Dear Askastudent,
I ended my first-year with a failed SPA100 course, therefore only the minimum 4 credits, and a gpa of 1.79. What I wanted to do when I got to uoft and how it changed because of crappy course selection times, poor grades and bad luck is a long story, but to keep it short, I reallly reallly want to get into Peace, Conflict and Justice studies, or just anything to do with criminal justice, law etc.
Sort of had the bad sense of picking too many subjects I knew nothing about, ended up getting some really grades, but ofc, my efforts were poor too and those that went into salvaging what was left of my grades in my second semester were not enough. My question is, when faced with a situation like this, when even your back-up plans for subject pOSts are also jeopardised because of poor academic performance, what would you do? What do I do about course selections, choosing majors? What are the consequences of being an undeclared major? how easy is it to change majors in junior and senior years? How do I push my GPA up?
I have to finish in 4 years tops, and I’m determined to do it, I just really want to get my grades up at a respectable level again.
Best,
Dothebestyoucan
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Do the best you can,
For starters, there can be back up POSts to your back ups! There are plenty of programs that only want 4.0 FCE that you can just get into temporarily to get through course enrollment. Logically, however, I recommend picking one that has courses that can contribute to the program you actually want to be in.
So you want Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies. Cool. It’s a Type 3, meaning there’s an interview and some extra requirements, but nothing seems to change for second year entry so I suppose all you need to do is work on your GPA!
Now you can’t be in some sort of “undeclared major” — that doesn’t roll at UofT.
However, you can definitely pass the time by enrolling in a Philosophy specialist (which is a Type 1) for example. This will give you priority to a bunch of upper year PHL courses, which can help you with the requirements for the second year eligibility to ELS. But aside from that, you can probably major in History, Political Science, or Sociology since you need at least one of those!
This is a little hard to work with due to a lack of any specifics, but for next year, just try to get into courses that will contribute to your program or that are at least somewhat related to it. So load up on any POLs, SOCs, ECOs, or whatever.
And it’s not that hard to change programs in upper years. People do it all the time! Sure, sometimes the requirements get steeper, but you should be fine as long as you work towards it.
Lastly, how do you push your GPA up? Well, I’d say that’s pretty obvious… work your butt off, silly!
xoxo,
aska