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I know that Ottawa has a rule saying you can only take one online course per semester. However, if I took 2 online courses in one semester but none in the other, would this count as one per semester? Can they see that I took both in the same semester, or is their rule just not more than 2 per academic year? This is to be considered for WGPA btw. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/18/2019 at 1:46 AM, Helloheloo1611 said:

I know that Ottawa has a rule saying you can only take one online course per semester. However, if I took 2 online courses in one semester but none in the other, would this count as one per semester? Can they see that I took both in the same semester, or is their rule just not more than 2 per academic year? This is to be considered for WGPA btw. 

If both show up as online in one semester, that entire academic year will be ineligible for the wGPA. Ottawa will allow no more than one online course or pass/fail course PER semester. 

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  • 1 month later...
29 minutes ago, AdamMD said:

How do they know it's online? It doesn't say anything on my transcripts. Furthermore, one course I took was online for my semester however it is offered in class for the 2nd semester. Both have the same course code ..... How can they discern the difference?

If it doesn’t show on transcript your fine lol. I stressed about this so hard last year, ended up interviewing. And “violated” whatever the online course rule was.

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/14/2019 at 11:44 PM, keener12345 said:

If it doesn’t show on transcript your fine lol. I stressed about this so hard last year, ended up interviewing. And “violated” whatever the online course rule was.

Do you mind sharing how your year was distributed in terms of online vs in class courses for the year you thought you violated the rule?

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8 minutes ago, Himynameis1234 said:

Where can this rule be found on the website?

In order for the academic year to count towards the WGPA calculation, a maximum of one pass/fail graded course per semester may have been completed in accordance with the five courses per semester each year requirement.  Therefore, an academic year in which more than one pass/fail graded course was taken in one semester is not considered in the WGPA calculation. The same rule will be applied for distance education (online) courses.

https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/admissions/application-process/excellence-marks

they don't always make it easy to find things on that website ha

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/10/2020 at 8:13 AM, rmorelan said:

In order for the academic year to count towards the WGPA calculation, a maximum of one pass/fail graded course per semester may have been completed in accordance with the five courses per semester each year requirement.  Therefore, an academic year in which more than one pass/fail graded course was taken in one semester is not considered in the WGPA calculation. The same rule will be applied for distance education (online) courses.

https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/admissions/application-process/excellence-marks

they don't always make it easy to find things on that website ha

I'm not interpreting this the same way. The way I read this, they will only COUNT 1 p/f or online course per semester to arrive to the 5 course/semester requirement. In other words, If you took 6 classes one semester but that 2 were online, you could still fulfill the 5 classes requirement counting only one of your online classes. I'm not sure if there are limits where you guys are for how many credits you can take, but for example this semester I took 7 classes for 19 credits. 1 p/f and 2 online, but counting only one of these my semester would still be eligible.

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4 hours ago, AKtoQC said:

I'm not interpreting this the same way. The way I read this, they will only COUNT 1 p/f or online course per semester to arrive to the 5 course/semester requirement. In other words, If you took 6 classes one semester but that 2 were online, you could still fulfill the 5 classes requirement counting only one of your online classes. I'm not sure if there are limits where you guys are for how many credits you can take, but for example this semester I took 7 classes for 19 credits. 1 p/f and 2 online, but counting only one of these my semester would still be eligible.

Based on "a maximum of one pass/fail graded course per semester" and "therefore, an academic year in which more than one pass/fail graded course was taken in one semester is not considered in the WGPA calculation" and "the same rule will be applied to distance education (online) courses" it seems that 2 online courses = whole year doesn't count. Don't get tripped up on "in accordance with the five courses per semester each year requirement". The last part is just minimum # of courses to even have the year considered. I'm assuming distance education and online classes are the same. At my school (western) the term distance education was normally used for summer school courses and meant a course can be taken at another university or you can do that course online.

