April: What are the differences between university and high school?

Leaving school and starting university can be a very daunting experience for some. However, once you get settled in, it’s far from scary! You’ll adapt to university life in no time, and you will get accustomed to the differences.

The main point to be prepared for when comparing the differences from high school to university is independent learning. Students straight from high school can get a shock when they are encouraged to learn by themselves at university. At high school you are all used to going to school from 9am-3pm every day and having your teacher help you in class and out of class, tell you what to study and how to study.

At university you will have classes for about 12 hours a week - that’s the equivalent of two days of school, so that just shows how little time you have with your lecturer or tutor, so the rest of the learning is up to you. Don’t be misled, though – help is always there and available when you need it. However, you must be independent and try and solve problems yourself.

Decisions and implications of your actions are your responsibility. In high school, parents would always be contacted if you were late, absent, falling behind or got into trouble. At university everything goes through you. As you are now a legal adult, your parents don’t have any say in your university degree, and the decisions you make and the implications of your decisions are your business only.

In first year business at Monash, classes are split up into two types: tutorials and lectures. In the bigger campuses it’s not out of the ordinary to have a couple of hundred in a lecture, whereas at Berwick the numbers are a lot smaller, in most cases. In lectures, the lecturer generally goes through PowerPoint slides and explains material for approximately two hours. Tutorials, however, are completely different – they are more hands on and usually you’ll have about 20 people in your class. Tutes’ generally run for an hour and they are more like your everyday class in high school.

For me personally, I enjoy university life a lot more than high school because now I have so much more freedom and opportunities for my career than ever before.