UofT Physics

[sportsfan12]

Hey guys, I'm entering UofT coming this September. I'm wondering if I should take physics during the school year or during summer. I heard that the summer physics is harder than the schoolyear physics (different course code). Is there any truth to that?

 

If I were to take physics during the summer would I still be eligible to major in second year programs that require physics as a prerequisite?

[zainy1993]

Don't take physics. Period.

If you need it for U.S. med school requirements take it 2nd YR+ or something when it won't count, assuming you have more than 6.0 credits in 100-series courses.

 

Most of the courses don't require physics anyway, unless you plan on becoming a physics major or something.

 

I know too many students who do terrible in physics, while doing pretty good in other courses, not to mention that they spend the most time studying for physics. You can take in the summer, but don't expect it being any easier.

You'll know what I'm talking about when you see how many students there are in PHY131 at the start of first semester, and how many actually decide to take PHY132 in second semester. Im not joking, they are literally 1200+ students at the beginning and only like 250 end up taking PHY132 second semester.

 

To answer your question very few specialists and majors require physics. Most of them allow you to take psychology OR physics first year, e.g. neuroscience, physiology etc.

For the competitive specialists requiring physics I'm not entirely sure whether they'll accept physics in the summer because they have to make your offer to you during the summer, and thats when you'll be taking physics.

 

Trust me on this, take my advice and don't take it.

[sportsfan12]

What do you mean by take it 2nd year +, when it doesn't count?

 

Also, if I don't take physics do you have any reccomendations for an easy course? I know that all courses you're going to have to work hard, but from your experience (assuming you're from UofT) what courses were easier for you.

 

Really appreciate the help man!!

[zainy1993]

If you have more than 6.0 credits in 100-series courses, any course taken after in the 100-series will not be counted towards your cGPA. Its in the calendar which your college gave you.

 

PSY100 with Dolderman is pretty interesting, its the reason why I'm taking so many courses in psychology. Most of the questions on the term test are pretty straightforward. The only problem is the workload, as theres lots to memorize for each test. Make sure you study ahead, or take notes.

 

SOC101 is easy but extremely boring, for me at least. The term-tests were a joke, there are only 3-4 chapters per test which you can easily cover 2-3 days before the test. I'm not telling you to study last minute, just saying that getting 80-84 in this course is pretty easy if you put in a little effort.

The only problem is the exam, which is really a killer. There's so much to memorize and he expects you to know everything from the whole year, and its a lot since it a full year course. Some of the questions are really tricky too, especially the ones when gives you about the case-studies. So study extremely hard for the exam. The class average for the exam was 56%, but the term tests were usually in the low 70's.

 

Try to take a seminar course, first year. Assuming you actively participate in class, and can write reasonably well you'll get 80+ easily. Put in a little effort and you'll get 85+.

[cheech10]

Except that UofT cGPA has nothing to do with med school applications, where GPA calculations include all your courses (exceptions for schools with weighting formulas, etc.).

[zainy1993]

Except that UofT cGPA has nothing to do with med school applications, where GPA calculations include all your courses (exceptions for schools with weighting formulas, etc.).

 

I stand corrected (I feel like an idiot now).

I guess physics will be counted no matter what, if you take it during the year. If you take in the summer though, you can get away with it not being counted in some med schools like UFT

[blizzah]

First year Physics is pretty easy if you keep up with the material and nail past tests.

 

You can count on a 10-20% upwards adjustment since the averages are so low.

 

Summer is harder because everything is condensed into half the time.

[uoftpremed]

Stay away from anything that can lower your gpa. Physics is really hard (at least for me it was). I dropped it after the first mid-term. I had 6.0FCEs in first year so dropping wasn't an issue as I still had a full-course load. You can take pre-reqs at Ryerson or Athabasca so you can avoid getting low marks. Im pretty sure the class average for first mid-term was 30 and they bell to 50. So anyone that tells you its easy is pretty frekin good at physics. Don't let anyone fool you the course is a gpa murderer.

[zainy1993]

Stay away from anything that can lower your gpa. Physics is really hard (at least for me it was). I dropped it after the first mid-term. I had 6.0FCEs in first year so dropping wasn't an issue as I still had a full-course load. You can take pre-reqs at Ryerson or Athabasca so you can avoid getting low marks. Im pretty sure the class average for first mid-term was 30 and they bell to 50. So anyone that tells you its easy is pretty frekin good at physics. Don't let anyone fool you the course is a gpa murderer.

 

I think you're talking about the course like 6 years ago. My cousin told me they have averages in the 30's for the midterms during those times. It's usually a C average now, but it still really hard because only the smart people stick through it.

