Hello!!! I just came across your blog and saw that you are currently studying commerce and law and in nz!!! so i was just wondering what is the course like? i would like to hear about your experience so far :) i'm interested in taking accounting/business/commerce/law related and going plans to further my studies in nz!! if you don't mind too, what uni do you go to? thank you so much in advance. have a great day!!! xx
I currently go to the University of Auckland so I can only give you an idea of what it’s like here, I know the other universities run their courses a little differently so keep that in mind!
For law at UOA it’s competitive entry into second year, so your first year will consist of only 2 papers and then 6 papers in your other degree (i.e. commerce). First year is considered “pre-law” like “pre-med” and roughly around 300 people each year get into law school. It is a competitive environment in first year, no way near as bad as pre-med’s but it’s not quite as cruisey as just doing a normal commerce or arts degree. The content can also be a bit tedious in first year. A lot of people go into first year law thinking it’s like Suits or some other TV show on TV but in reality first year papers are more of a history paper. High school doesn’t really tell you much of what law school entitles but essentially for the first couples years its getting the basics done. Since high school doesn’t prep you for the law content you do most of that in first year and it’s a lot of new material, new studying methods and concepts. I found it a little challenging and different but still rather enjoyed it. Once you get into law school you get into the meaty stuff - criminal law, contract, torts law etc. Each course is quite different but ultimately at some part kind of crosses over with each other. I think for law it’s more broad than other courses. What I mean is that you have to learn all the different parts of the law and you do that throughout about 2/3 years as opposed to say like Commerce of Engineering where you “try out” all the different specialisations in first year and then pick your specific majors by second year.
For commerce in first year you are required to take the compulsory business papers. This pretty much is just business, accounting, economics, statistics, information systems etc. This is to give business students an idea of what they might want to major in inside of commerce. All the papers are different and you may love or hate certain papers but in the end you have to take them all. By second you can you stick to taking only papers in your major. Accounting is quite a difficult course in my opinion. The courses go through content very fast and because the concepts are all new and require in depth understanding in order to apply the correct figures it can get tedious.
Just to wrap up, I’ll say that law is a very english based degree. Being good at writing, expressing yourself through words is a good indicator that law is suitable for you. Of course being a good public speaker helps but is not essential. Not everyone in law school wants to become a lawyer and having excellent public speaking is not required to be good at law. There is essentially no “correct” answer in law, if you can express yourself well throughout your writing that’s what gets you the marks.Accounting is a much more logical and mathematical subject. There is calculations and formulas and there’s only one correct answer.
I hope that gave you some insight on the courses! I tried to put in as much information I could without rambling too much but if you have more specific questions about the courses or other things please feel free to message me!
