here today. My name is Amanda, and I teach Accounting. Please don’t hold that against me. And I’m Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head – Education. So I’m responsible for all things, education in all of our Accounting subjects. And I’m also the Coordinator for Accounting and Accountability, which is the very first subject, one of the very first subjects you’ll encounter in a Business program at UTS. And I have with me Patricia, Patricia is doing a Bachelor of Business and a Bachelor of Law. And am I right in saying that you are in your last year Patricia?
Patricia – UTS Business School
Yeah, I’m in my fifth and final year, hopefully
Dr Amanda White
Yay, it must be so exciting to get ready to leave uni and leave UTS. So I’m going to start off today, as we do all of our formal events here at UTS with an Acknowledgement of Country. I’d like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands. I would also like to pay respect to Elders both past and present, acknowledging that they are the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land. And I’d also like to acknowledge that today I’m on Darug country. So hello to anybody who is also on Dharug country. I’m out around the Blacktown area. So hello to anybody else who’s another Westie, just like me. So we’re going to answer all of your questions today about Business. This session is going to be recorded; well it is recording right now. We’re recording Patricia and I and the screenshare. If you ask a question, we won’t identify who has asked that question so that your privacy is maintained on our recording, and the recording will be available to you. They’ll be sent to you after Info Day. Now of course, we want plenty of questions. So you can use the Q&A box. If you use Zoom before the Q&A box is probably nothing new. You can also use the chat. I’m going to just say hi everyone coming to you from Marsden Park, which is where I am I’m really close to an Ikea. We love IKEA Swedish Meatballs. So Hi. And Patricia, what part of Sydney are you coming from today?
Patricia – UTS Business School
I’m down to southwest so near like Cabramatta, Liverpool, around there.
Dr Amanda White
Awesome. I could go with some crispy chicken, crispy chicken or rice in Cabramatta definitely today. So you can ask questions using the Q&A or using the chat. And we’ll answer those as we go through. So anything you think about just ask them if it’s the right time for me to answer that in the presentation I’ll answer it otherwise I’ll save it for a little bit later.
I’ve been at UTS as an academic now for; this is my 20th year; two decades. Prior to that I was an auditor and Senior Consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. So I’ve had quite a lot of experience in the business world as well as in the academic world.
We’ve got a jam-packed agenda, and I’m going to start with our COVID-19 response. So the question I get asked most on social media, and you can catch me on Instagram. If you just search @Amandalovestoaudit, I’m on Instagram; I talk about uni life, things related to UTS Business News, study news, graduate recruitment, accounting. But, you know, the biggest question; the most popular question I get asked is what is happening in 2022? Right now, you know, we’re planning to come back onto campus in a way that is safe, lots of personal hygiene, mask-wearing, etc. However, we’re following government advice and recommendations and our COVID-19 taskforce. If you’re a person who would prefer not to come onto campus and would like an online option in the majority of our subjects, there are also online options for students who have that particular requirement, especially those who may have a health issue, where they might not want to put themselves or their families at risk, if you’re a carer. Now, we’re pretty experienced at teaching online, you can see here, I’m actually in my online, my home teaching studio. So over the years, the last two years, certainly, we’ve worked really hard to develop our online learning. And the course that I teach, or the course that I did teach up until the end of last year, was rated as one of the best courses in the university for teaching online. So we have lots and lots of expertise at delivering good, engaging classes online. And I know that lots of people have probably had a lot of pandemic sort of information. A question here, is this the same as the business pathways info session 1? Yes. So if you came to see me at 10 o’clock, this is all going to be the same information. So nothing new, unless you have a new question that you want to ask it is the same one. So I won’t feel bad if you wish to duck out and have some lunch, or chat to some of the other booths that are available.
So what about your ATAR and your selection rank? Yesterday was ATAR day; add to that any adjustment points that you might have for your selection rank. And remember that your selection rank, it’s not a gift card. It’s not like you know, you get a gift card 100 bucks from grandma for Christmas, and you go to, like Cotton On are somewhere and you, you know, you’ve picked $60 worth of stuff. And you have to think, oh, man, what am I going to buy with the other $40, I got to spend the rest of my gift card so that nothing goes to waste. The ATAR and your selection rank is not a gift card, you don’t necessarily need to choose the course that has the highest ATAR if you’re not interested in doing that. So I want you to make sure that you think about what courses are the ones you’re most interested in, and it might be one of our business courses, it might be a course somewhere else. But really think about what is the course that’s going to be best for you. And then picking a course that suits. As a guide, like I got many, many years ago (before you were all born) 97.95, which is pretty good. And I went into a course that was UTS Business, I went into that course and it was 82 I think; people said look you’re wasting your ATAR. But it was the course that really suited me; suited what I wanted to do and my goals. And I’m really happy that you know, I didn’t listen to those people who said, maybe you should go to Sydney or UNSW. This ended up being the best course for me in the job that I was in at the time. Patricia, when you were making your choices was Law and Business what you always wanted to go into.
