Hi I’m a last year High school student and I recently got accepted into UTSC’s psych program. I’ve heard that this program is insanely hard and I was wondering if this was true. Also, I’ve heard that psy100 is the most difficult course for first year. Could you shed some light on that? How is the campus life at U of T? is there a lot to do? because I’m one of those guys that like to get involved in clubs and extra curricular stuff.
That’s all thank you!
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I myself took PSY100 downtown, so I can indeed shed some light on the course. PSY100 is a knowledge-based course, as opposed to an application-based course. So in order to do well, you have to know the material, and know it well. And let me warn you that there’s a LOT of material. We covered around 13 chapters of the textbook, and each chapter was around 40-50 pages long. As you might imagine, a great deal of memorizing was involved – so if you’re a naturally forgetful creature, heads up. Because the lectures were three hours long, I sometimes found it hard to absorb all the material, so I read the chapter and made study notes before each lecture – this definitely helped me to learn more effectively. Other than that, it was a pretty standard course. It wasn’t easy, but it definitely wasn’t the most difficult course I took in first year.
PSY100 has a score of around 4.5 for “difficulty” and “workload” on the anticalendar (in case you didn’t know, it’s a collection of students’ evaluations of courses). So it seems that most people find PSY100 a little harder than the average University course, but not TOO difficult.
I’d definitely advise you to try it out though. You seem like you have a genuine interest in psychology, so I think the course will be really rewarding for you, despite the difficulty. Heck, I’m not even a psychology major, and I found the course really interesting. Another thing – first year psychology professors are known to be very fluent and humorous lecturers. Besides, if you find after first year that psychology is not for you, you can always switch majors.
I don’t know much about the student life at UTSC, but from what I’ve gathered, it has a smaller and more tight-knit community than the downtown campus. However, I’m almost certain that UTSC will at least have more extra-curricular activities than your high school, so I don’t think you’ll have any problem finding clubs to join! There’s definitely a lot to do at UofT. To give you some perspective, I hold a job, volunteer, and sing in a choir on campus – so don’t worry! I’m sure there’re some unique opportunities for you too.