Uni Advice

Welcome to the University of Toronto (UofT)! If you are in engineering, you are probably worried about a few things: your grades, your job prospects, what design teams you should join, etc.. I hope this page and some sub-pages I plan on adding help you with some of those. This page is currently a work in progress. I have amassed a good deal of course advice for first-years, but I have some advice on other topics I will add when I have time to.

If you are looking to apply to UofT or are worried about your job prospects, I have made a page dedicated to application-related questions. However, do not take it as an authoritative source -- while I have seen success with student organizations and a research position I have yet to secure a job in industry. If you have a question that does not involve advice, I might have answered it in my FAQ page.

General UofT advice

If you are doing well in your courses, do not focus too much on your grades. Career advancement requires you to be doing okay, but you should not forget that activities outside the classroom such as design teams and personal projects are just as important. I got my first interview from a personal project and going to career fairs, not because of my grades.

It is generally good to find a design team you enjoy, but design teams are not the only extracurricular you can partake in. Sometimes, your strongest interests are not fulfilled by a design team and you might want to do a personal project instead. As mentioned above, people have seemed more impressed by my personal projects than my work in design teams. That being said, you generally get less help with personal projects: One can not use the Myhal Fabrication Facility for them and you will not have a large group of experienced peers. However, you will likely find people with similar interests who can help you.

Would you like to transfer between Core 8 programs after first year? It is possible, but depending on what you want to transfer into you will need to make the Dean's Honours List (average grade at least 79.5%) in both semesters. This is generally true if you are transferring into ECE, Mechanical, or Industrial Engineering. Otherwise, you can probably do so as long as you have a 65% average both semesters and have a clean academic record (this can change between years depending on demand). If you are in a high-demand program and want to transfer to another high-demand program (Generally Mech, Industrial, ECE), you may be able to do so without getting Dean's List both semesters if your transfer frees up a spot for someone else to transfer to your discipline. This happened to a 2T7 in Industrial Engineering who transferred to ECE. This likely does not occur for students in Chemical, Civil, Mineral, or MSE as more people transfer out of these programs than into them in any particular year.

If you would like to skip classes, please do so with care. During my first semester of second year, I had a problem with skipping and being less attentive in class. This combined with poor study habits caused my grades to drop 5% that semester. If you are going to skip a lecture, please care to review the material on or near the day of the lecture if possible (and have a good reason to do so, I found it easier to not skip when I forced myself to have a reason to during second semester). If you are going to skip a tutorial, first ensure you do not actually need to attend it (not all tutorials are created equal).

Do not always rely on a curve, one second-year professor said to us and the 2T6s he would curve the final average to a B, but did not do so for either year (the final averages were C+ for the 2T6s and a B- for us). People may also just do really well during your year, as has happened in some 2nd year Civil Engineering courses I took.

Courses

This section is accurate as of the 2024-25 academic year and may be out of date if a course is restructured or a course coordinator is changed. Please contact me if you notice any errors.

Special thanks to Matthew Kong (ECE 2T8), who has supplied some of his advice for this section. You might find his notes useful. If I mention him without mentioning myself, it is probably because it involves something I have not tried (ex. Going to Sean Uppal's lectures).

APS110

The textbook is very useful and you can learn all the material from it, but the practice problems there are not great for practice (the three assignments and three quizzes are better, along with past exams). The textbook is mandatory to purchase. Its problems are (generally) a free 5% of your grade as you get most of those marks just by attempting them. When studying, please look at past exams when possible as well as your assignments and quizzes. The textbook does not have some of the longer calculation problems you might find on exams. For courses with a lot of knowledge like this one, studying early is a good idea to ensure you can understand everything before an exam.

APS111/112

Engineering Strategies & Practice (ESP) is a learning curve. I started my 1F term performing very poorly in APS111, especially compared to my other courses. However, one can make a comeback in ESP as I did in APS111. Any exams can be studied for by reading off the slides or Perusall textbook readings (which are mandatory to purchase for APS111).

