u/ProfessionalEntire33

course enrollment starts TOMORROW for me. how am i supposed to pick electives without knowing which evil prof is teaching them lol

Like are there any levels past distinction and high distinction and what do those levels mean and does it say it on ur degree?

Please i beg you guys post reviews of courses you took esp if youre in 4th year!!!!!

STA288 (stats for life sci), crs avg: B-

Profs: Dr. Wong and White i think?

my rating: 1/5

eval:

• 5% weekly check in quizzes (marked for completion)
• 6% participation
• 1% completing lab 0
• 1.6% BONUS pre-lab 2
• 24% labs (8% per lab assignment)
• 6% project proposal
• 18% project report
• 15% midterm
• 25% final

first stats course i ever took and safe to say NEVER AGAIN. EVEN though i got an A+ on this course it was not good. the way this course is organized and the way profs teach is insanely messy and hard. so basically, every week you have to watch 2h worth of lectures BEFORE the in-person class on thursday, but guess what! the lectures wouldnt be posted till monday bc they "needed the weekend to prepare them"? lol and what about us? we're uni students that have so many classes throughout the week, we also only have time on weekends to sit and watch the lectures. anyways, inperson class was USELESS but you still have to show up for the QR code to get participation marks. they basically just reviewed everything from the lec vids posted in the class. the profs dont know how to teach. they make even the simplest things so overly complicated when explaining. and guess what you also have to learn R programming by urself. they post these R modules like every 2-3 weeks that explain R but dont start from basics. i had some experience in python before so i feel like it really helped me understand the basics but yeah. at least they dont expect you to R code from scratch in exams. they told us we'd never have to write code on exams which was nice. we were given large chunks of R code and asked to interpret whats going on in each line tho.

anyway TIPS TO SUCCEED: keep up with the content (i did not keep up with it after the midterm coz my other courses took over my life and so i was left to study like 7 weeks of stats content in one week but its doable), review the lecture slides and make YOUR OWN NOTES nicely organized as the profs slides r very messy and disorganised and hard to understand. then review the R modules SLOWLY, and many times. YOU WONT UNDERSTAND IT the first time you read it through and thats OKAY. second time u read it it will make more sense and then 3rd time you'll be a pro. make notes of important concepts and review review review!

PCL469 (systems pharm I), crs avg: B+

Prof: Dr. Edgar, Montandon & Arnot

My rating: 1/5

• 10% Small Group Session (SGS) participation
• 12% SGS debate
• 10% drug review tables
• 8% SGS team question creations
• 24% midterm
• 36% final

lol i have a lot to say ab this course. This course is SOOO content heavy its insane. to give you a good idea of this, we needed to know like over 200 drugs for the final, along w their mechanisms, side effects, clinical implications, contraindications etc it was insane the amount of DETAIL they required us to know things in. for ex, we needed to know all the diff antibody types AND all the subtypes AND their serum concentrations and MW, where they r most prevalent and a lot of more insane things to have to memorise. I underatand having to know antibody types and subtypes but to not provide CONCENTRATIONS and MOLECULAR WEIGHTS on the exam and expect us to memorise it IS INSANE. there would be TABLES AND TABLES OF insane details that he would expect us to memorise, its def possible to do well (i got an A on the course) but prepare to put in the effort of 2 courses! i was taking 6 courses already this sem so this was like 7 courses now i was SOOOOO drained.

so basically in this course we went over different systems in our body, they explained how they work (physiology) then drugs to fix abnormalities and more, some systems covered were CV, immune system and CNS.

