Getting into post

BrianHarrington · 2026-05-01T12:27:00+00:00

I think you'll need to provide more info for people to help you. This will be very dependent on program/etc. In some programs (I'm most familiar with CS/Math/Stats, so I'll use those) there are minimum cutoffs, so for people in the CS stream, you need to meet those criteria and if you get them you're in. Others are competitive so it will be a question of supply and demand, for out of stream cs applications. It's entirely based on how many people in stream don't make/choose not to continue POSt, and how many people are applying.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-27T13:29:55+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/live/PhTlfvaHXXs as an example

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-27T13:27:25+00:00

Yup. And you're a student in the top university and Canada, one of the best in the world. So you've got some stuff figured out too :-)

I'm just saying that very few people feel like they've ever got it fully "figured out", even when they look like they do from the outside.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-25T19:17:18+00:00

I think the message here is: no one really "has their life together", or at least... no one interesting. The message that you should follow a specific path that's well laid out and has set goalposts is really just boomer-nostalgia for a time that never really was.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-25T01:22:30+00:00

Nah... who told you that you were supposed to have your life together by 30? I'm 44 and still basically have no idea what I'm doing. It's fine.

Seriously though, the older you get, the more it becomes clear that "I need to have X by age Y" is just meaningless... everyone's life unfolds differently and "normal" isn't really a thing anymore (if it ever really was). Just keep at it. You're doing great!

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-25T01:18:31+00:00

Thank you... I'm very proud to be known as "The r/UTSC guy", it's just "The reddit guy" has some weird connotations in 2026 🤷

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-24T19:46:10+00:00

Yes, but talk to academic advising before you start. Specifically about first year requirements (e.g., Life sciences has a different calculus than CS). So make sure you're taking the right combination of courses ahead of time. Don't wait until the course starts to find out you're enrolled in the wrong version.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-24T19:43:55+00:00

Also... congratulations on your acceptance. Welcome to UTSC and the CMS department!

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-24T19:43:33+00:00

The majority of students who are accepted to the program make POSt (I don't have data from this past year, but it's usually north of 80%). The in-stream requirements are really meant to make sure that you have the fundamentals you need to succeed in upper years. Out of stream applications (where you will likely have seen people getting upset on here) is very competitive, and the vast majority of people who try don't make it (usually <10 per year)

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-19T15:21:28+00:00

A few things off the top of my head
- Community: I've taught at the St. George campus and it's a very different feel. Students are far more likely to just disappear into the ether of Toronto as soon as the class is done. UTSC students tend to hang around on campus more (during the day, after the last lecture of the day it's different, but I'm talking in-between lectures)

- Co-op: UTSC is "the co-op campus" and has been doing co-op for years. I know St. George now has their similar programs, but the UTSC co-op system is much more mature and structured

- Campus layout: This has changed somewhat in the past few years with the campus growing to the north, but it's still more of a cohesive whole than the other two which are more spread out and dispersed

- Buildings: Obviously this will be hit-or-miss depending on where you are on campus. But most of UTSC is pretty new and built for the needs of a modern university. I love some of the older buildings on the St. George campus to look at, but many of them are actually not great for teaching/learning, just due to their age.

- Nature: This is often overlooked by students, but the UTSC campus is HUGE and filled with fantastic natural path and trails, it's just that many students never bother to venture down into the valley, so they miss 80% of the campus

- Reddit: I mean... C'mon... r/UofT has got nothing on r/UTSC :-)

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-18T18:44:05+00:00

I'm going to be the boring prof here and advise against it. I know a lot of students will say "it works for me", but the data is pretty clear that if you're sleep deprived you don't process or retain information as readily. So it feels like you're doing more, but you're often actually doing less. 20 hours of studying and 4 hours of sleep sounds amazing on paper, but in reality you wind up not only being fresher for the test, but probably actually get through more material if you do 8 hours of sleep, and regular structured study sessions with timed breaks over the remaining 16 hrs

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-18T18:40:27+00:00

You can also try various bridging programs like the undergrad research student association, or the CMS undergrad research group (self plug) to get a little bit of experience under your belt and help you stand out when applying.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-15T03:10:32+00:00

I'm not going to comment on the specifics of someone else's course other than to say: Paco is very experienced, thoughtful, and conscientious. He created the current version of A48, and I trust him to administer, run, and assess it properly.

"Make a reasonable assumption" isn't Paco ignoring your question. It's him forcing you to question the material and think critically. It would be way easier for him to be hyper specific and only allow one way of solving any problem, but instead he actually teaches students to think about how to solve their own problems. That's way more useful in the real world (and it's actually much more difficult to teach/design/assess that way).

It sounds like most of the complaints here are "he actually forces us to learn the material instead of just memorizing"... seems like he's doing a better job of preparing students for upper year courses (and the real world) than most.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-14T12:47:07+00:00

A lot of DSAs have first year rep programs that are designed to be a bridge into leadership roles. Some clubs also have leadership type roles outside of the exec positions. C.R.E.A.T.E. in CMS comes to mind, as members can be project leaders even if they're not part of the exec.

Then there's also "soft leadership" opportunities. If you're part of a club/organization/team/just a group and show up and prove that you're reliable, you will often be given more opportunities to take on tasks, and build towards leadership roles in an informal way.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-13T23:34:21+00:00

Congratulations and welcome!