Patricia – UTS Business School
Yeah, I think for me Law and Business was my first preference. So um, I was definitely considering like a lot of different unis for that specific course. But after the Law and Business, definitely Bachelor of Business was my second preference after that.
Dr Amanda White
Yeah, so Bachelor of Business was my first preference. And I really liked UTS because it was close to public transport. So I obviously come a very long way to go to uni, or I went I travelled a very long way to go to uni, and just other universities, you know, might have had the sandstone and those things, but I just didn’t want another 25 minute bus ride. Especially if I wanted to go to uni at night. And I really discovered you know so much about understanding Sydney as a city as well, from going to a campus that is really so central to everything. Patricia, can I get you to talk quickly about the selection ranks just for one second while I close my office door, because one of my little kids just wandered in ad left the door open and now I can hear them arguing about Pokemon Diamond. So I’m just going to close it in case it comes up with all of our recordings.
Patricia – UTS Business School
Sure. Um, so for the selection rounds we have listed here, the 2021 selection ranks for different courses for last year. And I think those are just a guide for what you can expect to know, as the benchmark, for like admission for this year, so I think just take them as a guide and don’t really hold them to too strictly I think.
Dr Amanda White
Yeah, and if you’ve done Business Studies, it’s supply and demand. So we just we rank every single student, according to the information that UAC gives us. And then we go down the number of places and the very last student that ends up being the cutoff. So how do you get a, you know, extra adjustment points? Well, there’s the Year 12 Subject Scheme. So if you score in top bands in particular subjects, you can get up to five extra points. So if you had 87, you can get up to five extra points that would take your selection rank to 92. You don’t need to apply they’re all automatically added.
There’s also a Cadetship Scheme; so I did a cadetship. I came to university part time and I worked full time. So check out the UTS Business Cadetship page for information. Because if you have one of these, regardless of your ATAR, you could be given a guaranteed place into our program. And the reason I chose you UTS was because I needed to be able to study part time and there’s been a lot of flexibility. So I could go to class at night, I could have class in the day. And a lot of our students, especially during COVID-19 times have taken to perhaps working their job in the day, and then doing online class in the afternoons and the evenings to give themselves a little bit more flexibility if they didn’t want to come onto campus. So applications are still open if you’re interested, or you have a cadetship. I found for me, the practical nature of UTS really, really helpful. All of the special guests from industry, the fact that we work very closely with a lot of businesses, a lot of startups really made a difference. It wasn’t just textbook learning, it was real-life scenarios.
We also have the inpUTS scheme, which is to help students who have had long term disadvantage that impacted their school results vocational university education, you can get up to 10 extra points with that. So definitely check out inpUTS if you’ve been affected. This could include; you might have had caring responsibilities for a parent, if a parent was unwell and you’ve had to care for siblings over your HSC then certainly think about that. I’ve had a student who was a refugee, and she came to the country not knowing any English. In five years, she’d managed to learn English; complete her HSC and we gave her some extra points. And she’s just gone into a fantastic graduate job. But yeah, she was offered actually a film production accounting role, which was to be an accountant, on location, with movies, which she turned down as she wanted something with a bit more stability, but there’s really great opportunities available.
Now there’s a question that says here, do you need to have experience or previous previous work in business to apply to our undergraduate programs? Absolutely not. Most of our students might have had a part time job but there is no experience requirements in our undergraduate business degrees. For our postgraduate degrees of course, if you have an undergraduate degree, you can get entry into many of our postgraduate programs. For some of our postgraduate programs, they will have work experience requirements and in some instances, if you’ve not had any previous formal study, in some small circumstances relevant work experience; can be used as a replacement for those. So I hope for that person that helps to answer your question there. Let me just close that. Too many little buttons open.
