About studying IT

Advanced students

Advanced courses
Performing well in the HSC or receiving consistently high grades for your IT units of study allows you to enrol in advanced subjects. An advanced unit, e.g. INFO2820 Database Systems 1 (Advanced), usually has a similar name to its general counterpart, INFO2120 Database Systems 1.

There are separate tutorial classes and/or lab classes and the subject material is more challenging, covered in greater depth, and assessed separately. These units often have separate lecture streams.

Students in advanced science degrees must enrol in a certain number of advanced subjects.

Advanced Engineering & IT Program
The Advanced Engineering Program is open to students enrolling in engineering or IT degrees with outstanding academic ability (an ATAR of 98 or higher). It offers the opportunity to defer physics and mathematics in the first year and work in a supervised design group of about six students developing a premise into a working prototype.

Entry to the program is by invitation from the Dean following the release of HSC results. The program is available in all engineering disciplines and continues in Year 2, 3 and 4, enabling students to expand on the skills acquired during the first year.

Special individual projects are also available to eligible students enrolled in IT degrees in first, second and third year.

Talented Student Program (Science degrees)
The Talented Student Program (TSP) is available to students enrolling in science degrees. It challenges the most outstanding students, with opportunities to take extra courses or get involved in cutting-edge research projects. These projects, supervised by senior academic and research staff, expose students to the school’s world-class research facilities.

Students enrolling in science degrees who receive a high ATAR (>99.00), a result in band 6 in at least one HSC science subject area and/or a mark of 95 or better in HSC Mathematics Extension 2 are invited to join the TSP by the Dean of the Faculty of Science. To remain on, or obtain entry to the program in second or third year, students must maintain a distinction average.

Vacation Scholarships
Each year the School of Information Technologies offers students the opportunity to apply for vacation scholarships High-achieving students undertake a real-world research project over the summer vacation period in a research group in the school, National ICT Australia (NICTA) labs at the Australian Technology Park in Redfern, or with the school’s industry partners and research collaborators.

The scholarships are valued at $5,500 over a period of 12 weeks; project work starts in early December and is finalised in February before semester begins.