How to Succeed At University--Canadian Edition. Danton O'Day

look up their websites. If you have long-term academic ambitions, universities that offer Master’s and Ph.D. programs may hold more appeal for you. In addition, the presence of graduate students working towards their Master’s or Ph.D.’s provides the university with a large source of qualified teaching assistants, laboratory demonstrators, tutorial leaders, etc., in addition to the full-time faculty. Another advantage of an institution that is training postgraduate students is that it will be more in the mainstream of what is happening in your area of study: It has to be in order to survive in the competitive academic world.

      Selecting a University

      Many students spend little time selecting a university. This can be a serious error. Although the overall ranking of universities may be based on their total programs, some of the less highly ranked ones offer specific programs that surpass those at the more prestigious institutions and some universities offer unique programs. If you have a concrete idea of what you want to do, look over each university’s offerings in the area you are interested in. You can also check Maclean’s magazine’s annual review of universities in Canada. But be aware, not everyone agrees with Maclean’s assessments.

      Don’t select a university because it is close to home. Never attend a university because all your friends are going to go there. Attending a distant university can give you new experiences, new friends and new outlooks on life. You will mature faster and grow faster mentally if you move on to a new environment.

      Did You Know?

      Universities are respected and ranked on their contributions to society—not on their teaching. Harvard and Oxford are famous because they have famous professors who work there. They are not great because they are great teaching institutions. In fact, the data suggest the opposite. A recent analysis of the world’s top research universities has shown that the top fifty or so universities world-wide generally have faculty who are not very good teachers. So if your goal is to simply get a good education, then you should set your sights on some of the lesser institutions. However, if your goal is to become a leader in the field in which you are interested, then enter those ivy-covered halls of the intellectually elite.

      If it is necessary to attend a local university for financial or other reasons then do so, but make an attempt to meet new people. University is a fantastic place to meet people with varied backgrounds. It is a multinational, multicultural community. Regardless of the university you attend, you will be exposed to new views of life.

      One way to get the feeling about what universities to apply to is to attend the annual recruiting sessions that most high schools organize one or more nights each year. Representatives of local universities, and even a few distant ones, give special talks at which they explain the attractions of their universities. Obviously the university representatives (liaison officers) are there to get your warm body to their university for the revenue it will generate. They are not going to tell you about their shortcomings, only about their strong points. However, you can learn a lot from these meetings, especially if you make notes about the topics discussed. If social or sports aspects are emphasized with little regard for academic programs, then you should beware. You are going to university (or should be) to get a valuable education that will form the basis for your future. You will have fun along the way, but that should not be your prime concern. Look for liaison officers who describe the academic programs available and be sure to ask questions.

      University recruiting nights are usually only province-wide and are not offered by all schools, so they will not be available to all students nor will they provide you with data on all the universities in the country. Thus you will likely still have to rely on other sources of information: university calendars, brochures and websites.

      What to Expect

      In many aspects university differs greatly from high school; in others it is very similar. In this section I want to give an overview of what you will be up against at university. Later I will get down to details.

      The most significant difference between university and high school is the freedom that you have at university. This might seem like a good thing but, as we have seen, it can work against you. For example, since you are free to attend or miss lectures at will, you may be tempted to skip them.

      Your classes or lectures will often be very impersonal events. You will sit in a large lecture hall listening to an apparently miniscule professor standing in the distance at the front of the classroom lecturing you on topics that were never covered in high school. Except in rare instances, you will not be missed if absent or acknowledged if present. It will be up to you to decide what is important and what is not. It will be up to you to decide whether or not to study; very few professors give unannounced quizzes in the lecture period.

      You alone can decide whether or not to do what’s asked. It will be up to you to decide if you should hand in an assignment. It will be your decision whether to attend a lecture, lab or tutorial. To the lecturer you will be one of hundreds or thousands of uninspiring first-year faces. It will be up to you whether you remain anonymous or get the most out of your years at university.

      Your hours in class will vary with the courses you have chosen. In each arts course (English, French, fine arts, etc.) you will have a minimum of two to three hours (depending on the university) of lectures per week. In the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) you will have the same lecture periods and you will also have to attend laboratory periods which will range from two to four hours per week. Some disciplines, such as mathematics and computer science, also have tutorials that are designed to give the practical aspects of the courses as well as some individual attention. The number of tutorial hours will also vary from university to university.

      Typically students are required to take five full courses (or full course equivalents, FCEs) per year for three or four years to be awarded the Bachelor’s degree. By the way, the Bachelor’s degree is rarely discussed in terms of three or four years but instead as to the number of full courses required (e.g., fifteen or twenty FCEs). Nowadays, most students take fewer than five full courses per year, usually averaging three to four courses per year. Also, full courses are less common with half-courses predominating. Thus depending on your chosen curriculum you will have between ten and thirty hours of class time per week. In disciplines that have few class hours, more outside reading and other assignments are usually required, while in the sciences time will be spent preparing for labs and writing lab reports.

      Because of the diversity of university programs it would be futile to spend any more time giving generalities about what to expect. However, to succeed at university I believe you should spend about twelve hours of work time per course per week. That means a sixty-hour week, which is longer than a typical workweek. Of course, some students do well with less work and others need more time at the books. Let your grades be your guide. As with anything, the more you work at it, the better things will go. Studying will be covered in more detail in Chapter 5.

      Courses and Calendars

      One of the most dramatic differences between high school and university is the wide variety of courses available at the postsecondary institution. At a large university you will have literally hundreds of courses to choose from, ranging from anthropology to musicology to zoology. Even small universities will have a large number of disciplines in which you can specialize.

      As a result, the most important book you can acquire for sorting through this academic maze is the university calendar. You can write to the universities that interest you and request their calendars, or, more conveniently, you can usually find them as PDF documents on the universities’ websites. Your school library or a local university library also may have calendars you can look at. Don’t select a university until you have visited the universities you are interested in or have checked out their calendars and websites and talked to others who have first-hand knowledge of the institution.