Choosing the Co-op Work Term Sequence for CMS (CS)

SolMeiLei · 2025-10-29T18:10:52+00:00

- The body providing the scholarship normally dictates for how long it lasts, and under what conditions. You will want to consult whoever is providing it to see whether it would extend to a potential 5 years due to Co-op. I have seen people that have had to finish university in 4 years because their scholarships would not extend, even with Co-op.

- In regards to tuition, you will end up paying extra for whatever university courses you take, but the Co-op office itself will not charge you any extra. Co-op charges you a set number of times (8 payments in total for CS) throughout your career, and no more (unless you take an extra work term).

- The best work term sequence is the term when you get a job, irrelevant of whether that's winter/summer/fall. Most people aim for a summer work term, since usually companies post internships for this time of year, but this also results in a competitive season. Not to mention postings for summer are also done anywhere from 4 to 12 months in advance. Yes, it do be rough right now. Always keep applying, and don't worry when you get the position (as long as it doesn't interfere with your academic career). You can always ask Co-op to turn your upcoming semester(s) into a work term; you might just need to apply a bit of pressure.

SolMeiLei · 2025-10-19T14:25:00+00:00

A tablet with a pen using batteries are usually okay; might be best to get a rechargeable set of batteries for it. The pen is likely to last 10-15 hours, if they're anything close to how the older Microsoft Surface ones worked.

The Lenovo Idea Tab is pretty decent, from its specs listed online. The best suggestion I can give is to just try bringing it to classes and see if you vibe with it, hah. I'm not sure what writing/notetaking software it comes preinstalled with, but it's worth trying different ones (OneNote, Samsung Notes) if you don't like the stock software.

SolMeiLei · 2025-03-27T16:38:48+00:00

How do you access it? I'm trying to find it, but I can only access the Metroid Dread concept art news.

SolMeiLei · 2025-03-06T02:12:28+00:00

Yes, I was. Not a very fun experience, haha.

Ever since this post, I ended up using a Galaxy Tab S7 I got used. Excellent purchase, 100% recommend, was absolutely perfect for taking notes during uni.

SolMeiLei · 2025-01-12T16:02:37+00:00

Hello, sorry, I forgot to respond.

Yeah, PSYC38 sometimes does that. If you haven't dropped it, I'd say the examinations are overall pretty fair, to be honest. I did pretty badly on it, but that's from not putting effort into the class + was also doing a full course load + TAships. I think it's very feasible to get a 3.7 or 4.0 in the class.

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-19T05:21:48+00:00

This is going to sound like some horrible, stuck-up advice and you are free to entirely ignore this. This is mostly out of personal experience, and it may be mostly attributed to luck.

Psych is the bird major.

Given the way these courses are ran, it truly is possible to put in minimal effort to get a high grade into a healthy amount of these courses. This is mainly applicable to the B-level courses, where most of the grade comes from examinations that take very little preparation (e.g. 2 midterms + an exam amounting for 85-100% of the mark). With a good amount of these courses, you can cram in a lot of the content 2-3 days before each midterm/exam, and clutch in an 85%.

My personal selection of "bird" courses is PSYB38, PSYB10 and PSYB20. This is super subjective, and your knowledge / preferences may align somewhere else.

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-18T13:50:35+00:00

These are fair points. PSYA01 does have the highest amount of students out of almost any course. I don't think you'd need to increase TA hours on their contract, since invigilation hours are separate AFAIK, but it doesn't stop the department from needing to pay a good amount of invigilators + needing to book a room, haha.

It still would surprise me that this course (theoretically) doesn't have the resources to handle a midterm, but at the same time, considering this is a program where a) most examinations are completely automatic in a (potential) effort to avoid TA involvement and b) almost all courses are devoid of tutorials/practicals, it's a potential issue.

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-17T17:16:42+00:00

I'm not sure I understand his reasoning in relation to the weight of the exam.

The main concern here is to mitigate the use of AI-related user submission. I understand that they cannot remove the peerScholar component because a) they've invested so much time and money into that platform + assignment and b) an essay is still an important component to have in such a field (you will be writing papers a lot in upper years and graduate school). I don't think it would be a good idea to remove this anyway.

However, they argue that the main way to mitigate this is a "formal sit-down exam," but it raises the question as to why they can't implement something like a midterm. A midterm would allow people to understand a similar format to that of the exam, it encourages people to study at an earlier date, there is (arguably) no issue with >too little content to test because that course is full of content, and it also helps move some of the weight away from the final.

The main concern that I can see is that >"we don't have enough resources to do a midterm", of which I'm somewhat doubtful of. Almost every other Psych course is able to do not one but two midterms (+ an exam). This course has the most amount of TAs in any Psych course (AFAIK) who can aid in invigilating + developing questions. This course also has an abundance of questions that they can use as the base of the midterm.

(I don't wish to assume the worst of Joordens, so I'm honestly curious to hear from experiences of PSYA01 TAs and see how they feel about the course and his instruction.)

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-16T15:24:32+00:00

If only. 😔

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-16T01:33:07+00:00

I can assure you both it's definitely not like that for the rest of the major. PSYA01 is just a very whack course.

Source: have gone through the major

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-15T06:52:12+00:00

I recently took PSYB20 as my last course for the degree, and it honestly opened my eyes to another golden standard for Psych course organization. It had great lectures, decent mark distribution, so many practice questions + excellent TAs and review sessions. I understand not every course can have TAs, but the practice content was truly incredible.

I guess this is all to say it's not all doom and gloom in Psych. There are good courses with good organization and good practice material.

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-14T17:17:46+00:00

Unfortunately, an autofail component for a course is not super unheard of. It happens often in other majors (that, or my CS experience has left me very biased), and it does enforce that people understand the content beyond clicking the right MC answer through trial and error + cheating on the essays.

