Hey aska,
A few questions for you on degree planning:
1. I am enrolled in a History and Classical Civ double major. In total the 300+ credits that I will accumulate between majors is 4.5 credits; however, according to the faculty’s degree requirements, I must have at least 6.0 300/400 credits to graduate. To accomodate this, I plan to do an additional 1.5 300 credits distributed between the majors (1.0 to HIS, 0.5 to CLA) that keep me within the 15 ‘three-letter designator’ limit but take me to 6.0 300/400 credits total. My question is, do you know of any problem with going above the required credits for a program in order to accomodate additional 300/400 credits? I am aware that for both majors I cannot do more than 0.5 400 credits, but I see no problem doing more 300 levels, unless ACORN bars me from doing so. I cannot think of any other way to gain more 300/400 credits as I wouldn’t take electives at so high a level. Any thoughts?
2. How is it determined which courses are counted towards a particular program (major)? On degree explorer I’ve seen CLA160H counted towards the HIS major sometimes as a Related course, and at other times I’ve seen other applicable HIS courses count. As long as I have an acceptable combination of courses to complete a program, it shouldn’t matter which courses are counted towards which program, right? I would like to count CLA160H towards the HIS major – is there a way to indicate this on degree explorer?
3. This is probably obvious, but CLA160 will not count as a three-letter designator course towards History, right? It doesn’t start with HIS…
Many thanks!
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hey there,
1) that’s not a problem at all. also, i think you’ve misunderstood the calendar requirements: you need to take a minimum of 0.5 400-level FCEs for your history major, not a maximum. you are totally allowed to take more than 0.5 400-level FCEs (though maybe don’t take too many if you?still want to be sane in your fourth year).
2) you can learn all about which courses count as related courses here. HIS courses won’t count as related courses, because they already count towards the degree, but CLA160H1 should count.
i think your confusion is mostly about how degree explorer functions: degree explorer uses as many credits as needed to satisfy a requirement, and then it stops. from what i can tell, which credits it uses is mostly arbitrary – so even if CLA160H1 could be used to fill a program requirement, but you took some other course that also fills it, degree explorer may use that other course instead of CLA160H1. that doesn’t mean you did anything WRONG – it’s just how the program works.
for example, let’s say you took 1.5 credits in pre-modern history – the major only requires 1.0 credits, so degree explorer is going to discard 0.5 of your credits, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t filled the requirement, or done anything wrong. so, to answer your questions: no, it doesn’t matter which courses are used for any requirement, as long as the requirement is met.
if you want to make certain that all your requirements are being filled and degree explorer is being confusing, you can always book a ‘grad check’ appointment with your registrar’s office in your fourth year, and the advisor will make sure you’re filling all your requirements.
3) like i said, it can count as a related course in a few capacities. you may want to ask the history department whether it can be used to fulfil whatever specific requirement you’d like it to fill.
hope that helps, amigo ~
wishing you a merry merry exam season,
aska