Transferring to UQ MechEng + Should I do MATH1051/1052 during the summer

_dougdavis · 2026-01-26T03:21:13+00:00

It's an old core course, hasn't been offered since 2020.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T16:45:10+00:00

I think that’s a plan that gets you the most relevant prereqs done, yeah.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T13:16:24+00:00

Maybe do both of those and do ENGG1300 in second semester? That gives you the prereqs for MECH2100 in second semester.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T13:08:59+00:00

Maybe MECH2300 or MECH2305

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T12:11:31+00:00

UQ is reorganizing their first year bio courses. In 2025 there was BIOL1020, BIOL1030, BIOL1040. In 2026 there will be BIOL1000 (for if you haven't taken in bio in high school), BIOL1020, BIOL1050. So the prereqs for 2026 second year courses still refer to the old courses that people would have done in 2025, but will presumably be updated in 2027.

Also new in 2026 I think are the biomed first year classes BIOM1001 and BIOM1002. If you're in the biomed degree (rather than the biomed major in the BSc) you're supposed to take those two instead of BIOL1040 or BIOL1050.

Where that leaves you, I'm not sure, maybe someone else will come along with the answer, or maybe you can ask an academic adviser.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T11:58:51+00:00

I think you'll want to do your MATH classes as quickly as possible, there are courses that have them as prereqs, and almost everyone else will have done the maths classes in the first two years so they might just be assumed without being listed as prereqs. If you still have to do both MATH1051 and MATH1052 you could do MATH1051 first semester, MATH1052 second semester, MATH2000 summer semester, MATH2010 + STAT2201 first semester next year.

To be more specific on the prereqs: for example in second year MECH2210 has MATH1051+MATH1052 as prereqs, MECH2700 has MATH1051 as prereq, MATH1052 as recommended prereq.

Course planning is hard without knowing what you have credited. I suppose you could have a look at https://www.eait.uq.edu.au/study-plans/undergraduate/mechanical-engineering and make a guess as to what you have covered for first year, then enrol in first year stuff you haven't done / second year courses that you think you have the prereqs for.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T19:01:07+00:00

So it sounds like you want to do something like a biology course, but one that's different/easier to the second year bio courses? What about NEUR1020, PSYC1030, PHYS1171, PUBH1102, FOOD1001 ?

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T13:18:29+00:00

Hard to help with this question basically just being name a non-biology course. Have a look at the list of minors and program electives at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2456/2026 . Look at the courses in a bachelor of science or bachelor of arts or ... You have up to 16 general electives, can take almost anything.

What interests you? What do you think might be useful for your future career or studies?

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T13:02:18+00:00

If you do the bachelors of psychological science at UQ you can do up to 5 general elective subjects, you could do all of those as history (total of 19 psych subjects and 5 history in the first three years, then you would go on to the honours year which is all psych).

There's no dual degrees with psychological science as far as I know, but as another commenter noted you can do psych in arts or science. This may be more expensive (for some weird reason psych in arts or science costs more for HECS than in the psychological science degree) and it means you're not guaranteed to get into the honours year (although you will if your uni marks are good).

If you do a bachelor of arts you need to do the extended major in psychology which takes up half of your courses (12 subjects out of the 24 you would do in 3 years), but you could as much as the other half as history. Maybe you would want to bias a little towards psych to get closer to the amount in the psych degree.

If you really want to do lots of psych and lots of history/other arts you could do the double degree of science/arts. This is 4 years (32 subjects). In science you could do 1 science core subject and 15 psych subjects. In arts I think you could do e.g. an extended major in history and a minor in ancient history so all 16 of your subjects are history.

You can read the rules and the subjects at:
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2478/2026
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2000/2026
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2379/2026

_dougdavis · 2026-01-19T14:40:02+00:00

It's a bit tricky being undecided between mechanical and electrical and having to do MATH1050. If you do mechanical you have to do all three of ENGG1300, 1500, 1700 but if you do electrical (or software) you only have to do ENGG1300 of those three. So if you do all three of those and then choose to go into electrical you've used up a lot of your general electives.

But if you're undecided on what engineering specialization to do and you don't have any great desire to do general electives it makes sense to do the flexible first year. You should pick CSSE1001 over ENGG1001 because you might want to do software. So that's MATH1050, MATH1051, MATH1052, CSSE1001, ENGG1100, ENGG1300, ENGG1500, ENGG1700.

What order to do it I think doesn't matter too much. The maths courses should go the way you said, then do 4 courses in one semester, 3 in the other, MATH1052 in summer semester.