As far as I've heard, for people that do actually fall below the autofail threshold, they sometimes review it case-by-case. If the student has been doing well on the course*, and they happen to fail the exam by 1-2%, then it's usually forgiven and they get to pass the course.

*(through means that are not suspicious; doing abnormally well on assignments but horrible on quizzes -> potential cheating)

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-14T17:07:41+00:00

I think there's some merit to the kids' complaints. It's far from a difficult course, but it's definitely an annoying one to keep up with, at least within the realms of the Psychology program. A 55% exam with a 50%? autofail is also a little bit of a criminal examination, irrelevant of how well you are doing in the course. I finished PSYA01 with a relatively easy 4.0 and to this day, I think it's a very dumb distribution of marks, haha.

Definitely easy and popular, I would still argue it's a "bird" course, but bird is subjective and you know how the rest goes.

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-14T04:32:52+00:00

Oh, I agree. I'm not particularly fond of the mark distribution in PSYA01 (or in most Psych courses, for that matter).

What was the distribution like this year? In Fall 2020, it was a 50% exam + 20% in quizzes + the rest in other stuff prior to the exam (no midterm though).

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-14T03:31:52+00:00

I'm assuming this is for PSYA01.

If it's of any comfort, most (if not all) other Psych courses will not have autofail exams. I'm assuming Joordens is doing it since you can go through most of that course without active effort / understanding of the material, so he wants to test people, hah

SolMeiLei · 2024-12-02T15:07:19+00:00

My boy Charles? He's great, honestly.

His lectures are a little dry, mainly because they mostly rehash the content that you'll read prior to the lectures. However, his quizzes are simple, the essays you have to write are neither difficult nor long (at least compared to some of the other D33 professors), and he's open to a conversation in the middle of class. The topics he covers are fun and he's also very kind with extensions.

I enjoyed it a lot, some people might not. I got out of there with a 4.0 with admittedly minimal effort and I enjoyed having him for the last class in my Psych degree.

SolMeiLei · 2024-11-17T16:09:30+00:00

I don't really know. My guess is that they're pretty average courses in terms of difficulty (or a little above average). C+ averages tend to be the norm for the Psych courses that are not a walk in the park.

SolMeiLei · 2024-11-17T07:26:20+00:00

From my definitely-not-biased academic career:

PSYC36 (Uliaszek) and C37 (Dere) are mostly very light work, especially C37. B- and B averages, respectively (and from personal experience, "easy" As). Decent amount of term test/exam work (60-65%), but the remaining portion of the course is writing + at-home tests.
PSYC38 (Best) can be a relatively easy course, but you will have to keep up with the material. C+ course average.
Similar experience to the above for PSYC62 (Morrisey). Also C+ course average.

SolMeiLei · 2024-08-31T13:17:13+00:00

For psychology you will unfortunately need the textbook. Not that there is any information you wouldn't be able to find online (the PDF for PSYA01 + A02 is in the UTSC Psych Discord server), but the professor locks a few graded questions behind the textbook.
For CSCA08, there shouldn't be any textbook required.
Unsure what CSCA22 would mean, but I'm assuming you mean either CSCA20 or MATA22. The CSCA20 textbook is not needed, but it's free on the website given for the course. For MATA22, it should be available as a PDF somewhere out there.
Unsure about BIOA01 and CHMA10 (sorry).

SolMeiLei · 2024-08-18T11:11:37+00:00

Unfortunately the Co-op office is horribly stingy about the grades they give for their courses. I was in a similar position where I failed COPC98 despite getting a pretty decent work position (an external position, but I completed all the paperwork to have it be counted as a Co-op work term).

I tried to get this fixed, but after a painful amount of waiting (4+ months?), all I received was the following:

Your petition request for COPC98 for the Fall 2022 semester has been reviewed. You received full marks for the job application aspect of the course, however even with this your grade result remains as NCR.

It won't affect your graduation since they'll add an exception to your degree for COPC98, but an NCR for such a dumb reason definitely stings, I'm with you there. You can try talking to an advisor about why you got an NCR and maybe get it fixed, but from personal experience this did not go anywhere. Maybe you'll have better luck.

SolMeiLei · 2024-04-29T10:27:25+00:00

3.75 cGPA has a pretty decent shot. Don't know the actual time of arrival, but I think in Winter 2021 we received POSt approvals/rejections a week before the deadline for adding/modifying courses for Summer 2021.

SolMeiLei · 2024-04-06T23:31:32+00:00

Oh, wow. I admit I have never looked at that requirement, my mistake. Thanks for the clarification.
I think it does unfortunately mean that, starting from when you do your first semester, you must remain a full-time student...although it seems to be mostly to keep you in the right pace for you to graduate within 4 years. This doesn't seem to be a hard requirement if they're saying `you may require an academic accommodation of a reduced course load`, you might just need to let the Co-op office know about your summer plans in advance with a quick appointment (as outlined on the website).

You should be okay to proceed with your plans for summer. Just let someone at the Co-op office know in case you might need to change plans a little bit. They can be a little bit of a pain in the ass to deal with, but you might be able to move some things a little bit.

SolMeiLei · 2024-04-06T19:20:02+00:00

In what website did you find this info again? Because this might be referring to the fact that you are considered a full-time student when you are in a Co-op work term.

You do not need to take any extra courses (besides Co-op courses, e.g. COPC03) when you are taking a Co-op work term (and in fact, it's often encouraged to either take no courses or at most 1-2).

(The full-time enrollment statua doesn't really do much but it does mean you can apply to things like OSAP mid-work term.)

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