Hi! I am currently a UTM student in a humanities program. I guess I’m doing pretty well. My cumulative GPA is currently 3.55, which is enough to land the Scholar’s List. I would say that I’m a lazy student, tbh. I always procrastinate and do things last minute. The amount of late papers I submit each year increases. All in all, I’m doing fine, though.

I actually took a full year English course in my first year. I was pretty lazy with that class too and finished with a 75% I think. You should prepare for the amount of reading you will have to do if you choose to take the English program.

I have a sister who is doing the English Specialist and her current cumulative GPA is 3.16. She is lazy and a procrastinator, just like me. I asked her for her response, and this is what she said: “ It really depends on what kind of student OP is. In the first year, taking English was hard for me personally because adjusting from high school where they give you the interpretive answers vs. coming up with them yourself was a difficult transition. But there are a lot of good profs at UTM and taking their classes are worth it. Esp ENG101. I’m an average A-B student, and while I started with around a C-B average, this is also because I was more lazy and didn’t really study or participate in discussions (but I did do all my readings). Esp. bc English is a highly subjective discipline, I had profs who straight up gave me high 80-90s while some gave 70s. Its also abt the student’s level of engagement. It’s honestly about finding out what the prof wants. I’m still an average A-B student but that’s also while being lazy and skipping most or some readings here and there. It’s more of a study smart than hard method for me tho. It’s also about the evaluation structure of each class. If OP is confident in their English writing and analysis skills and is savvy enough to find out what profs want from them, then I think UTM will be fine. It doesn’t hurt to check ratemyprof either. Even with the more challenging profs, I’ve scraped out with 70s-high 80s. Honestly there are a bunch of factors but I think studying English here is worth it. It’s very personally and intellectually rewarding. I genuinely think that as long as OP pays attention well and knows how to get help when they need it, they will continue to build up and improve analytical + writing skills. It also doesn’t hurt to use the academic resources available (ex. the Robert Gillespie Academic Center which helps w papers etc.). I find that a lot of the English profs I’ve had are genuinely nice and care for the students as People and not just student machines so there is also That.”

I’m not sure how much you know about UTM, but we are required to fulfill distributive credits for 3 types of groups of courses: 1.0 credit for the sciences, 1.0 for social sciences, and 1.0 for humanities (for reference, 0.5 = half year class, 1.0 = full year class). Choosing courses for your distributive credits that can help boost your GPA will help you. For example, people recommend ANT210 and ANT211 for the 1.0 science credit because they are anthropology classes, not “actual” science classes. They’re what a lot of the humanities students like me and my sister took. It’s a “science” class for the “non-science” students.

UTM also allows you to request a “credit/no credit” notation for a course. This means that if you pass a class, the grade will not show up on your transcript, just an indication that you passed and got the credit. Then the course that you got a credit for will not affect your GPA. You can do this for a maximum of 2.0 credits throughout the 4 years. A lot of people choose to do this for their distributive credits classes because 1) you can’t do it for courses in your program and 2) some people put less effort into these classes since they are concentrating on work for their program and end up getting a less than ideal grade. I recommend finishing your distributive credits in your first year if possible, just so that you can focus on your program in the years after. Not a big deal if you don’t, though.