So your university adventure begins. The first thing? Choosing courses of course! This post covers how to register for courses, what the keywords in the course registration system means as well as some considerations when making a timetable such as AP/IB credits, scheduling professors, online classes and STTs.
Although there are some specific topics for engineering students, others apply to all students. For an overview of all first year courses, check out my post here.
Getting started
To create your timetable for first year engineering, go to Browse -> Standard Timetables-> BASC -> Year 1, and choose a STT that you like. Then, add in the rest of the classes that you need, like english and an elective. For the full list of courses, check the UBC calendar, or read my review of all UBC first year engineering courses .
Laboratory vs Tutorials
Labs are exactly what you think it means: an assessment of some kind that you have to complete during the time of the lab. For example, in CHEM 154, you do a chemistry experiment (duh); in APSC 160 labs, you are given a coding problem/quiz to do in the computer lab; in PHYS 159 labs, you do a physics experiment.
On the other hand, tutorials are places where you can practice the course work and get more help. They’re held by teaching assistants (TA’s), who are usually older undergraduate or graduate students. You can expect worksheets, a lesson by the TA, or both.
Restricted, Blocked, STT keywords?
STT: This course can only be registered through registering for an STT. You cannot add the course to your timetable by itself (for how to switch sections, see here).
Restricted: Some or all of the seats in this class are restricted to a certain type of student. If you click into the class and scroll down, you will see how many general seats are available (anyone can register) and how many reserved/restricted seats. Typically, this is when the faculty wants to ensure that everyone in their faculty are able to take the course by alloting a number of restricted seats in advance.
This means that (1) there's no general seats, meaning that can only register for the reserved seat, and (2) for the reserved seats, you must be in BSC year 2 or above in the specializations that are mentioned.
Blocked: Nobody can register in this course now.
Should I use AP/IB credits?
For english or chemistry, definitely yes. Especially if these subjects are not something you enjoy, you’re not missing out on anything by using your credits. There are no courses that build on top of english or chemistry first year classes, unless you’re going into chemical engineering, or you want to minor in english.
Now math is an interesting one, and there’s arguments for both using credits or taking the course. Overall, I don’t think there’s a generalized consensus regarding this, as it mostly depends on how comfortable you are with calculus or math. You can have a quick peek at the online math 100 textbook that all classes use. If you find that it's all review, then perhaps you can consider skipping the course. On the other hand, if you’re finding it confusing, retaking the course is a good idea for a better math foundation going into MATH 101.
Personally, I got a bunch of advice before heading into first year, all along the lines of “you should 100% retake math 100 because you will struggle later on if you don’t”. I ended up with a pretty bad professor in math 100, and barely went to class for before midterms. In the second half of the term, I switched profs, and was able to learn some new things, so it worked out nicely. On the other hand, I heard from a friend of mine who used her calculus credits, and instead took MATH 152 first term, and she was doing quite well too (but she was pretty smart, so what can I say?). Again, there is no generalization on whether you should or shouldn’t take AP credits, it mostly depends on you.
Scheduling considerations
If you’re living on campus, this probably won’t apply to you, because classes are so close anyways. Otherwise, here are some considerations...and there is a big difference between having a good timetable and a bad one.
Late or early classes: up to you, 8am classes are not as bad as people say.
Break or no break: I prefer having several back-to-back classes at once, and then a chunk of time off. Classes are actually not as tiring as doing work. Furthermore, you get more complete blocks of time to actually do things. 1 hours gaps are the worst (unless it's lunch then that’s fine) since there’s really not much you can get done in 1 hour. If you want an example of a bad schedule...
Why is it so bad? First of all, there are way too many breaks between my classes as a commuter student. It means that on MWF, I have to stay at school for a full 8-5, when my classes in total are only 4 hours... I actually ended up skipping either my 8am class or my 4pm class.
Especially if you’re planning to commute, try to make your earliest and latest class closer together, so if you’re really tired someday, you don’t have to spend so many hours at school. Then on other days, you can decide when to go home (i.e., if you have some other activity/sport/hanging out) instead of being forced to stay at school for that last class you have at 4pm.
