do you recommend first year seminars? how do they compare to the ones programs? (tbh i still don’t quite understand the ones programs) thanks so much!!

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hey hey,

i absolutely would recommend first year seminars! my first year, i was lucky enough to take both a ‘one’ program for a full credit, as well as a half-cred first-year 199 seminar. in both cases, i had a great experience and even got to bump my gpa up a little bit. i do a pretty detailed plug for the specific 199 i took in this post, if you wanna check it out.

what’s the difference? i find that most of the ones are targeted more so towards humanities/social science breadth requirements– we’re talking global innovation, literature, cinema.don’t let that stop you if that’s not what you’re into: trinity has a few global health/environment streams, and meanwhile a stream of st. mike’s one works with tech. vic one is the only program i’m aware of that has a straight-up mathematical and physical sciences stream. however, for the most part i don’t find that ones gear themselves heavily towards math/science/physics etc. you’ve definitely got more options among the first-year seminars.

ones are also all run out of specific colleges, as you can tell pretty easily from their names. what? you’re telling me uc one runs out of uc? yes, that’s exactly what i’m telling you. meanwhile, first-year seminars aren’t affiliated the same way. they tend, instead, to be organized by breadth requirement. you’ve got your ones (not to be confused with the other ones u of t whY), your twos, your threes… you know how to count ’til five.

something else i’ve found differentiates the ones is that they tend to have some type of central idea or theme organizing their offerings. this tends to follow along the lines of what the college in general is known for. st. mike’s, a former catholic institution, offers ones that explore the intersection between faith and other subjects; innis’s ones cover either writing or cinema, which makes sense as that college runs those programs; trin tends to run more ir/ethics-tinged programs for a similar reason. if you check out this page, you’ll see that each one program has a clear focus/mission statement.

one other difference is that some of the ones, like munk one, can count towards POSt. meanwhile, seminars just…don’t. they count towards breadth req and your 20 credits, but that’s about it.

format-wise, i found that both the one and the seminar that i took felt pretty similar. both weighed participation 10%, didn’t send too much coursework home, and had fantastic instructors willing to go above and beyond. they were also pretty small classes that forced us to talk to each other– i ended up making good friends in my one program in particular, just because it was a yearlong thing.

that’s the main reason i’d really encourage you to take a one or seminar, actually! u of t does have its big n’ scary reputation of being hella antisocial, and truth be told it’s next to impossible to make friends in con hall classes. i actually tried, my first day, being the eternal optimist that i am — the girl beside me turned out to be a fourth year. i asked her if she was a TA. that was the end of that.

anyway, if there’s anything specific you were wondering that i didn’t speak to, feel free to let me know! otherwise, hope this helped, friend.

over n out,

aska

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

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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