Okay, so what about pathways? Lots of people don’t end up with the ATAR that they’d like and are still keen to come to UTS, which is fantastic. There are a number of different pathways. The first one is UTS College Diploma. UTS College has a booth here you can talk to them. It’s a private institution associated with UTS. If you complete a diploma there, you’ll come straight into second year at UTS in your program. There is a TAFE diploma which you can do. Do the TAFE diploma, get really good marks in that and then apply through UAC for entry into our second year. Or you could do a similar course at another university. So something like a Bachelor of Accounting at Macquarie or at Western Sydney, or one of their Bachelors of Commerce that has a lower entrance rank; work really hard, get really great scores, and then again, apply to transfer into UTS. Wherever you’re looking to do that, whether that’s through TAFE or through university really dedicate yourself because we rank applicants based on personal statement and performance to get any of these places because inevitably students do realize; oh look business might not be for them and we do have spaces become available as students drop out.
So what about course options? Bachelor of Business is our most popular degree at UTS. It’s one of our largest programs. And it’s also I think, the second most popular first preference within the UAC system. So once all the offers are finalized tonight we’ll get some statistics about what is most popular. And UTS Bachelor of Business has been number two most popular behind Nursing for the last couple of years.
So who’s the degree for? Those people who want to understand how a business operates, be involved in some form of business career. For example, that could be accounting related; it could be marketing related, human resources, economics, Patricia What is your major that you’re doing as part of your double degree?
Patricia – UTS Business School
So I’m currently majoring in Finance as part of my business degree.
Dr Amanda White
And what what exactly would you describe as finance jobs? Often people work in finance; students might not understand what that means. What are finance jobs?
Patricia – UTS Business School
Yeah, from my understanding, I feel like finance is very broad, you can kind of go into very, like different aspects of finance, you’ve got like your banking, investment banking, some finance people going into consulting and they work more on like financial; in the financial industry. There’s like, a lot of different like in-house or like within the industry specific industries, like, you know, retail or like fast moving consumer goods, or have like in-house finance positions, which you can do. So I think finance just encompasses a very broad range of like different jobs, I think.
Dr Amanda White
And when you came to UTS, did you know that finance was going to be the major you wanted to pick?
Patricia – UTS Business School
No, definitely not. I feel like I always thought of myself as more of like a HR, marketing type of person. But then, you know, after first year, and going through the different subjects, I kind of realized I was more inclined to a more quantitative base, like majors like finance. Yeah.
Dr Amanda White
And this is where there’s that great benefit at UTS of everybody does the same eight core subjects, you get exposed to every facet of business; you get to meet industry professionals in the classes, they talk about what the roles are like and, and what the rest of your studies might look like. And then you decide at the end of your first year, okay, I definitely am keen on accounting, or finance or marketing or human resources, or economics. So everyone does the core, they then get to choose their major. And then you can choose eight other subjects, either as a second major or there’s sub-major and elective combinations. And you can even choose electives from different parts of the university. I have one of my current PhD students, when she was an undergraduate was really into fashion. And she did a whole lot of electives from design and architecture. And she said, it was just so great, you know, she would study accounting, and then she’d have to go and look at, like theory of patent design, or understanding color. So there’s lots of different options, if you’ve got some passions that are outside of business that you think maybe how could I combine these with a business career?
Now, you might think the Bachelor of Management is that just about management? It’s a very specific subset of the management disciplines. So the Bachelor of Management is for people who are keen on experience industry. So industries related to, you know, recreational and leisure, or business experiences. So that could include events, sport, tourism, digital creative enterprises, or small sport business as well. So if and have a chat with the team at the Bachelor of Management, because I believe some of the people who teach specifically in this area on the booth today. So if you’re keen on, we have in the Bachelor of Business brochure, or sorry, the Business Undergraduate brochure, there’s some great profiles of students who have gone into sport business, sport management types of areas.
Alright, I saw the question here about double degrees. I’m going to talk about that when we get to the double degree section. That’s a really great question.
So the structure of the Bachelor of Management is similar to the structure for the Bachelor of Business. And then we have a Bachelor of Economics. I came to university more than 20 years ago, thinking economics was like, I loved my high school economics teacher, and I really thought I enjoyed high school economics, which I did. And then I got to uni and economics just wasn’t what I thought it was. But for those people who are really keen on economics, we have a Bachelor of Economics. It has a slightly different structure, because it’s very specialized, and it’s highly leveraged into economics. You will do 15 economics subjects, sorry, 14 economics subjects, I just realized I couldn’t add (not great for an accountant) 11 core subjects and 3 economics electives and then you will have 2 business electives, and then 8 other subjects. So students who do the Bachelor of Economics go into jobs with places like Deloitte, Access Economics Consulting, Economists at banks, advisors for government as well, can be really popular from that economics perspective.