I've never been in this situation but like others are saying, if it doesn't indicate it on your transcript... :ph34r:

 

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19 minutes ago, WuhanClan said:

Don't get tripped up on "in accordance with the five courses per semester each year requirement".

The wording is there. They may be assuming that people generally don’t take more than 5 classes per semester. It otherwise makes no sense to me, if you’ve taken 4 face to face classes and 3 onlines classes all at the same time, it’s completely illogical to discount that entire semester as you’ve essentially still met the requirement by counting only one online or p/f class.

 

I wouldn’t base my decision to apply or not based on the above interpretations without calling the department to clarify first that’s for sure. 

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1 minute ago, AKtoQC said:

The wording is there. They may be assuming that people generally don’t take more than 5 classes per semester. It otherwise makes no sense to me, if you’ve taken 4 face to face classes and 3 onlines classes all at the same time, it’s completely illogical to discount that entire semester as you’ve essentially still met the requirement by counting only one online or p/f class.

 

I wouldn’t base my decision to apply or not based on the above interpretations without calling the department to clarify first that’s for sure. 

That seems like a lot of courses though lol. Is your program set up that way? Yeah I agree, calling up Ottawa would be wise and I think would make an exception if your program is set up differently. Man I can't even think of taking 7 courses at once. That exam season would give me palpitations. 

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14 minutes ago, WuhanClan said:

That seems like a lot of courses though lol. Is your program set up that way? Yeah I agree, calling up Ottawa would be wise and I think would make an exception if your program is set up differently. Man I can't even think of taking 7 courses at once. That exam season would give me palpitations. 

I have no idea how it's set up over there, but I'm in biomed in the US and I can pretty much structure my program however I want as long as I complete some required core coursework and choose approved electives. So last semester I took 18 credits and this one 19, which doesn't include the p/f course (research captsone). We have to seek approval to register for more than 18 credits, but that's pretty easy if you have a good academic record.  :D I'm glad finals are over.

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10 minutes ago, AKtoQC said:

I have no idea how it's set up over there, but I'm in biomed in the US and I can pretty much structure my program however I want as long as I complete some required core coursework and choose approved electives. So last semester I took 18 credits and this one 19, which doesn't include the p/f course (research captsone). We have to seek approval to register for more than 18 credits, but that's pretty easy if you have a good academic record.  :D I'm glad finals are over.

Oh I see. For Canadian schools our 5 courses (labs are built in and not their own credit) per semester gives us a full course load and adding any more courses on top of that requires permission. I remember in first & second year 5 courses per semester gave me like 20-30 hours of class/week. It seems like your multiple p/f courses might be equivalent to one of ours or something like that.

JC what made you interested in uOttawa?

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54 minutes ago, WuhanClan said:

Oh I see. For Canadian schools our 5 courses (labs are built in and not their own credit) per semester gives us a full course load and adding any more courses on top of that requires permission. I remember in first & second year 5 courses per semester gave me like 20-30 hours of class/week. It seems like your multiple p/f courses might be equivalent to one of ours or something like that.

JC what made you interested in uOttawa?

I had 1 p/f and 2 online courses, those were worth 3 credits, so regular classes - just online. I had many semester where I had no choice but to take some online classes because I was a rural student in Alaska, so I find it too bad that uOttawa would make it so difficult for someone like me who's otherwise clearly demonstrated the ability to cope with difficult coursework and heavy courseloads at once. Oh, well. 

I'm francophone from QC & would love the opportunity to learn medicine in a bilingual environment (my french sucks these days, out of practice), so I'm really interested in that aspect of uOttawa (NOSM too). Plus, it's closer to family than the other Canadian schools. It's nice that the MCAT isn't required, and if the online course thing wasn't a problem I could've applied for this year. But that will be irrelevant in the future as if I don't get into QC this year, I'll be taking the test, now that I've completed all the relevant coursework. Granted I can secure a test date, ha-ha.
 