In early October, you will be placed in a group of approximately six people with which you will work on a design project. You might not like the project, and that's okay. Most people will likely agree with you. It is the design process you learn that matters most. You may be put in a bad group or have a TA or CI whose marking scheme you do not understand (I am told they try to balance the marks between tutorial sections). Having any of those will not prevent you from passing the course, but it may prevent you from achieving the mark you want. Approach these challenges with a good mindset.

There are ways to partly remedy bad groups: Internal deadlines of assignment drafts are one I would recommend (Matthew Kong and I both recommend setting this date at least two days prior to the deadline). However, you will need to actively check your group's work after the internal deadline and/or ask your EM/CI/TA for feedback (if they allow it) if you want to take this route. That will ensure you catch the most painful mistakes and see who might be making them. Matthew Kong recommends closely following the assignment reference handbook, particularly for assignments his CI marked. This is a good idea, though the amount it matters likely varies by who your TA/CI/EM is.

There are a few free marks in APS111 and APS112. PD points involve going to events such as Myfab Safety Training, which will enhance your skills in some way. Each PD point is worth 0.1% of your final grade and is reflected in your performance review grade. The performance review itself is not difficult to do well in as long as you are focused during tutorials.

APS112 will have a similar design project, except you'll only be sharing each design project with two or three other groups. Getting a bad project may demotivate you (especially if you lack interest or it makes research more difficult), but otherwise I think the impact of one is less bad than the 2T8s I know think it is.

See the ESP page for more information.

Calculus (MAT186 and MAT187)

I have been told the course coordinator for MAT187 will change in 2025-26. I do not know who it will be, so take any advice specific to one course coordinator (such as grade distribution or exam difficulty) with a grain of salt as it will likely change this year.

If you are looking for my page on vertical asymptotes, click here . If you are looking for my page on Winter 2025 Midterm 2, click here

I strongly recommend you take APS162 in the summer before first year and take APS163 during the fall if you can. As of the 2024-25 academic year, they are run better (according to the 2T8s I have talked to) and in the event you are doing poorly (before the drop deadline), you can drop the course and take it the following semester. I am told the 162 weekly assignments are rather easy and grades are usually quite high for the modelling essays in both 162 and 163. However, the final has been difficult in some years.

Completing APS162 also gives you the opportunity to either have a smaller work load (though in winter this will prevent you from getting a scholarship in second year) for a semester in first year or to take an additional elective course, which can be used to help satisfy your CS/HSS requirements. Registration for APS162 opens in early June and the course fills up quickly.

If you believe in September that MAT187 will be more well-run than APS163 (or have similar feelings regarding APS162), keep in mind that course coordinators can be switched. In October 2024, Prof. Camelia Karimianpour was replaced as coordinator by Prof. Jason Siefken, who is unpopular among the 2T8s I have heard from. Thus, do not assume MAT187 will be better. Only drop APS163 if you are doing poorly in that course or you would like to take an elective in the fall. You should be able to qualify for scholatships if you do not give yourself a reduced winter course load (you need to be taking 5 courses per term, and APS162 counts toward the fall).

If you are taking MAT186, Matthew Kong recommends attending Sean Uppal's lectures and using his notes and practice problems to study as many exam questions come from similar concepts and edge cases. The course no longer has assignments, but past assignment problems have been used as practice problems. Past exams are still the best way to study.

If you are taking MAT187, spend a good amount of time reviewing the textbook and other materials if possible to ensure you understand the concepts. At least one student told me the textbook was good for exam practice for Prof. Siefken's exams. I will update this page in the event the coordinator changes again.

CIV100, CIV102, and other structural courses

These courses require a lot of practice. The practice problems from weekly assignments are very good at getting you to understand the concepts so you may screw yourself over for your exams if you cheat on the assignments. These assignments take time and you have a week to do them, so set aside some time every week if you are worried you will not get time to finish them.