We also have a Bachelor of Accounting. I just want to note that the Bachelor of Accounting intake for 2022 has closed. This is a Co-Op scholarship program that in May of each year opens for application; students apply; and then if they get through the application process, they come to a whole day assessment process, or I think it’s three quarters of a day assessment process for this very exclusive program. There are only about 30 spaces available and these are high achieving students who know they want accounting as their career. It comes with a $51,000 scholarship. If you’re in, if you’re going into year 12, this year, interested in accounting, definitely check out the Bachelor of Accounting UTS. Just put that into any search engine. But our 2022 intake is currently closed. If you’re really still keen on accounting, and you’ve missed the deadline for the Bachelor of Accounting, I really suggest the Bachelor of Business. Probably a good 400 students out of our 2000 intake, choose the Accounting major each year to go with their Bachelor of Business. So it’s still a really popular way to be able to do that.
So let’s look at combined degrees, because somebody mentioned a combined degree question, and I’ll talk about combined degrees, and then I’ll answer that combined degree question. There’s lots of different combinations. So Patricia, as you know, chose business and law. When you do a combined degree, there are some restrictions that result in maybe only doing one major, so that the degree doesn’t take you six or more years. There’s lots of different combinations you can check out in our handbook. So you can combine the Bachelor of Business with pretty much everything. The Bachelor of Economics with a small subset of things, and the Bachelor of Management with a small subset as well. Now a question came through through the Q&A that said, Well, if I do a double degree like business and IT, and I decided to drop down to just my business degree, can you still do two majors? That’s a really good question. And that will depend on how far through the business degree you are; uh your double degree. If you’ve only done say, one or two semesters, what will happen is you will be able to drop down to the single degree but any IT subjects that you’ve done, depending on how many; may have to go into electives, or a sub major. That’ll still give you a sub-major to play with but it’s really difficult to do the full major unless you did only Bachelor of Business subjects first, but then that would sort of defeat the purpose of doing a double degree there.
Does UTS offer a major in Business Analytics? No. So data analytics, and data science is something you would do in the IT; the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology. So that’s where you would do that. In terms of Business Analytics, I believe there is a sub-major in Business Analytics coming on board but I’ve no word yet of a business analytics major. But you can choose to major in something like finance, and then go off and do enough, you know, eight other subjects from data science, in the Faculty of Engineering and IT. So essentially give yourself enough subjects to create a major in data analytics, or sorry, in business analytics, but it’s not labeled as such at this point.
And if you choose the BCII in business in a double degree, can you still choose two majors? Yes, that is one of the few areas where you still choose two majors because the BCII has winter and summer break. So if you do BCII, just a word of warning, they have Autumn session which is coming up, they do a Winter session, they have Spring session, and they have Summer session. So if you’re thinking; like I want long summer breaks, then the BCII is not for you. They run almost all year round in a really, really intensive program.
Alright, internships, that would be something I’ll talk about in a little bit.
Someone said, how would you give yourself enough subjects? I think that’s probably in relation to the business analytics question. If you did a major, you have eight extra electives. Or you could you could do eight electives. So you could go and choose eight subjects that you thought would help you in business analytics to get you to that point, some of those might be from business. So for example, there is some business analytics subjects in accounting, but some of those might come from data science.
Alright, if BCII is not for me, am I able to transfer just down to Business? Absolutely. And you can file for an adjustment in your course after six months. You have to finish a full semester of study before you can decide to switch from a double degree down to a single degree.
Okay, there’s still an internships question which I’m going to get to. There’s lots of information in a UTS brochures about how combined degrees work together to make sure that you finish in a reasonable period of time. Patricia, you’ve been at uni five years does five years seem like a long time?
Patricia – UTS Business School
Um, I think looking back at it, it didn’t really seem like that long, but I think whenever I hear its been like five years I think Oh, that’s been a long time. But I don’t know, I feel like uni’s just gone by so, so, so quick. And it just doesn’t feel like it’s been five years.
Dr Amanda White
Yeah when students get out into the real world of work they’re like, Oh, I miss uni days. So let’s talk about internships. And we have lots of opportunities for internships at UTS. Patricia has done (I know that we’ve got five minutes to go so I’m trying to get through everything). Patricia did, has done a number of different internships in accounting, in law and there’s lots of different ways. So an internship is a great way to get experience. Graduate employers look for candidates with experience, you get experience by doing internships.
