Hi! So I recently got accepted into the uoft arts and science program. I applied for humanities back in October, but after taking chem and bio in second semester I’ve been curious to take some science courses in uni. I looked online and sadly the chem course at uoft requires calculus and functions (that I didn’t take). Is it still possible for me to take this course, or do you have to have the high school prerequisites? Thank u ??
hey there,
ayy congrats on getting accepted!
if you take constructive criticism, it would be super helpful if i knew which chem course at u of t you were referring to? there are, like, at least a couple (there are over 70 chem courses).
jokes, i’m just being a hater. i’m gonna assume you’re probably talking about the standard first-year chem course required for pretty much all science programs: CHM135.
you’re right that the academic calendar says CHM135 requires the prerequisites of grade 12 bio, and grade 12 calculus and functions. so what i would do in this case is email the chemistry department directly and ask them if it’s in any way possible for you to take the course without the grade 12 math prerequisites. i’m not sure if they will say yes or not, but this was what i did for BIO120, and they let me. i would encourage you to email them asap, so that you know whether you need to consider enrolling in online school to complete the prereq.
i actually took CHM135, and i would say it’s definitely do-able without calculus or functions knowledge. however, take this with a grain of salt because i did actually have the calculus 12 prerequisite, so maybe it unconsciously helped, idk. but unless i’ve erased it all from memory, i recall there was only one lab out of five that even referred to functions on a graph. it was just pure memorization, you didn’t actually need to know calculus for it, and either way, it was all explained in the lab book. it definitely doesn’t need bio as a prerequisite though, since i didn’t even take biology 12 either, and i cannot recall anything in that course that required pre-knowledge of bio.
anyways. nothing can make me un-remember difficult CHM135 was, so just be prepared. the general consensus was that BIO120 was much easier, so if you don’t end up trying out chem, at least try out bio. in general, people say that the spectrum of difficulty with first year science courses goes like this: physics>math>chem>bio. (if you want my opinion, i think chem was harder than math, and i loooved BIO120).
if you’re genuinely interested in it, i highly support this endeavour to try your hand in uni science courses! they are so interesting and kind of change the way you see the world around you! if you wanted, you could absolutely complete the math prerequisites through TVO ILC, which i’ve seen people do. my friend did that, and it might seem overwhelming to take a whole calc course online, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. definitely worth it in the end—think of it as an investment in your future.
also, did you know that you can actually take a major in sciences while taking a major in the arts? i learned that embarassingly late LMAO. so just putting it out there in case you ended up girlbossing too close to the sun and end up loving the science courses you take so much that you want to pursue a science program.
over and out,
aska