bop to the top at UTM commerce

Hello,
I am a second year in the accounting and financial management program at the university of Waterloo. Due to a loss in my immediate family, my academic performance was poor during my first year. For the same reason for my second term in first year my marks were graded on a credit/ non-credit basis. This means all my marks for this term were marked as pass with no numerical grades. I am struggling in my second year in AFM as well and wanted to know my chances of getting into UTM commerce.
My university transcript is very poor (GPA 76.5% not including credit/non-credit grades) but in high school I got accepted into UTM commerce with a 89.5% average.
Thank you for your time.

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hey there,

UTM commerce doesn’t publish the cut-off range for GPA every year, but your 76.5% is around what would be acceptable. Also, from the looks of UofT’s course equivalencies, it seems like you would have completed most of the 4.0 prerequisite courses for commerce already while in AFM.

This is the stick, though. Even if you meet all the pre-requisites, in order to be in UTM commerce, you have to have completed 4.0 credits at UTM (either in addition to your transfer credit, or completing what you don’t get as transfer credit). Either way, you need to spend a year here before you can start commerce. They just want to see that you’re UTM material, you get me? You gotta bleed that blue and white. If you decide to do that, you could take some economics courses that are part of the commerce program so that you won’t have to take them once you get to commerce, but there’s no way to get around that extra year.

Here’s how I look at it: if you transfer, you’ll have to do one general year at UTM, then three years of commerce, plus your one or two years in AFM. That’s six years just to get a bachelor’s degree that’s pretty similar to the one you’re in now anyway. The way I see it, staying in your program or transferring into something else at Waterloo might be easier.

If you’re cool with spending a few extra years in undergrad, then go for it. Apply to UTM, and then you can move on to commerce if you want to. But remember to do whatever feels right to you.

Hope it all works out, freund.

aska