How do you do an internship? Well, if you’re doing the Bachelor of Business, or Bachelor of Economics, there’s actually an internship elective subject that you can do so you can do an internship and get credit for it. And those internships are ones that you have to find yourself. So it says you source the host organization, but we give you support and guidance. And then the UTS Careers Service runs something called CareerHub, which is an online job board plus a whole lot of other tools to help you develop your career and professional skills, and land the internship that you’re after. So there are internship options in the Bachelor of Business, Economics, Management and the Bachelor of Accounting, which is a little bit different. The Bachelor of Accounting students get an internship given to them, everybody else has to find one. But you also can do an internship outside of the separate subject. So most accounting students will do a summer internship with a public accounting firm audit, or tax or risk management or private clients in the December and January period, over the summer break in their second last year. So there are lots of different opportunities for internships.
In terms of international opportunities, we have three different ways in which you can get international experience – Build, which is short 4-week programs. Exchange, which is going to be when you can do basically the equivalent of an entire semester overseas. And if you want to really delve deeply, you can combine your degree with International Studies, so that you can spend an entire six months or up to one year overseas, so that can be quite good. Obviously, there’s been some issues with COVID and international experiences. Sometimes these international experiences now are even virtual. So I know that Patricia is typing some responses here, just to questions in the chat. But I know that Patricia did a law internship. And she did a law international sort of experience for four weeks with a company in China. So there’s lots of ways to get some international exposure. I wish I’d done an exchange just didn’t even think about it. But if you have some electives, you can take four electives, and go on exchange to the United States, Mexico, Australia, the UK, Canada, 40 different countries where you can go. And even if you don’t speak the language, there are a significant number of those 40 countries teach classes in English, so that’s a good option as well.
Scholarships, I just want to remind everybody here, we have lots of scholarships available. Sometimes scholarships don’t get given out because nobody applied. So just jump onto uts.edu.au/scholarships, and see if there is anything that you might be able to apply for and just tip your hat into the ring. There’s also prizes and things in different subjects if you come top of a particular subject, or you’re the top Accounting student in second year, prizes also are given out across the Business faculty.
Now as we get towards the end, Patricia, what is going to be your top tip for students coming onto campus and studying with us at UTS in 2022.
Patricia – UTS Business School
Um, I think one of my top tips would just be to get involved and be proactive, I think in terms of just getting involved on campus, whether it’s extracurricular wise, or just being responsible with your own study, like if you don’t understand things, basic help, just being really proactive and engaged. I think that’s how you get the most out of uni experience.
Dr Amanda White
Oh, awesome. My top tip is really to, you know, this is the time to step out of your comfort zone. Nobody knows who you are, unless you’re coming to uni with other people. So this is your chance to figure out who you are, what you want to do. And you know, definitely just lean into those opportunities. Say like, yeah, I might join a club or a year I might go to something even if I don’t know anybody. It’s a really great way to get to meet people university experience is really only as good as what you get to put into that, whether that’s online or physically on campus.
So if you want more information, make sure you check out our Business Undergraduate course guide. For International Students definitely contact UTS International, because scholarships do exist for international students. Usually those scholarships are percentage discounts on your fees for meeting specific criterias. If you have an international student query, contact UTS International. Or you can contact us at business@uts.edu.au and they can put you in touch with an international student consultant there.
And thank you to my business school team who just said, look, we have our advisory hub, you can come and get in touch with us at the hub. We have academics and students on hand to answer your questions for the rest of the day. And of course, if you do want to get in touch with me on social, you can contact me on Instagram, on my account just there @amandalovestoaudit. I talk a lot about students studying at UTS, hints, tips, etc.
And are international students allowed? Everyone’s allowed back on campus. Yeah, so everyone’s allowed back on campus. Of course at the moment we have mask wearing, and we have social distancing so all of those things are in place. If you forget your mask on campus, that’s fine, go to the security office, and they’ll be able to provide you with a disposable mask for the day.
But I look forward to welcoming everybody who’s coming to UTS into Accounting and Accountability in a couple of weeks time. I think it’s about four weeks until we go live with our first classes. So if you’re interested in UTS, please make sure you chat to some of the people at the booth, or you can contact me on social and I look forward to seeing you at one of our welcome events or in first semester in Accounting and Accountability. Big thank you to Patricia, who has been great in giving some of her perspectives as a student you can chat to Patricia at the Bachelor of Business, the Business booth as well. But otherwise, we hope you have a great day from wherever you’re watching our live stream from and we thank you for considering UTS and I hope to see you all soon.