• residence

    all these doors and they still won’t let you in

    June 11, 2019

    Lmao I’m a first year and I unknowingly missed my res application deadline do you know how likely it is I’ll get accepted from the waitlist? Thanks

    ——————————————

    hey,

    unfortunately as a fellow student myself, there are certain things i don’t have access to. one of those things is waitlist sizes, and it can be pretty difficult to estimate likelihood of getting off a waitlist without those. class waitlists are an easy estimate, res and admission waitlists not so much. on top of that, it’s hard for me to even poke around without knowing which residence it was you applied to.

    sorry, bud. really wish i could be of more help but this is one of those things that there’s no real rule for. or at least, i’m not aware of one. hopefully at least they gave you a time window of when you might hear back? i know for other students it’s been late june/early july.

    i would recommend that you give the residence in question a call and see if there’s anything concrete they can tell you. otherwise, you may want to start looking into other options. having been in a tough housing spot myself, i did this snazzy lil (read: actually quite long) post on off-campus housing a while back. your potential residence may be able to refer you to other resources as well, as i’m sure they encounter this circumstance pretty often.

    wishing you the best of luck sorting this out. i know it can be tough. as always, lemme know if there’s anything i can do to help.

    over n out,

    aska

     

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  • admissions,  engineering,  wait list

    still wait-eng

    June 11, 2019

    Hi, I am on the waitlist for engineering at UofT, I was wondering of I could get an offer in late August (if enough people decline their offer). Thanks!

    ——————————————

    hey friend,

    according to the lovely engineering admissions office, august would be pretty late for an offer as typically programs are all filled up by then. they aren’t able to give a specific date/time frame as to when the latest offers are sent out, as they’re continually sent until programs are filled. so unfortunately i can’t give you any specifics.

    the only time offers might still be moving around in late august is for postsecondary transfer students undergoing transfer credit assessment, apparently. if you’re applying straight out of high school, seems like odds are low you’d be getting an offer that late in the summer. wouldn’t give you much time to plan, either, especially if you’re from out of town and will have to worry about housing. if you’d be a commuter not so much.

    hope this helped and sorry to be the bearer of non-ideal news. fingers crossed for you that an offer of admission comes sooner, but it may be best to start fleshing out backup plans and alternate routes in case that offer doesn’t come thru.

    over n out,

    aska

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  • one programs,  seminars

    ones again

    June 9, 2019

    are first year foundation seminars or ones full year or half year?

    ——————————————

    hi there,

    it depends on the course! most first year foundation seminars, as far as i know, are half-year, but there are the odd ones that run for both sems. you should be able to tell according to the course code– i explain how that works in this post.

    ones, from what i know, are typically comprised of two half-year courses that add up to one FCE. i took innis one, which worked this way– you could choose two half-year courses from a group of four. it seems like now that there’s no application for innis one, you can take just the half-year as well. i wasn’t aware of that option when i registered for it– maybe it’s new? either way, though, i did know people who dropped the second half anyway. seems like new one works the same way– you can choose up to two of their half-credits, with the recommendation that you max this out. uc one lists all its courses as half-credit, which i’m assuming means it, too, is one such one. 

    i think st. mike’s one is similar, with the difference being there’s no explicit option to only take a half credit. their site advertises the program as two half-credit courses, with a !field trip! to some snazzy exotic destination. we’re talking rome, or the silicon valley.

    woodsworth one’s site is down right now, so i’ll update this post with that info if i remember.

    trin one is a bit more complicated, in that it’ll eat up 2.0 FCEs from your required 20. it looks like depending on your stream, you either take a full year of trin one in both first and second year, OR take two full-year seminars in your first year. munk one is also a 2.0 credit program.

    vic one,  meanwhile, seems to be the most convoluted of them all. the schawlow and stowe-gullen streams seem to require 3.0 FCEs, all taken in first year; the gooch stream seems to be a bunch of half-creds, with nothing on how many you’re expected to take; the pearson stream  seems to require four half-year seminars, as well as 1.0 FCE in history or poli sci. i know some of the vics have mandatory yearlong plenaries as well, just cos i had a few friends in vic one last year. what’s a plenary? some kind of guest lecture, as far as i can tell.