Special Online Considerations
Okay well you’re probably thinking now all this is not very useful since fall term is going to be online anyways, please provide me with some not outdated and actually helpful information.
Lectures
In Spring of 2020, all my classes were shifted online, with recorded online lectures, meaning that you can take the class anytime. I believe this will be the case going into fall as well, because UBC has to take into account that international students may be studying in a different time zone, so it makes sense to make lectures available at any time. In that case, you don’t really have to worry about picking a good schedule for term 1 at least.
In 3 of my classes, lectures were also live-streamed (and available as recordings afterwards). In this format, you can type in the live-stream chat (its just like Twitch chat) to ask questions, raise your hand to say something into the microphone, or answer polls/multiple choice questions from the prof.
Assignments/homework were done online anyways, or can easily be moved online by asking you to scan or photograph your work. For tutorials and coding labs, these were held online using a tool called collaborative ultra, which is similar to zoom. So are professor and TA office hours. And finally for exams, professors can choose whether to allow open book, or use an exam webcam monitoring service like Proctorio.
Discussion about online format
I think the biggest challenge with having online classes is keeping yourself accountable, and watching the recorded lecture videos on time. Already, the transition from high school to university is a big one, especially since first year class size is around 200 students, and there’s no high school teacher to chase after you for not doing your homework or attending class. This is definitely better with physical classes, since you see your friends in classes, and these friends kind of expect that you are there.
But with online classes, there’s only you to make sure that you’re not falling behind and regularly watching lectures. In my experience with online classes, I spent a few weeks not really doing any work or listening to lectures (with the mindset that it's recorded anyways), and consequently, I got really behind and never really caught up until final exams.
On the flip side, a good thing I found about online classes is asking for help is so much easier. Before, we would have to physically go to office hours, but now we can just chat online with the professor or a TA.
Professors
Sometimes you might get lucky and end up with an amazing professor. Other times, not so much. You can check out each prof’s rating on ratemyprofs. In my opinion, student reviews here are mostly accurate -- I’ve only disagreed with the ratings a few times. And in those cases, I thought the ratings were overly generous, so you really can’t go wrong with choosing a prof with more favorable reviews. Hopefully some prof doesn’t read this and bash my blog for endorsing a site that they thoroughly hate…
However, sometimes the course prof may be TBD. But don’t worry. When classes start, and you find that you really want to switch to another section, there’s usually a way.
STT Considerations
If you're in engineering, you might realize there’s not much to choose for your first year of applied science. In fact, every first year student in BASC takes the same 12 courses besides a humanities elective. So, the admin has made standard timetables (STTs), which is a premade schedule with the main course that everyone takes.
There’s a variety of timetables to choose from, but the main difference is having APSC 160 in 1st term and PHYS 170 in 2nd term, or vice versa. I would recommend APSC 160 (a coding class) in first term and PHYS 170 in second term because PHYS 170 is better taken alongside MATH 152 (which must be in term 2), as you will learn some concepts in math that will be transferable to physics. Although you can still take PHYS 170 without having known MATH 152, some operations you do in the physics course may not be explained properly, and you will just have to use it. Whereas in MATH 152, you will learn the concepts behind that operation and why it works. Another reason is that one of the earlier term 2 projects in the class APSC 101 involves coding, but again, some of your team members will probably have taken APSC 160 in term 1.
Switching STT classes
Classes start, and you want to switch into a different section of a class, but it’s a STT course, so you can’t register in it yourself. There’s 2 methods you can follow:
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Attend the other section’s lectures instead of your own
This is such a hack, typically used for math classes. If the course has no participation marks for lectures and the section you want does not conflict with your other classes, then you can attend that section’s lectures instead of your own. Just remembered to go back to your registered section for midterms.
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Contact ESS and find out how to switch
If the course has attendance or participation marks, then you probably need to switch officially on ssc. Contact engineering student services, and they’ll refer you to another contact depending on the course. This might be the first year physics registration coordinator for PHYS 157/158, or a form to fill out for the faculty of math.
Happy worklist-making!