Edgar was an amazing teacher. he knew how to teach and present information in a well organized and easy to understand way. he also provides practice questions which is nice and said one of them will come on the midterm and final (no answer key was given tho :() he has A LOT of content but its better than whatever the hel the other profs were doing. Arnot was not good as usual (she goes fast, and just DUMPS crazy loads of info on slides that she doesnt even understand herself lol, like once she looked at the slide and was like oh dk what that bullet point means like ???? you dont know but we are supposed to know) but i felt as if she was better than pcl302 at least or maybe im just better at understanding pharmacology now lol. Montandon was insane, bro just read off of the slides and like half the class wouldnt come to his lectures coz they were useless. he also had the most DISORGANISED slides it pissed me off sm i had to use chatgpt to piece together whatever the hell is going on in his slide decks. he was a chill guy tho.

now my rant about the drug tables:

drug review tables were the BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. every 2-3 weeks before an SGS you had to create these tables including ALL drugs learnt in lectures. the table would have columns for drug name, clinical implication, MOA and side effects. it would easily take 3-4 hrs to do coz you had to type everything in your OWN words it GENUINELY pmo so much and he said its for ur own good but i never used those tables even ONCE to review content (perhaps out of spite). but they were soooo useless coz you just go on autopilot writing all the drugs out and bruh it would be so time consuming to make sure you didnt miss any random drug coz it was graded just for 2 randomly chosen drugs (like you submit and the prof will pick 2 random drugs from like 4 lectures to check that you write everything correctly for it, if you have both drugs and have everything written correctly you get 100% but if you miss a drug thats 50% off ur grade for the assignment. so you need to make sure ur writing up 14 pages of DRUGS properly or else say bye bye to ur "easy marks" as edgar called them. each drug review table would easily by 50-60 drugs btw.

And finally I’d like to talk about exams in this course. The midterm exam was horrendous. The MCQ part was fine, I think the prof said the class avg for tht part was around 80% which is good. But the short answer questions were insane. They were such creative application based questions that we’ve NEVER been exposed to before. NONE of his practice questions were like that. My friends and I after the exam were like WHAT even were those questions. Some questions were fair for sure but the problem was, he barely gives you space to write bc he doesn’t want you to over write which fair enough but if you make a mistake while writing then that space is gone lol. He said only provide what the question wants if you put extra info the TA’s probs won’t read ur whole answer (WHAT THE HELL) anyways, bc of that ALWAYS bullet point ur answers coz clearly the TA’s don’t wanna read everything and just skim thru.

When we got our midterm exams back, it felt as if, even for the “easy” short answer questions, he would take off marks for the silliest smallest things like not kidding for one question I got like 0.25 off like? It felt like he had an agenda to make sure NO ONE gets full marks on any short answer question coz, and I quote “there’s always room for improvement”.

And then finally, the final is cumulative which was insane coz it was an INSANE amount of content but it went okay since I felt like 85% of the exam was post midterm content! & the shot answer questions were much easier & we were prepared for the long answer questions this time since he showed us a previous wuestion he used for a previous final in this class and we all got to answer it together which really helped understand what kind of things he’s looking for in an answer.

AST201 (Stars & Galaxies), crs avg: C+

Prof: Dr. Reid

My rating: 5/5

• 5% weekly assignments
• 5% poll everywhere in class
• 5% astrophoto
• 30% midterm 1
• 15% midterm 2
• 40% final

amazing prof, the guy is the GOAT! love his organised slides, engaging lectures and personality whilst teaching, genuinely fell in love w astronomy and im kinda sad i wont encounter it again ever but it was nice to learn about and very very interesting. theres also a pretty cool assignment where you have to book a telescope and find smth cool in the sky to take a picture of and submit which was an insanely cool assignment to do and you do it in groups which is super fun my group members were great. as for the exams, theyre really fair. i would only study the day before or 2 days before and scored near perfect in each one (ended the course w an A+), its all memorisation based.

