"Light" Semester

[jmw14]

Hi everyone,

I'm in second year at UoG and I took a course in the summer so I am ahead. I was planning to take MCB 2050 in the Winter 2016 semester for the cell bio course requirement but I have a conflict with another course required for my major. So I decided to use another course that will be taken in the Fall 2016 semester as the cell bio course instead. As a result, and since I can't reach ahead into 3rd year courses before completion of my Winter 2016 courses, I am left with 2/5 of my Winter 2016 courses being "free electives", which are non-science related. 1 of these I had planned to take a course that I may use to apply to OVC as one of the social sciences credits, but the other would be a geography course for my minor in ecology. My question is, would this be considered an "easy" semester? Since it will be one of my last 2 full-time semesters before applying, if my average is for some reason higher as a result of those 2 free electives, will OVC consider that to be because of the free-electives, and therefore think less of the "high" average? I'm sorry if that doesn't make much sense, please let me know if I can clarify! Any feedback would be very helpful!

Thank you,

Jessica

[datass]

Doesn't matter what courses you take as long as you follow the rules and it's approved. There is no discrimination between "easy" semesters/universities and "hard" semesters/universities.



Take the easiest possible semesters you can for your last 2 semesters.

[optimisticolivia]

OVC is mainly concerned that the majority of your course load consist of upper year courses (3000/4000level) they do not accept semesters are made of more than 40% lower year courses ( from what I understand)

so in a 5 course semester ( as university of guelph students normally have) you can have a maximum of 1 full credit ( 2X 0.5 credit) courses at the 1000/2000 level and your remaining 3 courses ( 3X 0.5 credit) must be at 3000 + level. Some people say that some upper year 4000 level courses are easy, and some say some 1000 level courses are "hard" but they specifically want UPPER year courses in your semester when you are in 3rd year and above.

In your situation with the social science credit you are looking to fill, you need to make sure that the specific credit you wish to use on your application is:
1<-- completed in a full time semester ( 2.5 credits minimum)
2<-- not a repeat of an already passed course
3<-- is at the highest level of difficulty, MEANING, you cant take two courses with SIGNIFICANT overlap in content. For example there is a restriction between ZOO 3000 and BIOM 4070 because their content is essentially the same. If you had taken the zoo course, got a 75 in it, and wanted to take the BIOM course and get a 99 in it, you cannot use the BIOM course on your application, you must use the ZOO because although it is a 3000 level course, OVC regards those two courses as the same content thus you can only use your " first crack at the content" as your mark on the OVC application.

When in doubt do get in contact with the admission services, and they can guide you in terms of these restrictions.

Hope this may help you out a bit

and good luck in the future