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Unfortunately my school shows EC next to online courses plus more often than not, those classes have way more students than in-class courses. Anyone else think there's a chance uOttawa would rethink this rule in the future given the current circumstances? That's the only thing holding me back for ottawa. Some schools have already announced that fall 2020 classes will all be online. 

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On 5/13/2020 at 4:42 PM, shortie said:

Unfortunately my school shows EC next to online courses plus more often than not, those classes have way more students than in-class courses. Anyone else think there's a chance uOttawa would rethink this rule in the future given the current circumstances? That's the only thing holding me back for ottawa. Some schools have already announced that fall 2020 classes will all be online. 

 

Greetings fellow Concordia student haha. That EC notation is obnoxious, the physics courses I took online were just as grueling/valid as pretending to show up to those godawful lectures offered in person. No idea why uOttawa has this arbitrary stupid rule, online classes with in-person exams are literally identical to in-person courses. utter bs.... /rant 

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  • 5 weeks later...
On 5/18/2020 at 5:03 PM, Great_Wumbo said:

 

Greetings fellow Concordia student haha. That EC notation is obnoxious, the physics courses I took online were just as grueling/valid as pretending to show up to those godawful lectures offered in person. No idea why uOttawa has this arbitrary stupid rule, online classes with in-person exams are literally identical to in-person courses. utter bs.... /rant 

Oh god is the EC notation that much of a giveaway LOL but that's my point exactly! I usually don't bother going to lectures anyway, since profs, more often than not, are not the best at teaching and I'd rather just teach myself. I heard uOttawa did this to discourage degrees which are entirely completed online. Other universities do this too but Ottawa just chose to go about it in a weird way -.- 

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44 minutes ago, shortie said:

I heard uOttawa did this to discourage degrees which are entirely completed online.

That's just silly. They could at least go about it on a case by case basis and just issue a strong recommendation to minimize online coursework for competitiveness's sake... Or straight up say that they won't take fully online degree recipients. The way it is now, in my opinion, it eliminates a lot of prospective students who may have been rural or otherwise disadvantaged (i.e. having to work during studies), something we always talk about in medicine but often do little to change, as evidenced by such selection practices.

I see it as just one more way to eliminate a large amount of applicants since they don't require MCAT and receive huge app volumes. Not fair, but what is, in this game... 

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On 2/10/2020 at 12:13 PM, rmorelan said:

In order for the academic year to count towards the WGPA calculation, a maximum of one pass/fail graded course per semester may have been completed in accordance with the five courses per semester each year requirement.  Therefore, an academic year in which more than one pass/fail graded course was taken in one semester is not considered in the WGPA calculation. The same rule will be applied for distance education (online) courses.

https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/admissions/application-process/excellence-marks

they don't always make it easy to find things on that website ha

Possibly (stupid?) question about how UOttawa's 3 recent years of undergrad rule works: 

Let's say I took 2 P/F courses in my 4th year, will they calculate wGPA using my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year GPA or only 2nd and 3rd?

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On 6/17/2020 at 8:38 PM, verycaffeinated said:

Possibly (stupid?) question about how UOttawa's 3 recent years of undergrad rule works: 

Let's say I took 2 P/F courses in my 4th year, will they calculate wGPA using my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year GPA or only 2nd and 3rd?

Apparently uOttawa updated June 18th. This sounds too good to be true, so I just want confirmation from others:

"On-line courses taken within the most recent three years of full-time study, which is used to calculate the cGPA, will be included in the assessment."

https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/admissions/application-process/excellence-marks

Although shame about removing wGPA. 

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21 hours ago, shortie said:

Apparently uOttawa updated June 18th. This sounds too good to be true, so I just want confirmation from others:

"On-line courses taken within the most recent three years of full-time study, which is used to calculate the cGPA, will be included in the assessment."

https://med.uottawa.ca/undergraduate/admissions/application-process/excellence-marks

Although shame about removing wGPA. 

WHAT!!?! Omg. This changes everything. :o

Also, I don't believe they used to count summer courses toward the full-time requirement, but now they do. Well that's an interesting turn of events!

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