AST251 (life on other worlds), crs avg: B-

Prof: Dr. Reid

My rating: 3.5/5

• 5% weekly assignments
• 5% poll everywhere in class
• 15% midterm 1
• 35% midterm 2
• 40% final

Same prof as ast201, so he was great. Genuinely felt like he was enthusiastic about what he was teaching and the content was soo soo interesting. This course basically teaches you how astronomers decide where to look for life outside of our earth, dr Reid teaches you different methods we use to decide where to look for potential habitable planets and shows you how to interpret different information abt the planet to further understand whether or not it could hold life! Super interesting stuff. There’s a bit of math but it’s just plugging in numbers into a formula that they give you. This year ig the course was made more “difficult” bc it had midterms and a final whereas before it was just projects. Midterms weren’t bad tho because he would give you this dataset with info about soo many potential planets and all the weekly quizzes would be based on those diff planets and similar questions would be asked on exams. The exams were def much easier than the weekly quizzes. Sometimes the weekly quizzes would take me like an hr to do just 13 questions but the exam was easier.

PCL386 (cancer pharm), crs avg: B+

Prof: Dr. Salmena

My rating: 0.5/5

• 10% Written assignment 1
• 10% written assignment 2
• 10% written assignment 3
• 30% term test
• 40% final

this guy does NOT know how to teach in an engaging manner. His lectures were given in such a monotone manner and he wouldnt even speak properly. His voice would just dose off at the end of his sentences so you can really only understand and comprehend the first part of his sentences. It REALLYYYY got on my last nerve that I couldn’t understand what he would say at the end of his sentences it would just be muttering and all my friends said the same thing 🥲🥲. He was also so so lazy, assignments would always be released a few days to WEEKS after the date listed on the syllabus and his excuse would be “oh we haven’t covered the content for the essay yet” BE SO FR why did you plan your timeline out SOO badly that we didn’t finish that content by now when the assignment was supposed to be released. Another excuse he used was “oh grant submissions r due so I’m working on that as they’re more important so I can’t work on creating ur assignments rn” BRO and what about us, we have other things to do too but we have to suck it up and do it we can’t just neglect one assignment just coz another is due so u can’t do that either. Poor poor planning on his part, he could’ve created his assignemtns way earlier in the sem based on content we’d have done by now, he didn’t HAVE to leave his assignment creation to last min... And they took AGES TO DO bc they were research essays which r always such a headache and also he took sooooo long to mark them like 4+ weeks. One good thing abt him tho is that he would NEVER make us memorise drug names and mechanisms like pcl469 made us do. And he was funny so I’ll give him that. Exam were fair if you did your studying and knew the concepts broadly, he wouldn’t test on nitty gritty details like 469 would. All this questions mostly would be which of the following statements is/are correct: a) i and ii b) iii and i c) ii only d) iv only. Midterm was 80 MCQ and final was MCQs + short answer questions
His content was basically just diff signaling pathways in our cells and how/where they go wrong in diff cancers and how we can fix that.

IMM350 (immunity in action), crs avg: A-

Dr. Clemenza, and more

My rating: 4/5

• 10% Inquizitive quizzes
• 10% group vid presentation
• 20% midterm 1
• 20% midterm 2
• % Final (in-person, no cheat sheet given)

final was way harder than imm340 damn. i studied not that great for it coz i was like itll be easy like the last sem 340 final WRONGGGG i was so wrong. but i ended up doing good on the course (so did most people, avg was rlly high) coz the other parts of the course were easy like the group vid was graded so nice, midterms were open book online and it was easy to find answer on slides. also i didnt go to a single lecture for this course except for the very first one in the sem when i was v motivated lol. its coz the lectures were 9-11am bruh aint no one waking that early for profs that dont even know how to teach and have accents you cant undertsand (french) sorry 😢

Feel free to ask any q’s u may have

Since the last year is APPE/ electives, so no “studying”, I was like surely the last year is cheaper since you work somewhere else? Idk lmk pls 😓😓

I have a high GPA but 2 CR grades in 2 courses, it’s gonna bring me cGPA down a lot but I haven’t calculated what it’ll be yet with “the lowest passing grade” being replaced w the CR to calculate the full cGPA.

For ref the CR’ed courses r electives, very unrelated courses (astronomy & philosophy)

I have one year of undergrad left and I wanna do everything to make the most of it. I’m not talking about academics here I’m talking abt things I should see, activities & random stuff like that, for my last year in Toronto (I’m in Alberta for the summer since my fam is here)

Any suggestions? I wanna have funnest year ever and make the best memories w my friends ❤️‍🔥

It can be in general things to do in Toronto or at UofT specifically

Hi guys im back to help with your course selection!

