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Undergraduate Study

Degree programmes at Victoria are designed to give you as wide a range of subject choice as possible. Here are a few things you need to know about Victoria’s academic year, teaching methods and degrees.

Victoria’s academic year

Victoria University of Wellington’s academic year consists of three trimesters:

Trimester 1: February– July;

Trimester 2: July – November;

Trimester 3: November – February.

The main teaching period is in Trimester 1 and 2. Trimester 3 is the summer trimester (similar to summer school) with fewer courses on offer and many students choose not to study during Trimester 3.

The beginning of the academic year is Trimester 1 which has the largest intake of new students to the university; the second largest intake is in Trimester 2. Due to the limited number of courses on offer during Trimester 3, it may not be possible to commence your studies in this trimester. Please contact our Admissions Team to find out the possible commencement dates for your degree of interest.

First Degree Structure

Here are a few facts about first (undergraduate) degrees at Victoria:

  • Most undergraduate degrees are three or four years of full-time study.
  • The building blocks of a degree are called courses. Each course is one or two trimesters in length.
  • Each course is taught at a certain level; 100-level is first year, 200- and 300-level courses are more advanced. A course also has a subject code; a course in Chemistry is indicated by the letters CHEM. Therefore CHEM 103 can be recognised as a first year course in Chemistry; the letters indicate the subject, the first number shows the level.
  • Each course is worth a number of points, which reflects the amount of work required. At Victoria most courses are worth either 15 or 20 points, with a few variations.
  • A three-year undergraduate degree will require the successful completion of 360 points.
  • An average course load per academic year is 120 points.
  • In most of our degrees e.g Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce & Administration, you will need to choose at least one major subject as part of the degree. This is the subject that you specialise in. Courses for your major will make up about a third of your degree. For some degrees, you will be able to choose two majors and the degree will not take any longer to complete.
  • Some specialist degrees do not have majors - for example, the Bachelor of Laws and the Bachelor of Tourism Management.

Find out more about planning your first year programme.... >>

Teaching and assessment

All undergraduate degree courses at Victoria are made up of lectures as well as tutorials, studios or laboratories depending on the degree.

Each course may have two or three lectures per week, each usually 50 minutes. Tutorials, studios or laboratories are held in smaller groups than the lectures of around 15 - 20 students. These are designed to allow students discuss the lecturer topics in more detail and get individual assistance from tutors.

Assessment is usually a combination of internal assessment and a final examination; however, some courses are 100% internally assessed.

Assessment information for your individual courses will be provided on the first day of lectures. This information will outline lecture topics, assignment deadlines, as well as other details of the course assessments.