are first year foundation seminars or ones full year or half year?
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hi there,
it depends on the course! most first year foundation seminars, as far as i know, are half-year, but there are the odd ones that run for both sems. you should be able to tell according to the course code– i explain how that works in this post.
ones, from what i know, are typically comprised of two half-year courses that add up to one FCE. i took innis one, which worked this way– you could choose two half-year courses from a group of four. it seems like now that there’s no application for innis one, you can take just the half-year as well. i wasn’t aware of that option when i registered for it– maybe it’s new? either way, though, i did know people who dropped the second half anyway. seems like new one works the same way– you can choose up to two of their half-credits, with the recommendation that you max this out. uc one lists all its courses as half-credit, which i’m assuming means it, too, is one such one.
i think st. mike’s one is similar, with the difference being there’s no explicit option to only take a half credit. their site advertises the program as two half-credit courses, with a !field trip! to some snazzy exotic destination. we’re talking rome, or the silicon valley.
woodsworth one’s site is down right now, so i’ll update this post with that info if i remember.
trin one is a bit more complicated, in that it’ll eat up 2.0 FCEs from your required 20. it looks like depending on your stream, you either take a full year of trin one in both first and second year, OR take two full-year seminars in your first year. munk one is also a 2.0 credit program.
vic one, meanwhile, seems to be the most convoluted of them all. the schawlow and stowe-gullen streams seem to require 3.0 FCEs, all taken in first year; the gooch stream seems to be a bunch of half-creds, with nothing on how many you’re expected to take; the pearson stream seems to require four half-year seminars, as well as 1.0 FCE in history or poli sci. i know some of the vics have mandatory yearlong plenaries as well, just cos i had a few friends in vic one last year. what’s a plenary? some kind of guest lecture, as far as i can tell.
as for seminars, i have seen both half-cred and full-cred courses. the half-cred ones seem to be more plentiful, or at least they have been in the past.
the tl:dr answer to your question is that you should look into the ones/seminars you’re interested in! hopefully this summary makes it easier for you to narrow things down, though.
over n out,
aska