IMM340 (Fundamental Immunology) crs avg: B+, my grade: A+

--- my rating: 3/5

evaluation:

• InQuizitive Quizzes: 10% (1% each) online
• Group Vid Presentation: 10%
• Midterm 1: 20%
• Midterm 2: 20%
• Final: 40% (not cumulative)

Midterms were online open-book MCQs. quizzes are through textbook online. Final was in-person closed book MCQs.

so like i barely went to the lectures for this course like i maybe went to like the last 4 since the final was only based on these lectures. lectures were SO ass. all profs have THICK french accents so its really hard to understand anything :( slides r very disorganised and so its hard to understand whats going on, and the lecturers being so bad at explaining doesnt make them any better. clemenza is sooo hard to understand accent wise but at least her slides had written notes along with pictures from the textbook, whereas other lecturers just put pictures it was so annoying and hard to piece everything together.

one thing abt clemenza tho is that in her last lecture she told us the entire signalling pathway would be put on a cheat sheet on the exam so we didnt need to memorise details which was so nice of her! but guess what, the exam printing office misprinting the cheat sheet so everything was super BLURRY which made everyone so mad. everyone was like holding the exam paper up and moving it closer and then further from their eyes to be able to get a clearer view of the text it was so funny when looking around the room in the exam room lollll. no curve or adjustment to grades was made for that btw. in the exam when ppl pointed it out to the TAs that it was blurry the TAs were just like oh oops u just have to make do w that which pmo so much but its ok i got a good grade coz i had thankfully still reviewed that signalling pathway even tho i knew it would be on the exam cheat sheet so ig i cant be mad.

midterms were pretty easy since they were open book, you could find the answer on the slides. video presentation average for the course was like 80% so it was pretty easy to get a good grade as long as you were creative in the way you presented the information from the paper you were assigned.

MGY377 (Microbiology I) crs avg: B, my grade: A-

-- rating: 2/5

• quiz 1, 2 and 3: 2% each
• Assignment 1, 2 and 3: 3% each
• Midterm 1: 25%
• Midterm 2: 25%
• Final: 35% (not cumulative)

all exams were in person MCQs. Assignments and quizzes were online no time limit.

I found this course super hard tbh. but everyone else found it pretty easy so idk what to think. the profs said you didn't need to know details but you really did for the midterms. i got bad/okay on my midterms like in the 70s and 60s but pulled an academic comeback with the final. the final was easy for the most part EXCEPT the last like 5 questions. they were like page long MCQs each describing some experiment and so many diff scenarios and idek i fully guessed those cause there was not enough time to even comprehend what the freak was going on in those experiments lol.

I really liked the way the girl prof lectured, she was really easy to understand and explained really well. the guy prof on the other hand....not as good. all in all, the course wasnt bad, i just think i was having a hard time with it :(

PCL297 (Research Experience) my grade: PASS (this is a pass/fail course)

-- rating: 4/5

• Research objectives assignment: 10%
• Supervisors assessment: 55%
• Research manuscript: 35%

I emailed like 6 profs/potential supervisors from the pharm department and got no response then 3 of them i emailed back 3 weeks later following up and one replied, i did an interview and i got the position. it was an interesting research project i worked on i helped w data collection, statistical analysis, manuscript writing, etc so i learnt a lot of valuable skills. but after 2 months on their team there kind of wasnt any work to do so i would go there and would have to pretend i had stuff to do for 4 hrs every week since i needed to fulfill the 60 hr research requirement (you have to go in during reading week and exam season too btw). their office was pretty nice so i enjoyed being there and making valuable connections. i also got my name on the paper for the project! also your supervisor marks everything and like no one has ever failed this course before, dm me if you wanna know more about this course

