University: The University of Western Australia

Degree: Bachelor of Commerce, Management and Marketing

School Subjects: Business Management and Enterprise, Economics, Accounting and Finance, English, Mathematics Applications

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From Year 10, I was fortunate to know what I wanted to pursue as my passion and strengths aligned in business. I’ve always wanted to climb the ‘corporate ladder’, working my way up to my goal of becoming the C.E.O. of a company. To achieve this, I selected very business-focused subjects at school, which I highly recommend to anyone who knows early that they want to pursue Commerce in university. This is because these ATAR subjects align closely with a lot of the Commerce majors. For example, Accounting, Finance, and Economics ATAR were both useful in providing me with a more well-rounded understanding of different aspects of the business world, which was crucial in learning, in my opinion. 1st-year Commerce continues this, as foundational economics and accounting units are mandatory units, so having completed them at school will make these units a breeze at university, especially for accounting, which can be difficult if you haven’t looked at it before, as you’ll have to rote-learn a lot of content with no real understanding of how the reports come together.

If you have no idea what you want to study, then you fall in with most high school graduates, in which case you might just want an insight into what Commerce is like, which is perfectly okay. Commerce, while easier with some background foundations, can be easily picked up with no prior knowledge whatsoever. In fact, I believe Commerce is one of the easiest degrees you can choose, especially to start from scratch. There is little math content (depending on your major), you don’t need to be adept in arts or design, and there are only two subjects that are arguably difficult in your first year (more detail on this later).

Management

Management can be considered as a rather broad unit in Commerce, where it covers a lot of general principles such as strategy and leadership. Management has a lot of focus on case studies, where you’ll analyse a business and identify its key strengths that provide a competitive advantage, weaknesses and improvements to be made, and innovative breakthroughs in the management space. I personally really enjoyed the strategy side; units such as International Management – MGMT341 and Strategic Management – MGMT3347 were particularly interesting. On a side note, a great elective you can choose is Foundations of Global Business – BUSN1103, where it has almost identical learning points to International Management – MGMT341. Meaning, if you do both units, you can significantly reduce the amount of new content you have to learn.

Marketing

Marketing has a very similar course structure to Management, in the types of assessments and exams, also with a range of case studies (though fewer than management). Marketing, simply put, is a very easy major. While Management is not very difficult either, Marketing requires less original thought or ingenuity, with more of a focus on memorisation (e.g. memorising acronyms or steps to target consumers). Marketing also concentrates a lot on consumer behaviour, which leads you into units such as Marketing Research – MKTG2305 (the hardest marketing unit in my opinion), where it ties into statistics. Marketing, however, does implement more creativity with units like Marketing Communications – MKTG2238, where you design a poster advertisement.

Comparison

Personally, I prefer Management over Marketing because it feels more substantial and applicable to real life and also is more important for what I want to pursue in my career. Between both these majors, the most challenging units I faced were all the fundamental Commerce units, particularly statistics, which is all maths. However, each year has very similar styled tests and quizzes. So, with constant practice using past papers, you will find this manageable.

Structure

Commerce typically has four units in a semester, resulting in (usually) four tutorials and four lectures per week. Each tutorial is roughly 45 minutes, and lectures are around 2 hours. Lectures are also recorded so can be viewed later. I personally don’t go to lectures in person because it’s much faster to read the lecture slides, which will be posted on LMS. Additionally, if it’s a difficult subject, you can pause lectures and rewind in your own time.

The tutorials are all mandatory attendance, where you are given marks for simply being there. Additionally, you get further marks by participating in class discussions, so don’t be afraid to put your hand up, it’s an easy 15-20% you can gain from little effort. However, tutorial slides are never posted online, so feel free to take photos in class as you’ll often find that the tutorial content is what will be in your assessments.

For most units, you do have exams (where it’s typically weighted between 45-50%) and can be online or in person. If you want to avoid exams, you can refer to the student guide to check which units won’t have an end-of-semester exam or go to Curtin, which has significantly fewer exams.

Tip

One thing I wish I did when I started my degree was to save my electives. I’d recommend completing as many core units as possible before using electives. This is because if you’re thinking of going on exchange, it makes things a whole lot easier. If you are considering going on exchange, feel free to reach out to me, I’m currently in Leeds studying and am familiar with the process.