Second Year Courses

[Acura]

Hey I was wondering if you peps can help me out here. I am doing a Life Science degree at UofT and am currently planning out my fall and winter terms of my second year. The bolded are requirements for my degree and for professional schools.

 

Fall:

Cell Biology - 2nd year bio course

Organic Chemistry 1

Mammalian Physiology

Statistics

Linear Algebra(first year course)

 

Winter:

Molecular Aspects - 2nd year bio course (continuation from Cell Biology)

Organic Chemistry 2

Biology Lab

Ecology or Economics(first year course)

Management(first year course)

 

The reason I'm taking Linear Algebra and the other first year courses as my electives is because I think those are easier for me and are said to be easier electives to take at my school. How does the whole taking electives and balancing your semester out work, is this it? And how do I find out better ways to structure it, all advice is appreciated thanks.

[NutritionRunner]

Personally, in terms of electives, I look for two things: 1. something that I am interested in (most people tend to do better in courses when the subject matter interests them) and 2. something that plays to my strengths. When an elective course manages to do both, I tend to do very well. When the course only fulfills one of those criteria, I generally tend to do well, but not as well as I might otherwise. But it really depends on the course.

 

Stats, algebra, and microeconomics should all be fairly "easy" courses if you have a logical mind and are good at math. I did very well in both intro stats and intro to microeconomics because they were logical and the exams required problem-solving, with only a few theory questions thrown into the mix (although this was not at U of T, so I have no idea if they might have more theory in their exams). I also did well in linear algebra, but I've always enjoyed math. (For example, I did extremely well in differential equations, which most people really struggled with).

 

Don't take a course just because it has a reputation of being "easy." Often, people will find that those "easy" courses end up being more challenging, simply because they have no interest in the subject matter. That's not always the case, however. Although I had absolutely no interest in either microeconomics or human resources, I ended up doing very well in both of those courses, but they played to my strengths (microecon requiring logic and problem solving, HR requiring common sense and a certain amount of just memorization). So I'd say if you are looking for "easy" courses to balance your required courses, make sure that they are either of interest to you or that they focus on one or more of your strengths. And it's best if they do both.

[Acura]

Personally, in terms of electives, I look for two things: 1. something that I am interested in (most people tend to do better in courses when the subject matter interests them) and 2. something that plays to my strengths. When an elective course manages to do both, I tend to do very well. When the course only fulfills one of those criteria, I generally tend to do well, but not as well as I might otherwise. But it really depends on the course.

 

Stats, algebra, and microeconomics should all be fairly "easy" courses if you have a logical mind and are good at math. I did very well in both intro stats and intro to microeconomics because they were logical and the exams required problem-solving, with only a few theory questions thrown into the mix (although this was not at U of T, so I have no idea if they might have more theory in their exams). I also did well in linear algebra, but I've always enjoyed math. (For example, I did extremely well in differential equations, which most people really struggled with).

 

Don't take a course just because it has a reputation of being "easy." Often, people will find that those "easy" courses end up being more challenging, simply because they have no interest in the subject matter. That's not always the case, however. Although I had absolutely no interest in either microeconomics or human resources, I ended up doing very well in both of those courses, but they played to my strengths (microecon requiring logic and problem solving, HR requiring common sense and a certain amount of just memorization). So I'd say if you are looking for "easy" courses to balance your required courses, make sure that they are either of interest to you or that they focus on one or more of your strengths. And it's best if they do both.

 

You're right my electives in first year I took because the general consensus was that they were easy and turned out to be quite difficult for me. I think the huge difference from uni to high school is that there is not true elective or bird course, all courses have 100% mark allocations and earning percentages for any course seems to be a struggle in some way... Thanks btw