PCL302 (Pharmacodynamic Principles) crs avg: B-, my grade: A-

-- rating 2/5

• Assignment 1: 15%
• Assignment 2: 10%
• Midterm: 30%
• Final: 45% (cumulative)

exams were in-person MCQs and short answer (like 30% MCQ, 70% short answer questions)

I hated this course. any course arnot teaches and coordinates is always ass im sorry. so the first prof to teach was salahpour, he wasnt bad but wasnt great either. his content was pretty easy though so it was fine. Arnot was a 1/10 this woman went at like 10x speed lecturing and her slides were the most unorganised NONSENSE, everyone genuinely hates when she comes she genuinely boils my blood. by not organised i means she has random abbreviations that she doesnt even tell us what they r and sometimes when someone asks shes like i dont remember sorry or says "what do YOU think"??? and then her slides have RANDOM DUMPS OF INFO organised randomly. like she wont put headings on some of her slides and its just random facts about a certain drug like it starts w its pharmacokinetics then randomly switches to moa and then random pharmacokinetic detail then random other detail it ACTUALLY pisses everyone off soooo much. and then if you ask her for clarification on anything 9 times out of 10 she replies with the same "what do YOUUUU think" like BUDDY if i knew i wouldnt ask u!! damn, anyway, salmena was next his section was good and his questions on the final were easy! last prof was hubbard i hated him his slides were amazing 10/10 but his content was hard and A LOT. like insane amount of content.

final was easier than the midterm bc we had more time so had time to review our answers. like i finished in 2hrs and spent then last hr just reviewing evrything which was nice! midterm was hard coz of the time crunch and short answer questions just required the most specific answers its like they purposely have told all the TAs not to give anyone 100% on any question coz genuinely why r they taking off 0.1 and 0.275 marks r u so fr ur lyingggg. one of the answers in the markscheme was also referring to something we've never learnt before, when i asked the TA abt it she goes "yeah everyone has asked about this same answer in the markscheme and yeah you didnt learn it" lol what? how can u expect us to answer something youve neverrr taught even?

PHL281 (Bioethics) crs avg: B, my grade: A-

-- rating 1/5

• Tutorial participation: 15%
• In-tutorial writing: 15%
• Midterm: 20%
• Paper outline: 5%
• Paper: 15%
• Final: 30% (cumulative)

Midterm was all MCQs, Final was like 50% MCQ, 25% short answer, 25% long answer (answer 1 out of 2 long answer questions given). No study guide was given.

I absolutely despised this course, not my thing at all. so the topics were interesting for sure (euthanasia, abortion, MAID, informed consent, etc) but the prof lectured in a very boring and unenthusiastic way. these topics are sooo interesting and have many interesting viewpoints and he couldve articulated them better. a lot of his lectures r just him "um ah uh" ing like please speak properlyyyy. half the people in lec would get so bored and be pllaying chess or watching suits on their devices loll.

the readings in this course are also A LOT, like 50-60 pages per week which i hated coz they were the most boring readings too like it would be the most obnoxiously difficult way of wording the most easy thing and dont get me started on informed consent by brock that man literally just said the same thing over and over again 50 times in his readings but in diff ways i would fall asleep doing these readings. i eventually stopped doing the readings and just focused on the main points in lecture slides (which were on the readings) and those were enough to get good results in the tutorial writing quizzes (closed book btw) and in the midterms and final! also the tutorials made me laugh so much coz how do u guys have such bright ideas about such boring readings at 9 in the morning bruh i wish i could be you. i genuinely thought i would fail this course by how smart everyone else talked in tutorial it made me feel really dumb

anyway good sem, had 3 back to back finals which wasnt the best but its fine its over. feel free to comment for more info/questions. sem 2 review of courses coming soon once i get those grades, praying quercus recovers from whatevers going on so they can release those

No cause like get off our campus fr. Too many ppl in front of commons can’t even look at cherry blossoms in peace. And studying is difficult when seeing so many ppl enjoying themselves outside bruh im suffering I STILL HAVE 3 EXAMS LEFT