Hi there,
I was recently accepted to the St. George campus for Social Sciences. I was?browsing the Arts & Science website for newly admitted students (I know,?I’m a nerd) and I came across this?page<http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/newstudents/courses/dates> listing?dates for course enrolment, among other things. I have a few questions:
1. How are start times assigned (random or a certain order)?
2. It says that the first date for first-year students is July 30th, but is?it possible that my start time will fall on a different date?
3. What will happen if I am not available at my start time?
I know it’s still pretty far away, but I’m planning a trip around that time?so I was just wondering.
Thanks!
???????????????
Hey there,
You are nOT A NERD FOR BEING EXCITED ABOUT/THINKING ABOUT UNIVERSITY! I know there?s a culture here on askastudent of gently teasing people who are a bit too anxious about university (there?s even a category on this blog called ?keeners?), but hey, that?s all it is, is teasing.
In fact, before you know it, you are going to begrudge university like all the rest of us, so be excited while you can. And hey, you?ll probably be a lot better prepared for university than your friends.
Alright, questions:
- Start times are assigned based on what year you?re in, and they?re usually a couple days apart. So fourth year students go first, then a couple days later, third years, then second years, then first years, then non-degree/part-time peeps. I know that?s SUPER UNFAIR, but hey, you?ll be grateful for it when you?re in fourth year.
- Unfortunately, if the site says July 30th is your start date, that?s your start date. Keep checking that page though, because they should publish a specific time in the day when you can start enrolling, probably sometime in the summer.
- Nothing official will happen; you?ll just have to enrol into your courses when you get a chance. I?d strongly advise that you start enrolling in courses right at the start time though (if there is ANY WIFI where you?re going on your trip, just take out like 15 minutes to do course enrolment), because the longer you wait, the more likely it is that the courses you want to get in will be full. But if you absolutely cannot do it at the start time, it?s not the end of the world.
Cheers,
aska
One Comment
Anon
A tidbit about how the start TIMES are assigned was included in a recent newsletter to the Department of Computer Science’s Undergraduate Newsletter put together by Prof. Paul Gries:
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Tidbits About the University: Start times for course enrolment
The Tidbit from the 30 January newsletter described how the course enrolment schedule works. There are two phases of enrolment: a priority phase, usually based on your program or admission stream, and a general phase. Enrolment is further staggered by year: fourth years go first.
To find out what year you are in, see the “Year of Study” section on the Step 3: Choose your courses webpage.
The language used on that page is important: your year is based on the number of credits you expect to complete by the end of the session, so summer courses count toward your number of credits even though you haven’t yet passed those courses. (Optimism at its finest!) This expected number of credits is calculated roughly the day before you can view your start time.
And that brings us to the last subtlety: start times. I got the lowdown from Richard Chow, the Associate Faculty Registrar for Arts and Science.
In order to prevent ROSI from getting overloaded, start times are staggered through the first day of course enrolment. There are plans to get rid of this eventually, but the university is understandably cautious ? imagine ROSI going down repeatedly in July and August. The faculty registrar’s office has been given guidelines to assign 1000 students per hour, so they assign approximately 250 students per start time every 15 minutes.
Fourth year students with the fewest expected number of credits have the earliest start times. That means that if you have exactly 14 credits, you get first crack (in order to optimize your chances of getting all 6 FCEs that you need to graduate). As explained, all students with 14 credits are randomly assigned to groups of 250 students. Then students with 14.5 credits get to go (in groups of 250 students every 15 minutes), and so on.
For second and third year, it’s the opposite: students with the most credits have the earliest start times. For example, if you’re a third year student with 13.5 credits, you get the earliest third-year start time.
For first year, students are assigned start times based on their admission stream. Humanities and Social Science are grouped together and randomly assigned the first set of start times (250 every 15 minutes), followed by Commerce. The CS and Science streams are last; this is because the departments associated with each of those streams all give priority to the students in their stream.
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