Planning My Courses For The Upcoming Year!

Now that course registration is just around the corner, I thought I’d write a blog explaining how I plan my courses for the upcoming year. Course-planning is intimidating and can be hard work, but now that it’s my fourth time doing it (!!) I feel like I’ve got it down pretty well. 

1. Checking Course Requirements 

The first thing I always do is make sure I know what course requirements I need to fill. As a U of T student, I'm responsible for finishing certain requirements for both my programs of study and my degree. Thankfully, Degree Explorer makes it super easy to see program and degree requirements, so I always check Degree Explorer first. Degree Explorer can be a bit confusing, so checking out your program of study’s website for course requirements is also a great way to double check what courses you need to take. 

  Now that I’ve compiled a list of what courses I need to take for the upcoming year, I’ll move on to planning my timetable.  2)     Planning Your Timetable   The Fall and Winter Session Timetable is such a great resource for designing your course schedule and making sure that none of the courses you’re planning to take overlap. I use this site to plan out mock timetables and make sure the courses I want to take don’t conflict. I usually create a couple of timetables, especially if I’m not sure whether I’ll get into a certain course or not. I always want to be ready with a back-up timetable in case a course I want to register in gets filled up! 

I also love to search the Fall and Winter Session Timetable for courses I want to take, sometimes even in different departments. If I'm unsure of whether or not to take a course, I'll always check online to see if students have reviewed it. Sometimes, I'll email the professor teaching a course I'm interested in and ask for the syllabus to the course in advance. Now that some courses are online next year, shopping around for courses may be harder than usual, so I took extra time this year to research the courses I was planning to take prior to registering.  3)     Getting Ready to Enrol    Once I’ve figured out which courses I’d like to register for, I’ll add them to my Enrolment Cart on Acorn. Doing this means you’ll be able to enrol in them a lot quicker when it’s your enrolment start-time. 

From there, I make sure I know my enrolment start-time so I can get into all the courses I want to. Noting this down is super important, as courses fill up really quickly and accidentally missing your start-time may mean you don't get into courses you planned to! Happy course planning! 🙂