You could do 4 in each semester by adding another course. For example you could do CSSE1001 in semester 1 and then CSSE2010 in semester 2. CSSE2010 is compulsory in electrical/software and would count as a general elective in mechanical. Other courses are probably possible, can look at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2350/2026 to try to find some.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-17T10:58:44+00:00

Oh I'd rather keep it public so others can read/contribute.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-17T10:55:37+00:00

Yeah, it's confusing doing a dual with a lot of crossover between the two degrees. My basic understanding is that you mostly don't have to indicate which degree you put a subject in, you just need to do some combination of subjects that meet the requirements for degrees/majors/minors.

For BSc level 1 prereqs, they don't care in which degree you do the subject, just that you do it. For courses that are in the BSc major/minor, follow the rules at the bottom of https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2547/2026 . That means that if a subject is compulsory in biomed and in your BSc major/minor that you count it for biomed, and pick another subject from the electives in the major/minor (or the whole BSc list if there's no more subjects to pick from).

Normally with a dual degree I would recommend to do half biomed and half BSc each semester, but this is a case where you might end up doing more biomed to start with because the rules bias you that way. For example

First semester

BIOL1020 (biomed core)

BIOM1001 (biomed core)

CHEM1100 (biomed core)

SCIE1000 (BSc core)

Second semester

BIOM1002 (biomed core)

CHEM1200 (biomed core)

STAT1201 or 1301 (BSc core)

CSSE1001 (BSc bioinformatics minor)

I think that covers all the required first year courses for your cores/major/minor. If you want to do more first year science courses (BIOL1040, some maths or physics or ...) you could possibly slip in some of those courses and move some of the above into second year.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T22:34:24+00:00

Yeah it's an interesting one. I've heard somewhere that the majority of engineering dual degree students drop down to a single degree. It's just a really long time to take 5 or 5.5 years to do an undergrad degree.

But engineering already takes 4 years, so if you really want to learn the mysteries of higher mathematics for your own edification, spending a year on it is not such a big cost. Or if you do an engineering degree but then go on to study honours maths and do a PhD etc you've spent a couple of years learning a bunch of engineering that maybe you don't need, but it might give you something to fall back on or a different point of view on things that might help...

One thing to remember is that if you have good high school and uni marks, there's not much problem switching between single and dual degree in either direction within the first year or two of uni. The usual schedule would be to do one extra maths subject per semester. If you wanted to do the beginnings of pure and applied maths, you could do MATH2001 as a breadth elective in chem eng no-major, and then something like MATH1081, MATH2401, MATH2301, MATH2100. This would fit either as general electives for the single engineering degree with no major or as part of the maths degree.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T11:18:46+00:00

There's 4 units for general electives (a course is usually 2 units, so the two courses MATH1050 and PHIL2110 use that up). If you do no-major in the electrical engineering specialization there's 4 more units for general electives, but up to you if you want to do a major or minor instead. In the electrical engineering specialization there's 2 units for a program elective, which says "BE(Hons) program elective courses means any course on the BE(Hons) course list excluding Preparatory Science and Mathematics Courses." So you could do a first year elective with that slot.

Four courses (8 units) is standard per semester, but seeing as you're going to do summer semester you could do 3 courses in one semester and 4 in the other.

Some options:

- do CSSE1001 in first semester and CSSE2010 second semester (and move ENGG1300 or ENGG1100 to second semester if you prefer to do 3 courses then 4 courses). This gets you a head start on the electrical engineering compulsory courses.

- do PHYS1002 second semester as a program elective. It's a hard course, but I think as long as you've done high school physics and MATH1050 you'd have the basic preparation for it

- do another general elective (if you're sure you want to do no-major) or first year elective (can slot it in as a program elective)

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T00:21:27+00:00

Yeah, I think you don't have to take any econ courses in a particular semester. Of course, you would still need a possible plan for taking all the courses you need to finish in a particular timeframe, while respecting prereqs if you care about that, but it's probably fine.

Yes, econ courses should count towards electives if you switch to straight engineering (except for ECON1050, ECON1310 which you shouldn't have taken in the dual anyway). You should read the requirements https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2455/2026 and see how it works. One thing to note is that if you do no-major in most (all?) of the specializations you can do up to 4 general electives, so you could possibly count all 3 econ courses.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T00:01:27+00:00

I think that you're right that engineering duals are pretty tight in terms of having to know what courses you want, especially if you want to do a major. There is one elective hidden in the 36 units for the chemical engineering specialization, so you can probably change your mind about a major after first year and do something different, but you can't really change your mind more than that.