    as for seminars, i have seen both half-cred and full-cred courses. the half-cred ones seem to be more plentiful, or at least they have been in the past.

    the tl:dr answer to your question is that you should look into the ones/seminars you’re interested in! hopefully this summary makes it easier for you to narrow things down, though.

    over n out,

    aska

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  • internal transfer

    you’re uts-g to go (in like a year or so)

    June 9, 2019

    Hi, so I’m in high school and got accepted to both utsg and utsc for lifesci but I don’t think I’m gonna be able to meet my conditions for my utsg offer. so I was thinking that I would accept my utsc offer and transfer into utsg from there. do you know how soon I could do that? and how I would do it?

    ——————————————

    hey there,

    congrats on both offers! even if you ultimately don’t end up at utsg first year, that’s still pretty great and i am a proud aska.

    from what i know you’d only be able to transfer to utsg after first year. this would be called an internal transfer, and it should be done through ouac. this is the link to the application, and the important dates you need to know are here.  essentially, the deadline will probably be in january of your first year. i’d keep an eye out for it, and try to get it done during christmas break if i were you– but that’s obviously just a recommendation.

    over n out,

    aska

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  • enrollment,  enrolment

    half? full?

    June 8, 2019

    when do you do course selection for half year winter courses? do you do it at the same time as fall courses? how do you know if a course is half or full year?

    ——————————————

    hey,

    course selection for the half-year winter courses takes place at the same time as fall courses, yes! we’re talking enrollment around the end of july– stay posted for an email from your registrar. obviously, space allowing, you’ll be able to switch those winter courses around for much longer than you will the fall ones.

    info dump time: you know if a course is half or full year based on the letter right after the course code. for example, ENG102H1S has an ‘H’ after the ENG102. an ‘H’ indicates a half-year course, whereas a ‘Y’ would tell you it’s a full year

    what do the other numbers and letters mean, do you ask? the ‘1’ indicates that it’s a course at st. george; i’m pretty sure ‘5’ means UTM and i guess if you see another number we’re talking utsc. meanwhile, the ‘s’ tells you which semester the course is offered in (first or second, in this case second).

    so if ENG102 was a full-year course offered at UTM, it would read as ‘ENG102Y5’. if it was a half-year course still at st. george but in the first sem, it would read ‘ENG102H1F’.

    hope this helped! writing this post reminds me that i have all this knowledge floating around in my head that is absolutely, entirely, totally useless outside of u of t. 

    over n out,

    aska

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  • enrollment,  enrolment,  priority

    priorities, priorities

    June 8, 2019

    who gets priority enrolment for courses?

    ——————————————

    hey there,

    the easy response to this is– the people who need the course most get priority enrolment. for example, kiddos in the anthropology specialist/major program have priority when enrolling in ANT207, because they need it to complete their program. and a lot of first year lifesci courses give priority to science/compsci kids, because they’ll need those courses to make POSt.

    i mean, in the making of this post i saw a few weird priority assignments that i couldn’t really explain, so maybe that’s not the whole story? but i have word that the timetable has a few issues right now, so there’s also a chance that’s it.

    not sure if you’re aware of this already, but when you’re planning your courses out you can check who has priority enrollment! as long as you’re using the timetable, you should see a lil yellow tab with a dropdown icon. just click it, and it’ll give you a quick rundown of who can enrol and when. this is true for restrictions as well. slightly crappy screenshot attached for your reference!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    hope this helped!

    over n out,

    aska

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  • anthropology,  registration,  timetable

    i can only speculate

    June 8, 2019

    if i can’t find a course on the timetable, does that mean it isn’t being offered? i’m really interested in ANT195H1 (Speculative Fiction and Social Reality) but when i try to add it to the timetable, it won’t show up!