In most structural courses, it is best to spend most of your time doing past midterms and final exams. In CIV100, Prof. Michael Seica often re-uses old test questions and the format does not change (Matthew & I can both attest to this). I have not determined whether this is the best idea in CIV102 as I have not taken it myself.

Paying attention in class is also sometimes important, and I learned that the hard way in CME210. However, if you are missing important knowledge or just want to learn ahead, there are plenty of resources available online. Such resources are particularly helpful in CIV100, as students often have bad experiences with their profs and learn better with the linked resources, which cover most or all of the material. When using these resources, ensure they really cover all the material you need.

Linear Algebra (MAT188)

I will be paying close attention to the course in 2025F, as I have heard rumours of a course coordinator change. If one happens, any advice specific to the current coordinator (such as specific assignments, grade distribution, and exam difficulty) will likely no longer be useful.

This course has a lot of free marks because of the use of standards-based grading on weekly webwork and tutorials and the dropping of your six lowest pre-class essentials marks. To get them, ensure you are caught up with the course material and do your assignments (there are five) on time. These grades are worth 29% of your final mark, almost as much as the final exam (35%). I am aware Linear Algebra is difficult for some, but I believe the point of these free marks is to ensure you are spending enough time on the course to understand the material, particularly since it is very difficult to catch up on the material once you fall behind (I know many 2T8s who fell victim to this).

If you want to study ahead for any course in the summer (taking APS162 doesn't count), study ahead for 188. This and constantly getting free marks allowed me to avoid falling behind in the course (it was my second best grade that semester). To study for the exams in this course, I typically looked at the Pre-Class essentials and practiced and reviewed the content for any learning standards I did not think I met at the time.

APS105/106

The people familiar with programming will find the midterm(s) easy and you will probably not need to spend much time on the course. If not, practice using past final exams (in APS105, these are harder than the midterms) is best.

If you are taking APS105, the final exam will be significantly harder than the midterm. It will have more difficult questions and there will be much more of them relative to the time given. Matthew Kong noted that many students are much worse with the later topics than earlier topics, so you should study them more and give yourself enough practice especially if you are unfamiliar with them.

CHE112

Chemistry generally requires a lot of effort and you will spend a lot of your time in this class. I was able to save some time thanks to prior knowledge taking AP Chemistry the previous year. In 2024-25 (when they began having two midterms instead of one) students began to perform well on the term tests. However, the final exam is still difficult. You can choose your lab groups, but you might need to choose within your tutorial. The textbook can be accessed by the UofT library and has a good number of practice problems, though I personally did not like using it. I preferred to study using my lecture notes.

CIV185

CIV185 has open-book tests (type X). However, the tests were difficult as most did not understand the content that well. The slideshows are usually very long and if you are not great at memorization you will struggle with them, especially for the rocks portion of the course. However, you will need to study them regardless and learn to filter out irrelevant material if you are to memorize it (use whichever method is best for memorizing material).

First-year Courses not taken in Civil Engineering

All notes in this section are from Matthew Kong's experience during the 2024-25 school year unless stated otherwise.

MIE100

People generally find that the content for this course gets much harder after the midterm, and so the averages on the final exam tend to be significantly below other assessments. This is partially because the content after the midterm (rigid bodies, vibrations) becomes more involved, but also because (anecdotally) students tend to stop studying the content as much after completing the midterm (I agree with Matthew Kong's assessment here). Thus, Kong highly recommends trying to keep up with the content later in the semester. You should study this course like you would study CIV100: A lot of practice. Like CIV100, there are no conceptual questions on the quiz, midterm, or final. The teaching team posts plenty of past exams on Quercus you can use for practice. Kong notes the assignment questions are significantly harder than the quiz/exam questions, so being able to solve them yourself is not as necessary as in CIV100. However, you should understand what the question is about. The assignments have unlimited attempts so you do not have to be certain when giving an answer. The exams are type C. From my experience with type C exams, it is best to write down formulae and concepts you may forget (you may want to ensure you know what content you might forget first). Make sure all your info is correct.

