Wonderful Wellington

I decided to study a at Victoria in 2014 and to do a Bachelor degree in Biomedical Science, majoring in Genetics.
For this program, there a compulsory courses and a couple of electives, each course running for one trimester with most of them having internal assessments and one final exam.
The first year courses cover a broad range of subjects without going into too much detail. They are nice introductions to the variety of topics and subjects and might give a good idea of what topics are going to be covered in second or third year.
The second year courses are stepping up a bit in how much detail they're covering which increases even more in third year.
A lot of locals think that the first year at University is very hard and difficult which I can understand from their point of view as high school is not very challenging here and transitioning from easy high school to a more academic approach can be difficult. For me personally, I thought that first year was a good revision of what we would learn in the last years of high school (Germany) and the transition into second year wasn't too difficult either as I found it nicer to concentrate on less diverse topics but to study them in detail which continued even further in third year.
Since I did a Science degree, all those courses have practical applications such as set hours of lab work throughout the trimester. The labs were a nice way to learn practical uses of the theory but could be improved by making them more challenging; all labs are provided with lab manuals and instructions on what to do but I think it would be nice to have a stronger focus on creative thinking and being able to establish lab protocols ourselves.
My favorite course at Uni has been Biol252, a second year course studying cell biology and cell development. While the academic staff in this course was very approachable, helpful and passionate, the labs were also designed very well and allowed us to study the development of sea urchins from the fertilized egg to the larvae state before they're ready for settlement. The course Biol219 - New Zealand Flora and Fauna was a great course too - a two week field trip course to study the native animals and plants of New Zealand. I enjoyed the course a lot as it was a nice approach of learning outside of the class room but also to include New Zealand's history and culture.
Academically I would say that Victoria University is a good university but certainly not as challenging as other Universities around the world. The assessments are good but if I'd compare it to the German standard that I am used to, then it is not competitive at all.
However, now I am doing a postgraduate degree at Victoria and I feel that this is way more challenging and with higher expectations of excellent academic delivery than there was in undergrad.
Over all, I enjoyed my time as an undergrad student, especially in such a great town as Wellington is. The view from the University is amazing, the academic stuff is very nice and approachable and everything is on a first name base. Victoria is offering lots of extracurricular activities such as the Victoria Plus Program or the Victoria International Leadership Program, lots of clubs and societies that make it easy to engage with academic and non-academic life of University. Victoria International is also hosting a lot of events to support international students.