Full Course load Question

[grapz]

Hello.

 

I am in my first year of my undergraduate studies.

I am doing poorly in only one of my courses. Incidently this course happens to be a social science course. I plan on dropping this course and take two half courses next semester, so i still maintain a full course load this year.

 

I am wondering if this has any implications or if this effects how they look at your application in anyway for ontario medical schools, thanks

[webshy]

Hello.

 

I am in my first year of my undergraduate studies.

I am doing poorly in only one of my courses. Incidently this course happens to be a social science course. I plan on dropping this course and take two half courses next semester, so i still maintain a full course load this year.

 

I am wondering if this has any implications or if this effects how they look at your application in anyway for ontario medical schools, thanks

 

Course loads are calculated over the entire year, not by semester. Therefore, your course load will remain the same even if you take one less course this semester and one more course next semester.

 

Question though: isn't it too late to drop a course without academic penalty? There are firm deadlines for dropping courses, which likely have passed. Each school has different deadlines; however, I expect no schools have them this many weeks into the term. (We are in our last week of classes at the University of Waterloo.)

 

Elaine

[grapz]

I'm at UofT. They have firm deadlines, but since my course is a full year course, the last day to drop the course is sometime in feburary i believe.

[Dante]

come on man, you can't be doing that bad... and if you are, what makes you think that dropping this course now (when you only had 5 courses in total) to take 2 MORE courses next semester (meaning you have 6 in total) will leave you better off? You can always pull yourself up, ESPECIALLY in a full year course. That's just my opinion... you've already invested so much time (and money) in working hard at this course... go talk with your prof, figure out why you're doing so badly, and remedy that... it's easy to say "oh i'm doing bad, i'll drop and take 2 extra to make up for it next semester", when the reality is you'll likely be worse off

[grapz]

I've evaluated my situation.

 

Turns out that the course i dropped has 4 hrs of lecture + tutorial per week.

 

The two half courses i added have 4 hrs of lectures, and no tutorial per week.

They also fit into my timetable perfectly. I firmly believe that i can achieve a much higher mark than the course i dropped

[oh_outstanding]

So what you are saying is that at a school where there is three full semesters if 30 credits are taken in one school year but distributed over the three semesters not two, is that still considereed full course load? At all med schools?

[webshy]

So what you are saying is that at a school where there is three full semesters if 30 credits are taken in one school year but distributed over the three semesters not two, is that still considereed full course load? At all med schools?

 

By "whole year", I meant September to April. Med schools who are looking for a full course load will consider those courses taken between September and April. They will not look at how many courses you took from September to December vs January to April, but instead the total for the 8 months. "Full time" is defined differently by different universities, and varies from 3.0 to 5.0 courses.

 

Hope that clarifies,

Elaine