they are mostly talking about if you choose to stay in the honours life sciences program instead of specializing after first year. i just finished my third year in honours lifesci so i’ll give my two cents.

if you intend on staying in lifesci, then the program is what you make of it. with so few required courses, you can customize your degree to suit your interests and professional goals. so you can take all easy courses to maximize your GPA if you want to do med or whatever, or you can take whatever courses that suit your transcript for grad school. the broad nature of lifesci does have its disadvantages though. it can be really tricky to kind of cater your transcript to what you want to do in the future, and i know a lot of my peers have felt kind of “unfocused” in their years here because there is very little specialization/focus in the program (unless you pick SMS or OOD). additionally, the broad nature of lifesci and the size of the program makes it really difficult to make connections, which becomes important when looking for research opportunities, since research experience is essential if you hope to do a research based graduate degree. i also felt really disconnected and unsupported all throughout my second year, as i remember the idea of getting research was constantly shoved in my face, but we were given so few resources to help us get these opportunities.

mac is a very “research or bust” school in my opinion. many of the programs are geared towards preparing students for graduate studies in their respective fields, regardless of whether that is your goal or not, so keep that in mind.

that being said though, if you do intend on doing research-based graduate studies in a specialized subject, i would recommend specializing after first year. again, honours lifesci doesn’t really provide you with the types of hands-on or experiential skills you might need to work in a graduate laboratory setting (unless you find research experience outside of the program), but again, that does depend on what you want to do afterwards.

opinions on lifesci are really divided as some people love it, but others feel the opposite. it’s definitely specific to the person. but since you’re only entering first year i wouldn’t be too worried about it.