Course Selection: Explanations, Tips, Advice

"Course Selection: Explanations, Tips, Advice", June 2008

We are now only a few days away from being able to see what courses are available for the 2008-2009 academic year. For some people, this day has all the excitement that Christmas Day does in childhood. For others, it has the same amount of excitement as the first day of Hepatitis B shots in seventh grade, when all the eighth graders make out how horrible it’s going to be and then punch you in the arm repeatedly afterwards. For some of us, school has been over for about a month and a half. For others, it isn’t over until mid-June or the first week of August (when summer school is finished). For others still, high school hasn’t been completed yet. Regardless, the fact that the Master Course Timetable is coming out means that the school year is one step closer (Eeep!).

I have developed a system for picking courses that I feel is very effective. It can take a little bit more effort than some others, but it has prevented me from ending up with conflicts later on. This is especially important if two mandatory classes end up conflicting. Chad wrote a very similar article last year. I suggest you read them both. To see to Chad’s earlier article, Class Selection Help and Tips, go here.

Before I go into my method, I think I should explain a few things that relevant to the courses themselves, and will hopefully also help you with the courses you are choosing.

If you haven’t already, set up your MAC ID. You need this to access SOLAR and choose your courses. The process does take a few days, so the sooner you do this (if you haven’t already) the better. If you wait too long, you will miss the first day (or two, or three) you are allowed to choose courses, and may end up with conflicts, or having to take classes at a time you do not want to (8:30AM classes every day!).

First, I want to explain what the terms mean. Term 1 is fairly straightforward. It is the first term of the year as you would expect, which is from September until December. Likewise Term 2 is also easy to figure out, as it is the remainder of the year, which is January until April. Where it gets confusing is with Term 3. Judging from that pattern, it would be suspected that Term 3 is for the summer months. It is actually for a class that starts in Term 1 and ends in 2. I guess the school’s reasoning is 1+2=3. I know I found this really confusing too.

Next is the unit value of each course. Most McMaster courses are worth either three or six units. A three unit course corresponds to being one term, while a six unit course is for both terms. Thus, if you were to take Political Science 1A06, you it would be a full year course, taken in Term 3 when you look it up on the Master Course Timetable.

As I mentioned, most courses at Mac are worth three or six units. The rest can be anywhere from zero to nine units. I still haven’t figured out how McMaster assigns the value to most of their courses, other than the higher the credit value the longer you would spend doing course work. The non-unit courses have no academic basis, but are useful for your future (such as Social Science 2EL0, the career planning course), or are required in order to do lab work (such as Science 1AO0). Most students take 30 units in their first year, with 15 units in each term. You are not usually allowed to take 12 units in one term and 18 in another. The exception to the rule is Engineering, who have a total of 37 units, and an unbalanced load for the two terms.

Course requirements are courses that need to be taken in order to take subsequent courses. For example, you need to have completed Grade 12U Chemistry in order to register in Chemistry 1A03. After completing Chem 1A03 you will take Chemistry 1AA3 so you can take Chemistry 2A03 to pursue your degree in Chemistry. All degrees are set up in the same fashion, so make sure you are fulfilling the requirements you need to go onto later courses in your discipline and forward in your degree. They are also called prerequisites. For example, if you wanted to take Introduction to Biophotonics: Eng Phys 4I03, the prerequisite for the course is either Eng Phys 3E03 or Physics 3N03, and both of those courses have their own prerequisites. So when your choosing your courses, you will need to think ahead somewhat, although looking to fourth year is absurd.

Many first year classes are in different sections. That means there are multiple numbers of the same class being taught in a given term. Sometimes it is all by the same prof, and sometimes it is with different profs. C01 means section one, C02 means section two, etc. Tutorials and labs are based on the same principle, except they will correspond to a specific section. For example, Geography 1G03 C01 will have tutorial sections 1-8, and lab sections 1-6, while C02 will have tutorials 9-16, and labs 7-11. This information is very important when trying to avoid conflicts.

Lastly, I want to address the issue of easy electives. No matter the year, this issue comes up. Easy is always in the eye of the beholder. If you are good at writing essays, you would want to take an English, History or Cultural Studies course. But if you are not good at essay writing but proficient in math, you may want to take Math 1A03 or 1AA3. Take courses that are suited to your strengths and you find intriguing, and you are much more likely to do well.

And now, my method for picking courses. You are going to need a few pieces of paper (I prefer lined) and writing utensils and/or highlighters. I end up having a mix of both. Alternatively, you can also do this all on a computer and just copy and paste your data.

Pick up the course calendar (or peruse online, if that’s what you’re doing), and find out what courses are mandatory for you this year. It may be as few as six units, or it may be as high as thirty-one units. Write them down using the full course code (so English 1A03 and English 1AA3 and not English and English). Now comes the fun part. Look through the Undergraduate Calendar and find some elective courses that sound interesting to you. Find at least one more than the number of elective credits you have.

Now you are going to record when each of your mandatory courses is available. McMaster uses the first letter of each day of the week instead of writing the day out in full. Thursday is either Th or R and the exception. Make sure you write down the laboratory and tutorial sections that correspond to each lecture section too. You are going to want to do the same thing for your elective courses.

From here, you are to make a chart (Chad made one in his article, you can download it here and fill it in!). You want the days of the week (Monday to Friday, unless you WANT to sign up for a Saturday section) on the x-axis (horizontal), and all the hours of class time on the y-axis (vertical). McMaster’s classes start at 8:30AM and go until 10:00PM, are fifty minutes long, and use the twenty-four hour time system. So you would have 8:30-9:20, then 9:30-10:20 all the way until 17:30-18:20, followed by 19:00-22:00 (the length of night classes). From here you are going to input all of your courses into the chart, remembering to use the full course code and course section. You are also going to want to add the tutorial and lab sessions.

Once you have everything plotted, you will likely have one or more courses in some of the same time slots. You will need to pick your courses so that no two classes (or labs or tutorials) are occurring at the same time. You need to take care of your mandatory courses first, as well, they are mandatory. After completing this, you can see what times you have available to fit in your electives. Remember, you are only allowed to be on SOLAR for forty-five minutes at a time, so if you know what all of the courses and the sections you want are beforehand it will save yourself a lot of frustrations later.