Hi. Variations of these questions have been asked and answered, but I guess I’m looking for the mechanics of the whole thing: first, have been admitted to Daniels in Architectural Studies and hope to pick up Art History as a second major. How easy is this to accomplish? What steps are involved? Second, how do non-Daniels electives work? Say I’m interested in an elective in English Lit or Archaeology or photography. Would I be able to tack these on and when? Third, any way as a Daniels student to do a business certificate? Thank you so much! You’re an amazing resource.

hi there and congrats!

although i can’t speak from personal experience (i took a nap in the daniels building once, does that count?), as a daniels student you are definitely allowed to enroll in other arts and science programs or electives and there are certain pathways that allow more flexibility to do this within your degree requirements. computer science and rotman commerce are the two main exceptions though – they have higher “deregulated” program fees and are basically gatekept from daniels students and also all the other artsci students, so you’re really not missing out on anything overall. all the typical artsy (and science-y) courses will be available to you.

in terms of scheduling different courses and programs, as you may know, you need 20 FCEs (“full course equivalents”, which are essentially full-year courses or credits) to graduate. architecture studies students have to do a specialist in architecture studies, which is like a major but more intensive, with more courses. the comprehensive stream of the architecture studies specialist (a mouthful, i know) is a good option to complement a second major because it only has 10 required FCEs, essentially taking up half of your degree courses. the other streams are more specialized, but would require 13 FCEs. for example, the art history major requires 6 FCEs, and you also have breadth requirement courses which are required for graduation and can include up to 4 FCEs of courses from different subjects, which all starts to add up.

depending on the number of required courses you end up with, you might have space left over for other electives too. as far as i know, you can add any electives you’re interested in during course selections as early as your first year. the only potential limitation is that some courses may have priority enrolment for students in a specific program or stream, so it might be harder to get into really popular ones, but most of the more intro-level courses that people usually take for electives are pretty open.

as for your last question, rotman does offer a “certificate in business fundamentals” for all artsci students (including daniels i assume) which requires 2 FCEs, so you can totally tack that on. like, when uoft said you can build your own degree, they meant it.

it gets pretty hectic trying to keep track of all the different programs and courses you want, so i’d recommend keeping everything organized on degree explorer. also i will say, while it might be tempting to do ~all the majors~ it’s definitely not required and depending on what you find interesting/useful, it might not even be the best way to go about it. electives can also give you a way to dive into different fields with more flexibility. although having a fancy title on your transcript also is kinda cool, too, so there are advantages either way i suppose.

good luck!

aska