ECE110

Like in CIV100, studying practice problems is very useful for this course. However, the exams here also feature conceptual questions which reviewing the lecture slides may be best for (especially for the physics portion of the course). The textbook and assignment problems are similar in difficulty to the exam questions, so try to do your assignment questions properly and use them and the textbook for practice. Most physics assignment questions have randomized numbers, though solutions to very similar problems (perhaps only with different numbers) can be found online. The circuit questions generally do not change. Only use those solutions if you are stuck or would like to verify your answer. Avoid going too deep into the textbook, as it features proofs unnecessary for this course.

Second-year Civil Engineering

This section is a work in progress and may be split from this page when it is done.

CIV201 / CIV282

Your notebook for CIV201 is very important, being worth 70% of your final grade in the course. Do not procrastinate on completing it like I did, as it caused me to do poorly in the course despite my final report mark being better than anything else I did in CIV282.

CIV282 is a communication course which often combines its assignments with other courses. These combined assignments are your CIV201 final report and the CIV220 Urban Metabolism Assignment. During drafting for both assignments, you will submit a draft version. Try finishing most of it by this date to get valuable feedback. Each draft is worth 5% of your CIV282 grade. After your Urban Metabolism Assignment, you will be put in a group for a final presentation about some urban metabolism-related problems either one specific city or the entire world is facing. The teaching team will pair people who did the same city for the Urban Metabolism Assignment if at least four in your tutorial did so, so getting a group of 4 to do the same city will increase your chance of getting a group you want for this presentation.

CIV220

This course is not hard, apart from the Urban Metabolism Assignment. However, with only four things making up your mark you should be careful: Do not procrastinate on studying for your final exam like I did. The midterm/final format is predictable and knowledge-based so the best way to study is to review your knowledge and look at past tests.

CIV235

This course requires a lot of practice, particularly for the freehand section. Prof. Rad has specific standards for you to follow in the CAD sections and specific techniques in the freehand section. Sticking to them requires practice and Prof. Rad is not always nice when grading, especially for freehand. The course structure was changed significantly in 2024-25 and may undergo more changes.

CME261

This course suffered from a lack of practice problems when I took it. During this time, the best way to practice was to review the tutorial problems, though the exam problems were often harder than them. Unlike some other math courses, answers here are often not clean so avoid assuming you are wrong when you get a weird answer on a test (you should still try checking your work if you have extra time, though).

CME270

The lectures for this course are well-structured, and Prof. Hofmann provides a lot of examples. Practice problems are the best way to study here, but you should also try avoiding silly mistakes as the graders are often very tough on mistakes. You can choose your groups for your labs and assignments (these are the same groups). The labs and assignments are not marked as tough as the tests are.

CIV280

This course is also well-structured. This course has a lot of memorization, but exam content can vary wildly from year to year. I did very well on the final exam because it contained a heavy amount of scheduling content. The term projects will help you here, and I would advise avoiding procrastinating on them. One upper-year did one of his term projects early to avoid needing to do it near two midterms. These term projects make up a majority (55%) of your final grade and for the two group projects, you are able to choose your groups.

CIV209

Past exams (particularly the 2023 exam) have so much content that they are good study material on their own, especially given the slides are very dense and it is difficult for one to get through all of it. Most questions are conceptual, so ensure you know and understand the concepts. Your continued understanding of the content will help you during the lecture quizzes, but those quizzes are rather difficult.

CIV250

Like CIV209, this course have a lot of content. However, the quizzes are not difficult and are not graded. They are good prep for the conceptual questions, which are very important to understand completely as Prof. Basheer marks them very strictly. The calculation questions are not difficult, but with the professor marking hard you should ensure you understand all the content.

CME259

This is a humanities course with a lot of writing and you will be required to note relationships between concepts. Participating in seminar is very important (seminars are worth 30% of your mark, and are not marked that easy) and you should ensure you understand all the concepts. If you are afraid you will be unable to, your aid sheet will be very useful for the midterm and final. You will be able to bring two aid sheets to the final exam.

