Hi Aska,
I’ve just been accepted into Humanities and Innis College! I live in British Columbia and apparently Math 12 here is not equivalent to “Calculus and Vectors” in Toronto. I applied for Humanities but I also want to take Life Sciences courses. I would have applied for Life Sciences, but I didn’t take Calculus in BC so I didn’t have the prerequisites. Will I be able to take Biology courses if I haven’t taken Calculus and Vectors? And if not, can I take some sort of calculus course in my first year so that I can take Life Sciences next year? Or if I take a year of Humanities is it easy to transfer into Life Sciences?
I know that at UBC it is hard to transfer from the Arts Faculty to Sciences but since Arts and Sciences are one faculty at U of T, will it be easier?
Thanks!
N
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<virtual fist bumb with explosion> Congrats N!
Switching around programs at U of T is relatively easy as long as you are remaining in the same faculty. You are correct that Life Sci and Humanities are in the same faculty, so that portion of your academic life in working in your favour.
The first year at U of T is a little bit of a place of limbo. You are in the school but you do not declare a Subject POSt (which is a fancy term for your fields of study) until you have completed 4.0 FCE (full credit equivalents) after your first year! So you may have applied to Humanities, and been accepted, but you can just as easily choose a field in Life Sci as your Subject POSt. Saying that, there is obviously complications. You must take the required courses, and obtain the required marks for the program you wish to enter in your first year.
I won’t go fully into the complex ways of Subject POSts but know that a Biology Major just requires you to take specific courses, and not obtain specific marks (other than obviously passing the course).
This is where you run into some brick walls. The first year Bio courses do not require Calculus and Vectors (quiet yaaay), but to apply for a Bio Major you will need some courses that do require the MCV4U. Here is a chart (**cough** bottom right) that tells you the equivalencies for the qualifications. Meaning that you need to take Calculus 12 or Calculus AP before you can take the Chem courses for the Bio major. You can take some sort of calculus course, but some sort has to be the specific highschool sort. You have to obtain the high school requirements before you can take the course! It’s been done, so contact your registrar or Bio department to look at ways of doing that.
This is one of my pet peeves, not the kind that gets me hulk green angry but makes me have internal eye rolls, why Canada, why can’t you have one uniformed highschool classes game plan. Also, when the opening of the coffee lid falls on the cup fold and you end up spilling with every sip … but that’s besides the point.
good luck young mountaineer,
aska