ELTE Walkthrough

__lazysnake's guide to ELTE-IK

nice read, I've sent it to some people :) Fazekas Sándor-Imre
I wish that I had something like this before I've started engineering! [...] A guide like this can mean everything to someone new that is still getting the hang of things. I'd like to double stress the part about friends. I couldn't exist without them. Orosz Tamás
As a highschooler who's afraid to apply to university because of its difficulty, this guide was more than helpful! Varga Zoltán

Introductions

I will not post definitions on this page, there won't be exam solvings. Instead I'd like to tell - based on my own experience - how one should study for whichever class. Both during the semester and for exams, and also what opportunities one has. You know, to minmax your year and get every achievement.

Obviously I don't mean things like "get more money" or "you should already have a degree". What I want to post here are matters that one can decide on by themselves. Naturally, unforeseen events (accidents, family matters, etc) can distrub the walkthrough.

Since I'm on the B training line, I'll only be able to document such classes, and ones that I took up in addition. Also, because I didn't have a sooper-dooper walkthrough like this one, I managed to fail discreet math 1, and so some clases will only appear in later semesters.

Italian translation by: Kadosa.

Preparing beforehand

How well and which highschool we have attended cannot be undone now. Howevermuch knowledge we have, that's what we have to work with. Although there are ways to increase our chances of success and overall efficiency even before entering university. First of all, we need friends - or at the least acquintaces. It's easy to befriend people over the year, and it helps a lot when we're still getting used to our daily routine. This is our first item:

Friends

Even if we didn't have to pay much attention to class in highschool, if we had the luxury of just letting things run their course, that will not be the case anymore. The second most important thing is to be strong willed, and be able to stop on a slippery slope, or even stop ourselves from stepping on one.

Willpower

It's not a requirement, but it's recommended to have some programming experience. The summer before entering university is good enough. It's also a semi-good way to practice willpower.

General good advice

If we pass the pre-requisites, have some friends and sufficient willpower, then it's time to start getting used to a sort of routine. It's gonna be like that for every semester, so I will not mention it again. Now, not attending lectures and using up our "legal missings" should not be an option. This is the very first slippery slope that most stuents go down. What grade we get for each class is determined by 5 things.

Grade got ~ Number of attended lectures * (How close to the front you sat + How much attention you paid to the lecture + Knowledge gained in class and by hard work + Luck)

One should always remember this equivalence when trying to decide if it's worth sleeping till noon or going to class, or maybe to study or go on a raid.

Most people bite the dust early, or simply are afraid of some classes because they feel like they lack knowledge. Say you can't write even the simplest line of code, what's gonna happen? Well, each week it's assumed that you know what they taught you on previous weeks. So first week it's absolutely nothing. On the second week however it's "according to plan" that you have decent knowledge on the stuff from the week before. That is why it's pretty important to sit down and study. If you let something go, you will evertually face gaps in your knowledge so huge that there just won't be enough time to catch up. So really, you don't have to be afraid of anything, you will have to know it in time anyway.

Another slope-to-avoid is not starting up on home projects in time. It's double stressed for classes that use the BE-AD system (BEAD is sort of short for beadando in hungarian, which means home project. So funneh.). It's a nice touch to give ourselves and the supervising proff a good amount of time. This concept is one of the pillars of hard work.

There are three things that can give you advantage when studying for midterms or exams (granted that you have the willpower). Have people to study with. One of them must be smarter than you. Have sources/notes you can study from. This latter one is the most important, or so I think. Fortunately it's very easy to gather quality notes here. So do a few google seaches, look up the facebook groups for the classes, ask around in your circle of friends, and save every presentation, every document and every pdf. But always have your own, nicely done notes as well.

Sooner or later there is going to be classes that you'll just go "yeah I jsut can't learn all of these definitions". At times like this - and in similar cases - it's better to not try. Tactically single out whichever parts you can learn. But then go full in and learn them like there is no tomorrow. You can always try and learn the rest afterwards. Simply put, do what you can do, not what you can't do.

You should always, always pay attetion when working out theses or proves. Going zombie mode and just copypasting everything won't get you anywhere, as next time you look at the thingies in your booklet it's still gonna look like gibberish. Always make sense of what you're looking at. You may even have a better way of phrasing it. Taking notes this way helps you remember and understand them while also helping you build a personal study-style.