 

The first midterm average was 68 or 69%. No bell-curves. This was the average for the fall/winter 2011/2012 year. This was the easiest test because after the first midterm a lot of people dropped, mainly the weak ones. The second test average was C, but a lot of the people who did poorly on the first midterm dropped, making it that much harder to score well.

The exam was by far the worst, my friend told me that they had to bell-curve by at least 25% in the exam to get the mark he got in the course.

[toulalan]

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[Sarvish]

Well, here's my $0.02.

 

Having taken the course this past year, I can honestly say, it all depends on how good you are at Physics, and logical thinking in general.

 

If you are not good at those things, it will be an uphill battle from the start. We started with upwards of 1200 students, as zainy1993 said, however, at the end of PHY132, we had only around 200. This is as a result of Life Science students being incapable of reasoning through a question and just "getting" it. Memorizing facts and details will not be helpful, but an ability to think on your feet will.

 

In my case, I tend to do better in courses that have a fair amount of application and logic as opposed to hard core memorization. I had never taken Physics of any kind in my life until I took the course, and I received a B+ average in both PHY131 and PHY132, better than many who had taken it in high school. The reason I didn't get an A was mainly due to my own shortcomings in preparation. However, that being said, the class average for the first semester class was a C+, and the class average for the second semester class was a B-.

 

It just comes down to how you approach questions. I ended up taking a programming course out of interest (with no experience) and got a solid A with perhaps the smallest amount of work compared to the other courses I had taken. This perhaps shows how much your way of thinking comes into play when taking university courses.

 

It is good for the MCAT, and a number of interesting Specialist programs which require Physics at UofT. I would recommend taking it if you fit the above description. If you don't, then you may need to work harder than others, but can still achieve a reasonable result.

 

I agree with this post. Physics is something where you can do well with very little studying because you just have to understand the basic concepts and build up from there.

 

Many people who did poorly are the ones who barely got in to UofT and got some "bad" mark in high school physics (80ish) and expected to get the same thing once they got here.

 

PHY131 and 132 start from the very basics. You need no physics knowledge whatsoever in these courses. The material didn't even cover everything you learn in high school physics (This year we skipped over magnetism because we didn't have time).

 

I had a bit more of a struggle in 132 but I ended PHY131 with an A+ and PHY132 with an A (with a 120% course load second semester).

 

Please don't avoid physics just because everyone else says it's hard, the average for PHY132 was higher than any other general life sci course that semester. Take it and drop it if you find it too hard, if you're lucky, you may find it to a breeze and really interesting.

 

ETA: To put it in perspective, I did 7% better in PHY131 and 2% in PHY132 than I did in PSY100, one of the known bird courses at UofT. I found physics, you either got it or you didn't. If you understood it, 90s were very possible as there's really no way to trick you in physics.

 

ETA again: Without being too harsh, the average person in UofT life sci is not as intelligent as you think they are. Don't look at course averages when you're picking classes. I'd say grade 12 calc and grade 12 physics were good indicators of how you'd do in university. Most other courses, anyone could get by with pure memorization. Heck, I got a 90+ in SBI4U6 and I barely knew how transcription/translation worked.

[blizzah]

You generally WANT to take first year courses with the lowest course averages.

 

There is always a bimodal distribution, be in the right mode

[robinre]

I did phy 131/132 downtown over 2 summers-after first year and after second. The courses were agood way to occupy some time and since I wasn't taking the full year course I still had a good summer each time. I'd recommend doing it that way. I think if anything taking summer physics only helps you in that you'll only be focussing on that, rather than that course plus 4 others. Difficulty wise it's probably the same. The exams were hard, but that's expected.

[drkwhy]

If you have more than 6.0 credits in 100-series courses, any course taken after in the 100-series will not be counted towards your cGPA. Its in the calendar which your college gave you.

 

Yeah, but they also won't count towards your degree...so you're paying for more courses where you could have just taken em in the beginning.

 

Also, PHY131 is really easy IF you had a good high school physics teacher and you really did well in calc and physics in high school.

 

They have a weird marking scheme where MC counts way more than the short answer. But this stigma about uoft is a discursive formation...the more people shout stuff like, the more people get scared and already feel like their failure is predetermined. There are people that get perfects on physics test (was a few in my year for PHY131) and then there are always the ones that do horrible. But the physics dept is forgiving. Their curving of marks favours the ones that do horrible (fail) to allow them to just pass in the end (but people do still fail).

 

If you do end up taking it, read the textbook and do all the practice problems in the back of each chapter and then laugh at how ridiculously easy the test/exam is.