    ——————————————

    hey there,

    ANT195 does sound pretty cool! unfortunately, it’s hard for me to say at this point because the timetable is still constantly being updated. i’m not sure if these are big updates or small ones. i tried looking it up too, both using the course code and by scrolling through the anthropology listings, and can’t find any mention of ANT195.

    i guess if you really wanted to check on it, you could very politely email the department? thing is, if it hasn’t been finalized yet, the department may not even have an answer for you.

    might wanna start looking into backups, just in case. ENG102 might be a good option if it’s the speculative fiction you’re into– my guess is it would be a larger course than the anthro one, though. lemme know if you need any other recommendations and i can try to dig those up for you! i would recommend you plan for something else for now, and keep checking up on the course as the weeks go by. maybe, with a little luck, it’ll come up. it’s still in the calendar, anyway, which is more than i can say for some of the courses i planned to take. 

    a side note — since the timetable is always being updated, it’s best to double check all your courses before your start time at the end of july!

    over n out,

    aska

     

    EDIT 06/08/19: i’ve received word that the timetable actually has a few issues that need ironing out. eg. old courses appearing, current ones missing etc. there’s a possibility that ANT195 may fall into the latter category. i will add to this post if i find anything out, but i would sit tight for now.

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  • first year,  seminars

    one never knows

    June 7, 2019

    a lot of first year foundation seminars aren’t on the timetable or on acorn yet, but they’re in the academic calendar. will they be added later? or are the ones not there not being offered next year? it’s making me worried bc i really want to be able to be in at least one course with a smaller class size.

    ——————————————

    hi hi,

    i’m not sure exactly which foundation seminars you mean. as far as i can tell, they’re all listed on the timetable– i looked up ‘tbb199’ and ‘pmu199’ in the box for course code and found pretty extensive listings up. there is a chance they will be adding more, but i have no clue how or when that would be, or even how likely it is. the timetable has a mind of its own. it’s still being updated every day. i feel like it’s more likely to fully stabilize around… the beginning of july? 

    anyway, the thing with the academic calendar is, i’ve found it’s not always the most up to date. at least when i was course planning last year, there were a crap ton of courses listed on there that just had broken links or were no longer being offered. this has just been my experience.

    if the first year seminars don’t work out, may i suggest the ones program? some of them need applications, like vic one or trin one, but plenty of others should be accessible to you at the time of course registration. like the seminars, these are small (25 students ish) classes with stellar instructors and interesting course material. i took both a seminar and a one my first year, and found them to be pretty similar in terms of difficulty and format– almost interchangeable in my head, although the course material was pretty different. i would say it’ll offer you a comparable experience, just as a backup if the seminars you want really aren’t being offered.

    and yes! take those smaller classes! they’re real nice to break your schedule up with, especially if you’ve got a crap ton of con hall lectures. i will never stop recommending them– i met some really cool people through those courses and got to do some fun stuff. lots of them have field trips too. do all that you can to fit one in your sched; you won’t regret it.

    over n out,

    aska

    EDIT 06/08/19: apparently there are actually issues with the current version of the timetable! particularly regarding first year seminars, i would advise you to hold on for a bit– some old courses are showing up, and current ones are missing. will update with info as i receive it. thanks guys.

    i would wait to start doing things on ACORN as well, as courses for next year aren’t up on there yet (or if they are, they’re not final). if you add anything to your cart at the moment, they may be be summer courses and i feel like you may not want that.

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  • fees

    fee fi fo fum

    June 7, 2019

    how do you pay the tuition costs? and when? do they send you a bill?

    —

    hey,

    fees! always a good time. not really. this is me trying to deal with my issues through positivity and i can tell ya it’s not working very well.

    to check out how much you owe the uni and pay your tuition, you’ll want to log into ACORN. i’m assuming you have yet to do so, just cos if you’ve been on your ACORN you wouldn’t have this question. just make sure you have your utorid and password and you’re good to go!

    once you get into ACORN, smack dab in the bottom right corner in a REAL big box is the ‘finances’ section. it’ll really conveniently tell you how much you owe– and if you click the ‘invoice’ section you’ll be able to see how that sum breaks down into things like tuition, incidental fees, and res fees if you’ve got them. and if you click the ‘make a payment’ button, there’s a section walking you through how that works.

    some things you should know:

    • there’s usually a deadline for payments. it’s not til september-ish (i can’t remember right now, but rest assured it’s not soon).
    • a lot of people flip out if they pay on or just after the deadline, and don’t see any updates or confirmation from the school. they think they’re gonna get kicked out. they’re wrong. there’s a 10 business day grace period after the deadline, during which the university will wait to receive your payment without any consequences. if you ever have friends with this issue, please tell them to chill and hold off on visiting their registrar. if you ever have this issue, rest assured that all will be okay as long as your payment is in before the end of that period.
    • if you’ve got scholarships, osap, etc. you can defer payment. this basically means you’re allowed to register without paying, but still need to pay as soon as you’re able.
    • please, please! pay your incidental fees this year. i dunno how political i’m allowed to be here, but the ontario government is introducing a student choice initiative that basically makes fees optional if they’re going towards non-essential university groups/services.

    i’m a lil worried that a bunch of people, especially first years who aren’t sure what’s happening, will opt out of these fees. but guys, they’re so important. so many of the student groups i’m familiar with on campus are bracing themselves for a challenging year– many don’t know what kind of resources they’ll have. these are the groups advocating for our rights as students– things like the utsu, or the varsity. we need the resources, transparency, and positive change these organizations enable. food banks, disability services, and sexual assault counselling are among the other things this opt-out puts at risk.

    we may not be able to scrap the initiative directly, but we can pay our fees. the varsity literally costs us like two bucks, which is already one of the lowest student paper incidental fees across canada.  this has been a psa! not what you asked, sorry sorry, but i feel like it was important to throw in.

    anyway, hope this was helpful! as always, best of luck with first year and all.

    over n out,

    aska

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  • residence

    when the hecK

    June 5, 2019

    When the heck do first years pick a residence

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    hey friend,

    i can’t find any specific info on this, but as far as i can tell, you… might already be past the deadline? the myres portal is where you’re meant to apply, and it lists march 31st as the deadline. apparently the latest date for offers to be sent out is june 3– if you log in with your utorid, you’ll be able to see it.  i dunno if you got any emails or what, or really what your situation is, but i feel like you probably should have been notified earlier? at least, i remember getting an email about it when i was admitted.

    no need to panic though– you still definitely have options.  if you’d like, you can still apply (i think)– they’ll just put you on a waitlist. you can also start looking for off-campus housing, which isn’t a terrible option either. it can be a little harder to make friends off-campus, but for me residence was a mixed bag anyways and you don’t ~need~ to be on res to meet people.

    not a long post cause i know next to nothing about your circumstances, but if you need further assistance my ask box is open!

    i couldn’t find a gif for this post and am too tired from my summer 9-5 to keep trying, so here’s one i like from the gif dump i keep:

    over n out,

    aska

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  • one programs

    ones upon a time

    June 3, 2019
    Can I still apply for ones at this point
    ——————————————
    hey,
    weirdly enough, i remember having had to apply to innis one when i took it– at the time, i think all the ones required an application of sorts. since you asked this question, i took another look at the ones webpage and it seems like now, vic, st. mike’s, munk, and trin are the only ones requiring an application.
    you should still be able to apply to the frye, jewison, pearson, and ryerson streams of vic one– more instructions here. unfortunately i couldn’t find anything about a deadline, and the application is by email which i find a tad bit strange. suffice it to say the opportunity is still available, though!
    apps for trin are open til july 1, apparently. instructions, streams, more information, and application here! as for munk one, apps are also still open! assessed on a rolling basis, so there’s no deadline but it’s best if you send yours in early.

    i didn’t get a chance to take st mikes’ ones, but they seem really freaking cool if you have the funds– looks like students get to go to either rome, ireland, or silicon valley depending on the seminar. extra cost, of course, hence funds (but there are scholarships available). these classes do seem to be faith-based if that matters to you. once again, i dunno about deadlines, and can’t find out how to apply. the thingy says to email recruit.artsci@utoronto.ca if you’ve got questions.
    the rest of the programs seem to be a free-for-all during course reg, which is definitely not how i remember things being but i guess it is what it is.
    i would definitely encourage you to go for the ones. everyone i’ve spoken to who’s taken them has had a really great experience, and it’s a good place to make new friends as the setting’s quite small. they also have some amazing topics and instructors.
    hope this helped and your first year experience is amazing!
    over n out,
    aska
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  • clubs,  UTM

    mewsik

    June 2, 2019

    Hi! I just recently accepted my offer to UTM and will (hopefully) be majoring in Criminology, Law and Society by the end of first year. However, my question has to do more with musical opportunities at UTM. I absolutely love singing and playing the piano and have enjoyed competing and performing throughout high school. I was wondering if there are any music clubs that I can join or courses that I can take as a non music faculty student during my time at UTM. Thanks!

