Written by Kenny Trinh
Getting accepted to the University of Toronto has been a dream of mine since middle school. The moment I got accepted, my emotions started flowing and I couldn’t wait to set foot on the school campus the following fall. After that, I started looking at the university and the next steps, but it’s hard to process all the information as it can sometimes be all over the place! I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen another blog post like this but trust me when I say, you’ll thank me later 😉
Tip 1:
- Two amazing tools that are very easy to use are the FAS (Faculty of Arts & Science) Calendar and UofT Timetable. Many people, including myself, weren’t even entirely sure about what classes they needed to take. Just simply head over to the FAS Calendar which has most programs (if not all) and tells you the required courses for first year. Once you know what you need to take, start planning it out! Use the UofT Timetable, which is constantly updated to create a schedule with those classes. You look at the course codes from the Calendar, search them up on the timetable and just simply add to plan. There is also an option to view your created timetable to get an idea of what your day to day will actually look like. For some classes, make sure you take notice of tutorial times listed as ‘TUT’ and labs/practicals which are listed as ‘PRA.’ Now that you know what your schedule would look like, on to the next step.
Tip 2:
- Without a doubt, out of all the “Important Dates” you see left and right, the most important to know is which day you will be able to sign up for classes. Course registration is done through Acorn; when you log in, it’ll give you the date and time you can “Enroll” in a class. Before your date, you can start loading up your courses in the enrolment cart. This is highly recommended because once your enrolment time begins, you can just click enroll and not have to have to be in a hurry as classes can fill up quickly! If you attempt to join a class and it’s full DO NOT BE ALARMED. The rule of thumb is to expect about 10% of students to drop the class. So, if a class has 400 people and you’re 30th on the waitlist, don’t stress! In my own experience, I’ve gotten into a class with 196 people while starting at 70th on the waitlist.
Tip 3:
- Know where your classes are. Don’t be the person scrambling at the end of each class trying to figure out where to go next. For example, it might have something such as WW120. The characters represent the building while the number represents the room number. Using UofT maps, you can look up the building location, and in this case, WW stands for Woodsworth. To find the room, look at the directories on the walls of the building which will guide you right to your room. Not only will this help you know where classes are, but it will let you know how far you’ll need to travel between classes and hopefully, you’ll able to plan around it so your classes are as close as possible. UofT has a large campus, so you don’t want to get stuck with classes on opposite sides and only 10 minutes to get there.
Transitioning shouldn’t be any harder than it has to be. If you follow these guidelines, it should be a breeze coming here with all the crucial information already in the palm of your hands. Good luck!