I’ve been accepted into the UTSC Arts & Science co-op program; and while initially planning an intended major, I’ve recently been exploring other options more thoroughly and found one that I’m really interested in at UTSG, specifically the Architectural Studies program at the Daniels Faculty. I came across your webpage and posts while searching for information regarding the internal transfer process and first-year course planning, and I wanted to ask a few general questions from a student perspective:
How realistic is the UTSC to Daniels transfer pathway in practice?
Is it common for students to take some Daniels or other St. George courses during first year before transferring?
If a student transfers after first year, do most first year credits usually still count toward the Daniels degree as electives/breadth requirements, or do students often end up significantly delayed?
Are there any particular first year courses or strategies you would personally recommend for students planning this kind of transfer?
I’m really trying to plan my first year carefully before course enrolment opens, so I would greatly appreciate any advice or insight from someone familiar with the process.
Thank you very much for your time!
heyyo,
oo i really love your question, it got me doing a ton of research. which isn’t a complaint btw, it was a great opportunity to expand my amazing and ginormous repertoire of uoft knowledge.
first of all congrats on your acceptance to utsc!! getting into uni is probably the biggest step of all, so you’re already halfway there.
now sadly, i can’t exactly tell you HOW realistic it is to transfer to daniels, or if it’s common. i’ve personally never seen it, but i’m sure it does happen. i just haven’t met anyone personally who’s done it, probably because aska isn’t exactly the biggest social butterfly in existence. surprising for a person crouched behind a computer all day, i know.
(me, btw)
the daniels website does mention transferring into the faculty from utsc, so it’s not like it never happens. you can see more about how credit transferring works here, but basically, all of your utsc courses and the marks you got in them will be retained. none of them will apply to your daniels program, but they will count towards completing your degree.
oh also, another thing you have to consider is that you may end up taking a program in the faculty of arts and science (st george’s faculty for the majority of undergrad programs) along with your daniels program. this is because even the specialist in architectural studies is only 10.0 credits, and you need 20.0 to graduate. it seems like this should be relatively easy once you’re in daniels, but to be 100% honest with you, i’m not sure how exactly this works. gasp, yes, unfortunately aska is not omnipotent :/
i’d really recommend getting in touch with the undergrad admissions or registrar’s offices at daniels to find out about how that whole thing works. there’s so so much red tape to navigate at uoft, ESPECIALLY with transfers, and talking to someone who knows what’s up will make that infinitely easier to navigate.
as for what you should do in first year… you can totally take some courses at daniels if it’s possible for you to get downtown easily. you can check out the requirements for the program(s) you might wanna do here, and from there check the first- or second-year courses that are available to non-daniels students. lots of them ARE restricted to current daniels students, but not all.
another recommendation would be to take some utsc courses related to potential programs you’re interested in, just in case you change your mind and to have a backup plan. if at all possible, i’d try to have certain days only for utsc courses and others only for daniels. because as someone who travels somewhat frequently from downtown to utsc myself, i think i would die if i had to do it, like, three times every day.
anyways that was super long-winded but i hope it helped, it was very fun to do all this research for you. in the end, though, i’m no academic advisor so i really really think you should reach out to admissions/the registrar at daniels and also the utsc registrar. they will light the way (any house of the dragon fans? no? sigh…).
i promise they won’t be this creepy.
cheers,
aska