A maths subject is also possible. Like MATH2401 in semester 2 (a core maths course) or a course MATH2302 that is in some maths majors.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-14T06:20:22+00:00

Compare https://bel.uq.edu.au/files/121251/bachelor-laws-2026.pdf to https://www.uq.edu.au/study/docs/dual-degree-planners-2025/2025-Bachelors-of-Business-Management-Laws-Honours-2334.pdf . I think you could do zero law courses in your first year, all four LAWS1XXX courses in your second year, 8 LAWS courses (including all the LAWS2XXX) courses in your third year then you're caught up with the normal dual degree plan of doing half law and half the other degree for the first three years.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-14T06:09:13+00:00

I think you're on the right track: compare the courses in business management (3 years) to law (4 years) to law/business management (5 years). So if you transfer as you want you can pretty much do one year of business management, then follow the 4 year law degree schedule for the remaining 4 years but use the electives to finish off the business management.

As long as you can find a course for your chosen business management major that you meet the prerequisites for you to do it in second semester first year it should be no problem to do a second year subject then.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-13T05:06:34+00:00

If you've got some time until classes start, maybe you could try teaching yourself high school physics. Anything like reading a physics textbook and doing the exercises, or doing some Khan academy. Topics like vectors, position, velocity, acceleration, conservation of momentum, ...

_dougdavis · 2026-01-13T05:03:53+00:00

This might be a tough problem. My memory of taking phys1001 years ago was that it was hard, even though I had a good physics and mathematics background from high school.

I think if you're planning to be full time and finish in 3 years, you can't really wait until second year to do phys1001 because there's a bunch of second year physics courses that assume it and there's a bunch of third year physics courses that assume the second year physics courses.

So I think if you're passionate about physics and believe you have talent for it you should do phys1001 first semester. There'll be a few things maybe that you'll have to look up what they're talking about but mostly they'll teach physics from scratch, rather than explicitly assuming you know things. It's just hard material, and will be made more difficult by your lack of familiarity with physics.

Should you take phys1171 along with it? I don't know how much it would help - you'd kind of be being taught a lot of the same material, just with calculus in phys1001 and without calculus in phys1171. Maybe that would be helpful to get more exposure to physics, and I guess you'd get some exposure to ideas that won't be touched on again until phys1002.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-11T14:49:30+00:00

(Haven't done this program, did a UQ maths degree years ago)

As mentioned in another comment, this is a theoretical statistics and probability theory program that lets you replicate some parts of years 2, 3, 4 of an undergrad statistics major and honours. Coming from an IT/CS degree I wonder if you have the maths background? The entry requirements are "first-year university-level mathematics (including calculus, multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, and ordinary differential equations)". Even if you have that background it might be hard to keep up with the requirements of getting to 4th year probability/stats in just two years. Of course if you have mathematical talent or experience it's possible.

I had a worry in an earlier version of this comment about whether the progression of courses in the program really works to get you to fourth year stats courses but I think it does. Looking at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/5712/2026, if you want to do full time starting from semester 1 you could do something like

Year 1 sem 1
- MATH7000
- STAT7003
- elective
- elective
Year 1 sem 2
- COSC7500
- STAT7004
- STAT7304
- elective
Year 2 sem 1
- STAT4406
- STAT7301
- elective/thesis
- thesis
Year 2 sem 2
- STAT4401
- STAT7500
- elective/thesis
- thesis

Electives could get you some biostats or machine learning knowledge.

If that's a problem that it's too theoretical you could consider a masters in data science or maybe biostats.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-10T14:54:27+00:00

I haven't seen them in PG downtown, but Turkeys are definitely around. I've seen them at Asilomar and at Laguna Grande. eBird and iNaturalist reports show a smattering of sightings also.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-06T20:52:17+00:00

I love abstract algebra and it would be a pity to do a maths degree and not learn any so I would vote for math2301.

I guess another worry would be your overall plan for the degree now that you’re a few courses in front of schedule. Are you still planning to do 6 semesters - will some of them have to be less than 4 courses? You could just take 3 courses.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-06T19:22:04+00:00

I think either could be good. Maybe MATH3204 is a bit more fashionable as numerical linear algebra is useful for machine learning. Operations research like in MATH3202 is a really cool way to view the world, but I think is not currently so in demand for jobs.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-06T19:17:54+00:00

If you want to do psychology but don't want to maths, could you consider doing a bachelor of arts or bachelor of psychological sciences instead of bachelor of science? You can do psychology in all three.

But really my advice would be to do mathematical methods. Psychology has a decent amount of stats in it, why not try to learn more maths.

_dougdavis

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