🪴 Maixnor WU

Survival Guide Semester 1 and 2

Nov 04, 20255 min read

Welcome Freshmen

You did it. You passed the entrance exam and are some of the lucky ones to study in this undergrad. Now it is time to get started with your studies. Don’t panic, it’s not difficult to get started.

First Courses

When you first sign up for courses (on LPIS) you will need to sign up for 3 courses

Study Approaches

I witnessed a lot of different approaches

  • reading the books recommended by the courses
  • go to all lectures and take notes
  • go to no lectures and learn off of slides
  • get notes/summaries from someone else (e.g. Mega)
  • study in groups I personally go to all lectures and study in groups before exams. Some people can only study in isolation, others best with other people. Just do whatever works best for you and don’t bash people for their preferred study style.

Being Present

In most lectures you either have direct presence (you need to sign that you are there) or indirect presence (you need to do something in the classroom, difficult if not there). I recommend being present for a different reason: See and be Seen. You see what people are doing around you and people can see what you are doing. Mutual help. The more you are willing to share, the more people will share with you, simple. Help people and they will help you. We have a great community in BBE.

You can also have a beer or something to eat after lectures with your friends and just enjoy life :)

My Notes

click here → BBE for all notes I have ever taken If you want to contribute, let me know <3

WU Services

Canvas

https://canvas.wu.ac.at The main platform where almost everything is happening. Here you find all your assignments and resources. If it is PDFs of papers, links to other sources or simply slides used in the lectures it is all found here.

Canvas also has most grading information, since most courses have either participation or during-semester tasks which are part of the grade, not just the exams. Most Courses also enter your exam results into canvas and then translate the final percentage into the final grade which you will receive.

There are lots of different modules (e.g. files, grading, “modules”) and every course has different configurations. It always requires some getting used to with each course and every professor and their team structure their courses differently. Some courses structure the course in weeks (including resources, slides, assignments) while others group same and same (e.g. all slides in one place) while others heavily rely on the files module.

LPIS

https://lpis.wu.ac.at/lpis The enrollment in individual courses is done using this service. Here a few points to make sure you are not learning a painful lesson after the first deadline.

Important

About 3 seconds after the opening time most if not all desirable spots are gone. You want to be on time, I mean it. Be there the second it opens.

The secret to enrolling with highest success rate

  • always make sure you know previously exactly which courses you will enroll in (coordinate with friends)
  • there might be different sub-courses ^a8b466
  • know your deadline, there is no other
    • a friend missed the deadline and then could not join us with the course we wanted to take as a group, sad
    • there is a “waiting list” but if nothing moves within a few minutes there is little hope it will change

The moment you have been waiting for has arrived, the deadline. Have an atomic clock ready and time the exact second to refresh the page, then hope to get in. Choose wisely which courses to reload first (e.g. QM1 with 30 slots each before BS1 with 240 slots in total)

MyLearn

https://learn.wu.ac.at/ The legacy application which was used before Canvas. You will use it max 3 times per semester.

Teams

https://teams.microsoft.com Microsoft Teams. Hate it or love it, it is being used. At least video calls are done using just one platform instead of each professor using individual solutions. There are no handins on Teams, only on Canvas. You might still need do fill out/upload stuff there; e.g. for the QM interviews you needed to fill out an excel and upload your Case Studies (don’t worry about them for now :), you will soon enough) to have the call.

Some classes are thought only online (remember this) via video calls. They are regularly organized within channels in separate teams.

Personally I only enrolled in teams for 3 courses, 1 online course, 2 interviews for both QM courses. So nothing major.

Other Services

WhatsApp & Collaboration

Most likely all your communication between you and fellow students will be handled via WhatsApp. Be that the main group chat or simple 4 to 6 person groups for group work it will all be there.

Sending Documents or PDFs (or R files for QM) will most likely also be done via WhatsApp, if you want something more sophisticated (and want to enforce it too) you can use MS Office or just a Google Doc.

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