• auditing,  courses,  current student

    don’t let your dream (courses) be dreams

    March 16, 2022

    Hey! I found out about a course I’ve been dreaming of way too late. I’m on the wait list, but it’s a small class and i’m like 33rd ? so no chance of me getting in. Is there anything i can do at all to still be able to take it? It’s online and I dont know if emailing a prof or the department would do any good for me.

    hey there,

    ironically, i think i may be answering your question way too late… sorry 🙁 but hope this can still help in some way.

    i think 33rd on the waitlist might be too far down to get the prof to accept you directly over the other students who were also interested, but if the waitlist moves along enough, you could have a good shot. anyhow, it doesn’t hurt to ask. some smaller courses (think <20 students) have actually had surprisingly high drop rates in my experience, so there may still be hope!

    another thing is, you may want to ask the prof about auditing the course. auditing would allow you to attend and participate in lectures and classes, but you wouldn’t get a credit for the course or submit any assignments/evaluations.

    you can audit courses for free as a uoft student, or if you really want to get a nice shiny official Certificate of Attendance™, there would be an auditing fee of usually 40% or more of the course tuition. in any case, this could be a good way to get into the class if you mostly want to attend out of interest, and won’t be able to take the course in later years. heck, you can even audit courses after graduating (if you haven’t had enough school yet…) with permission of the department/instructor, and the auditing fee.

    not all departments/instructors will allow auditing, but the best way to find out if you could audit is just to reach out to the prof directly and ask.

    Dreams Can Come True Hillary Duff GIFfrom Dreams Can Come True GIFs

    best of luck,

    aska

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  • current student,  dropping courses,  repeating course

    third time’s the charm

    March 10, 2022

    Hello! I have an urgent question, I am currently on my 3rd year of study and one of my courses I need to take to graduate needs a first year prerequisite which I took back in my first year and got a very low mark and dropped it, now I’m taking it again I am failing it again, can I drop it again and retake it during the summer of 2022 after I had taken a refresher course for it? Or will that show up in my transcript now because I have dropped it twice?

    hello there!

    to my knowledge, you should be able to drop the course and take it again in the summer. there are limits for retaking courses that you have already completed, e.g. to get a better mark, but as far as i know, if you’ve just dropped the course both times without completing it, whether it be a normal withdrawal or late withdrawal, that shouldn’t have any impact on enrolling in it again in the future.

    Its All Good No Worries GIFfrom Its All Good GIFs

    fyi, the deadline to withdraw from winter session courses is coming very very soon on march 14th (4 more days!), so hope this gets to you in time! after that you can also apply for late withdrawals or cr/ncr on winter and year-long courses until april 8th.

    hope this helps! if you have any other questions, definitely reach out or try booking an appointment with your registrar, who can provide more advice specific to your situation.

    best wishes,

    aska

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  • choosing,  courses,  current student,  prereqs

    course selections is like tetris but more frustrating

    March 5, 2022

    Hello! I was wondering… if we’re supposed to take classes for our enrolled major (second year) but also want to enroll at the end of our second year for another major- how do we balance our course load to take the prerequisites AND our major requirements? Thanks a bunch 🙂

    hey there,

    hope second year is going well~ i’d probably prioritize the courses you need to enter the major you wanna apply for, and then try to fit in the courses/prereqs you need for your current major.

    for most majors, there’s no strict requirement on what year you take your courses in, so you could take some of your 200-level courses next year if needed, and just generally mix and match the different course levels as long as you have the prerequisites.

    you might want to plan everything out on degree explorer to make sure that you’ll have all the prereqs you need for upper year courses. course planning is kind of a pain but there’s also something satisfying when you finally get all of those forty-something coloured blocks to fit in your plan :’)

    Car Tetris GIFfrom Tetris GIFs

    hope that helps,

    aska

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