Another fatal flaw that most people fall for is different phases of "I'll remember it" or "I already know this". At worst they won't even look at it or write it down. It's somewhat better if they learn it once temporarily, but then forget it. This can also be a reason as why some people just won't pay attetion to the lecture. I'll write it down nice and clear: There is no such thing as knowing something too well. You can - and should - go over something that you have learned already.

It should go without saying that you should always study what you need to study. I don't mean go at the bare minimum, but don't mistakenly learn something you absolutely won't need. For example it's good and well if you learn every single prove in anal1, but then they'll only ask for practical problems. Or you could make the best ever responsive website for web1, but fail if you don't match the criteria. It's usually publicly listed on the lecturers' website what/when will be asked of you. If not, you can ask either them, or people that have already passed that class.

Also, it's exceedingly important to know your rights and liabilites. For example what does it mean to postpone an exam, what's the difference between a failed and an invalid exam, how can one apply for scholarships, etc? We can learn about this from our mentors, the student council, some office or the HKR (Student Liability System) and such documents..

First semester

Basics of mathematics //matalap

Introduction to computer science //szamalap

Introduction to programming //progalap

Discreet mathematics 1 //dimat

Linear algebra //linalg

Basics of economics //kozgaz

Basics of law and management //jog

Web-developement 1 //web1

University basics and learning methodology course //mentorora

Minimal requirements/Build optimalising/Achievements

Second semester

I've done economy, law, and discmath this semester.

Analysis 1 //anal1

Functional programming //funkcprog

Roleplay and game design //one of the roleplays

Roleplay and culture //the other roleplay

IT history //infotori

Minimal requirements/Build optimalising/Achievements

Minimal requirements/Build optimalising/Achievements

Advice on studying

One of the hardest parts of studying comes right after writing down all that is needed for one single exam, then find ourselves facing 100+ definitions or such. How does one even get started? Even more so, because easily half of them could be half of an A4 page or longer. Aaand double even more so if we haven't even seen some of them. Of course everyone has their own way of learning stuff, and I'm not saying that my method would be better than any of them. However if you can get used to these monotone study sessions with little thinking, I'd say you can pass even the hardest classes. That said, it's required to study during the semester too. We aim to pass afterall.

As I've said above, it's important to gather notes from whatever credible source you can. It's still at utmost importance. Although no amount of notes will make you smarter if you cannot read formally written definitions or axioms. A lot of theses have little to no words. Some won't even have numbers either. The ability to read and phrase formulas is neccessary from now on. Be cautious however! Don't go head over heels when rephrasing theses to ways we can better understand. Only do that if you are 120% sure that they mean the same thing. For example it's a very general error to forget out "clearly" (not sure if that's the proper mathematical term in English for 'not ambiguous', like splitting a natural number into primes) from one of the axioms. But still, it becomes something entirely different.

Once we have some proper notes that we can rephrase when needed, it's time to structure them in some way. Generally it's good practice to follow the chronological order of the lextures, because the material usually builds on top of itself. There are also two things to keep in mind. Firstly, always thing about how things are related to eachother in the grand scheme of things. Even if two things aren't really connected at first glance, they probably will have so connection. Like congruences and set theoretics (congruencies are relations that split things into equivalence classes that are basically sets, duh). Secondly, some topics or definitions/theses blend into eachother pretty well. Feel free to put them under the same label. This way you can reduce a list of 150 things into roughly 80. You won't have to be turning pages back and forth constantly either.

After getting our precise, user-friendly, comfortably reduced notes done, the thinking part is over. Now it's time for long, boring, montone study sessions. Personally I recommend reading through every single page every morning, noon, and evening. Then in addition browse through 1-3 random pages every hour or so. This way it's guaranteed that we've seen every single item at least 21 times, plus we were already familiar with them. Of course only if we properly gave ourselves a week to handle this stuff.

The same routine goes for proves as well. The only difference is that you likely won't be able to mash together proves. It's exceedingly rare.

If we have to learn definitions or such during the semester, it's generally enough to write them down and figure out how they work. It's a great way to prepare for the inevitable study marathon for exams.

Materials

Sites I use to study for harder classes. They also hold other valuable information such as maps, links to various facebook groups (classes, HOK, etc), or the requirement chart for the proffessional training lines, and so on (they're mostly Hungraian):

I'd also like to point out, that beside obvious information - like requirements - some teachers have previous years' exams and such uploaded to their sites. So they're worth checking out.