    ——————————————

    hello hello hellooooo,

    enormous congrats on accepting your offer! i sense … a future lawyer, maybe?

    well, maybe-future-lawyer, i hope the weather is as good where you are as it is for me right now. there’s something about sunshine and blue skies and cotton candy sunsets that make me feel like everything’s gonna be okay.

    anyway, i looked this up for ya– many of your options are listed here! a quick rundown on what we got:

    harmonix music club seems pretty cool– as far as i can tell, their focus seems to be on creating a very international/multicultural space for making music. i guess the idea is that music can unite people no matter their background or culture– or maybe that you need difference to produce beauty the same way you need different notes to make a harmony. wow! metaphors! maybe i’m reaching.

    into heavenly harmonies? the utm gospel choir might be a good option for you. they do monthly/bimonthly performances, and if there are openings you can join either as an instrumentalist or vocalist.

    there’s a straight-up utm music club  you can check out, too, that holds a bunch of music-centred events on campus– think karaoke, open mics, jam sessions, and guitar workshops. sounds pretty cool to me. they claim to be the best music club on campus on their facebook page, anyway.

    beyond these options, there’s a chinese music club or kpop organization you can join if you feel so inclined. this post is gonna drag on if i plug those two too, so look them up yourself if you’re curious, would ya? appreciate it!

    you should have the opportunity to connect with many of these clubs your first week at uni! i dunno specifically where/when the clubs fair is yet, but as long as you keep an eye out i’m sure you’ll hear about it. tends to be quite well-advertised, especially if you plan to attend frosh. if you can’t make it to clubs week, it shouldn’t be too difficult to contact these orgs directly through social media and ask about getting involved.

    in terms of courses, well… not sure if i’m doing something wrong, but it doesn’t seem like utm offers music courses, or has a music department at all? i can’t find it, anyway, which is surprising to me because i always just kind of assumed there was one. this is the full list of undergrad programs at utm, if you wanna check for yourself. if i’m right, then your options for getting involved with music might be limited to extracurriculars.

    since we’re on the topic of music, i would tell ya to follow my spotify, but that would defeat the point of an anonymous blog, wouldn’t it? guess i’ll just have to appreciate my own curated-til-3-am playlists. i kind of feel like the world is missing out, but we’ll never know, will we?

    wishing you the best of luck and a 10/10 work ethic for first year! lord knows most of us could use it.

    over n out,
    aska
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  • breadth requirements

    no math? no problems

    June 2, 2019

    hi, do you know if you have to take a math course if you’re not doing a math degree? (i’m in social sciences, leaning towards something like polisci or women’s studies)

    ——————————————

    hey hey,

    you don’t have to take a math course specifically, no! u of t tries to diversify the courses we take not by mandating certain courses as requirements, but rather making us take a certain number of credits in each of a few different categories. these are called breadth requirements,  and in a lot of ways i prefer them to the way i’ve heard other unis do things. the category you’d be concerned with is breadth 5, or ‘the physical and mathematical universes.’ this can involve math, but doesn’t have to if you don’t want it to.

    it is possible to meet the breadth 5 requirement (or at least half a credit of it) without ever solving a single equation. i do a quite large plug for the one breadth 5 course i did in this post. long story short, it was very arts-kid friendly and i would 10/10 recommend. i’m sure there are other courses out there geared towards humanities students (read: few numbers) if you dig a little more!

    if you want a more detailed rundown of what the categories are, you can check out this recent post i did on how the breadth req works. please read it if you’re not familiar, otherwise this recommendation might not make much sense to you! but the bottom line is, if you’re worried about having to take math, you can probably skirt the entirety of breadth 5 — as long as you don’t mind biology-type courses.

    short answer: if you plan well, no math for you! unless, of course, you want to take it. then you def can, and still fulfill your degree requirements. NOBODY LOSES TODAY i love it.

    over n out,

    aska

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