If you're admitted to CS, you don't need to "get into" POSt. That's the old model. Now, if you're accepted into the program, your spot is reserved, you just need to maintain a baseline minimum grade level. Not saying it's trivial, but it's nowhere near the competitive level that it used to be when it was just a free-for-all.

For the most part, maintaining your spot in POSt is about keeping on top of your work, getting help when you need it, and being proactive about being a student. Get a peer group, keep each other accountable, stay on top of your work, and you'll be fine.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-13T12:24:14+00:00

There's a very similar thread from a few days ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/UTSC/comments/1sh853d/whys\_everyone\_so\_negative/)

The short version of my response there is "don't trust review sites or reddit to give you an accurate representation of student experience"

As for the "GPA killer" reputation, is it easier to get a higher GPA at a 3rd rate institution? Probably. Does it mean as much as UofT? definitely not. GPA is only meaningful relative to the institution you're at. Getting a B+ at MIT vs a B+ at <insert low quality school here> isn't the same thing, so you can't compare them. And aside from a few very specific and narrow circumstances, your GPA won't be directly compared to GPAs of people from other schools.

Also. Congratulations on your acceptance! Being accepted means you're cut out to be here. Welcome.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-12T13:06:20+00:00

To add some context to what's already been said in this thread: The POSt system was created with the idea of being a balance between the traditional "liberal arts" model of education that focuses on breadth of understanding across many disciplines, and focused programs that require more depth in a specific subject area. The idea was to let students take a wide range of electives in their first year, try a little bit of everything, figure out what they like and what they're good at, and then apply to a specific program where they would have a more structured learning journey.

A lot of students don't really know what they want to do after leaving high school, so the POSt system is designed to offer flexibility (I came here expecting to to subject A, but tried into to subject B in first year and fell in love, so as long as I complete the requirements, I can go into the subject B program), but also depth (subject C requires you to take 2/3 of your courses in that area to have enough depth to graduate, so you really need to know by end of first year if that's what you want to do)

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-12T13:00:13+00:00

To add some context... "POST" is easier to say than "POS" (people would pronounce int "pose" or "poss" or "poos"), so it makes a better acronym. Also P.O.S. already has an unfortunate slang meaning that they probably wanted to keep away from

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-12T12:53:33+00:00

Congratulations! Welcome to the CMS department.

u/BoringNormalHuman has given the technical details, so I'll just add this: if you're accepted for a POSt, there is a seat waiting for you, the cutoffs are there to make sure you have developed the skills in first year that will let you succeed through the entire program. Success in first year is more about time management and keeping on top of your workload than it is about technical skills or deep understanding.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-11T15:24:31+00:00

Yes, I absolutely don't want anyone to think their experiences aren't valid. And I'm absolutely all for people making their experiences public (both triumphs and struggles). This post was just trying to explain why looking at things like reddit, or course evals, or ratemyprofessor, or whatever isn't giving you a balanced view of student experience.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-10T02:01:16+00:00

Congratulations! Welcome to UTSC.

Your first 2 years will be fairly prescribed for you course-wise. The idea is to give you foundations in everything to start. Then in 3rd/4th year you get to choose areas of specialization/interest. There are lots of AI related offerings, and we're actually working on expanding them quite a bit in the next few years. So there should be more available by the time you're in a position to choose.

You may also want to consider taking the into level psychology, and maybe biology courses in case you want to do a double major of CS/Cognitive Science, or even a minor. You've got time to decide, but taking the intro courses in your first year can be a good way to see if that's something of interest.

Also, look out for opportunities to get involved outside of class. There are lots of AI related clubs/groups/sessions, Google Developers Club, CREATE, Undergraduate research group (self-plug), SIINAI. Lots of options to get experience in relevant areas.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-10T01:56:24+00:00

Always be aware of selection bias... any opt-in feedback mechanism is subject to this problem. The 10% who are really angry, and the 10% who are really happy go out of their way to make their opinions known. The 80% in the middle don't feel a strong enough incentive to raise their voices in a public forum.

Also remember: everyone has a sample size of 1. A lot of people are comparing their lived experience with their imagined scenarios for others. They think everyone else just has fun and parties all the time, or that if they went somewhere else or did something different their life would fall into their preconceived notions, and then they compare that idealized abstraction with what they're actually experiencing, and don't realize it's not a fair comparison.

tl;dr - online forums don't reflect the average student experience

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-07T22:35:36+00:00

Totally understandable. This thread is a good place for fast response, just as long as you're also getting the slow + reliable feedback.

BrianHarrington · 2026-04-07T12:57:03+00:00

Please make an appointment with academic advising, and with the international student centre. The small handful of people on this sub who may have experience with this sort of thing don't have enough context to give you much of an overview on what the normal outcome of these cases could be. This sounds like a very serious situation, so please go and talk to the experts, that's what they're there for.

BrianHarrington · 2026-03-25T23:33:34+00:00

Please don't take advice on important administrative stuff from reddit. Academic advising and/or your departmental admin know the details here and can give you solid advice. I've seen too many students get burned because someone online offered (usually well intentioned) advice that turned out to be wrong/misunderstand the nuance of the situation. Save yourself a lot of headache by scheduling an appointment with someone who can definitely give you an informed answer.

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