CME262

This course has very few conceptual questions. Prof. Seungjae Lee prefers most numerical methods to be tested in homework assignments using python, so your exam questions will not be tedious. The questions are not hard as long as you understand the conepts, though due to the content's nature I would still recommend praticing for exams.

CME263

This course assumes you have not taken MDM4U (Data Management) in high school. If you took it or AP Statistics, some parts of this course may be easy. On your midterms, you will get six questions, with your worst question dropped from your grade. During the first 2025 midterm, many students did the questions in order, causing them to spend a lot of time on one question then being unable to finish the test (the average for this test was 61%). To avoid this, save any tedious test questions for last. If you are afraid you will do poorly on the midterms, the assignments should be rather easy for you. As well, you should practice using assignment (and maybe tutorial) problems, though the tutorial problems are easier than test problems.

Third-year Civil Engineering

In the first semester of third year, there was a noticeable increase in assignment difficulty. Only CIV331 and possibly CIV375 were immune to this trend. Exam weighting also increased substantially, with exams now worth an average of 50% of the final grade rather than closer to 40% like in previous years.

In third year, you still have mostly mandatory courses. Nearly all of them are related to specific subdisciplines of Civil Engineering such as transportation, water, structural, etc. Most students know roughly what they are interested in by this point, and the many different sometimes uninteresting courses and said courses' more difficult assignments appear to be the root causes of thid year being the most difficult year of the Civil Engineering program. The CivMin department is working on a curriculum change meant to make third year more flexible and I believe difficulty will decline once implemented, but it will not be implemented until 2027 or 2028.

CME358 (Survey CAMP)

During the late summer before your third year, you will go up to Gull Lake near Minden, Ontario and do various practical assignments over the 13 days you are there. Learning to use the surveying equipment is not easy and you will spend a lot of time trying to get a single point. This will inevitably make the rotation on which you learn it first seem like the most difficult one. For me, this was not helped by a rather poorly-structured topographic mapping section (we were only able to start our maps 36 hours before they were due), though I believe the marking will be easier as people were not able to provide a completed product. In topo, try to avoid getting every little detail and focus on buildings, major features, and getting a good grasp of the elevations on all parts of your map rather than taking so many points in one area (like my group did).

The highway curve rotation was fairly straightforward, though keep the scale in mind as it might not make too much sense. Highway curve was well-structured so my group had more than enough time to finish our map. However, I doubt it was marked as easy as the topographic map as people were able to finish.

Water systems is the most chill rotation. I had plenty of free time most days during that rotation as the presentation required significantly less work than other rotations. However, the presentation is worth 50% of the grade in that rotation (compared to 40% for the final projects in the other two) and the quizzes were graded quite harshly (likely due to the professor who also taught CIV250 expecting specific terminology, though I am not 100% sure) so I would not call this rotation easy.

Survey CAMP will change significantly in 2026 as the CIV+MIN 2T8 cohort is close to the bunkhouse capacity for two camps, necessitating a third camp to be added. The trip will be shortened to ten days from thirteen. As a result, the rotations may need to be restructured. People typically prefer the last camp for co-ops, but more experienced professors typically prefer the first camp. You will need to wake up at 6 a.m. to select your camp like one would for course selection, but the site used is significantly less laggy than ACORN. There are separate slots for men and women as the department does not want both genders sleeping in the same room at CAMP.

Women are placed into the new bunkhouse. It has six rooms each with a capacity of eight people. Men can typically choose between the old bunkhouse (a single large room with a capacity of 40) and the remaining new bunkhouse rooms (for my camp, there were two rooms left). The old bunkhouse is significantly louder, so if you would like a good night's rest I would recommend trying to get a space in the new bunkhouse. If you are interested in playing drinking games with other guys you will probably prefer the old bunkhouse.

CIV312 (Steel & Timber)

The most important lesson in this course is understanding how to use a standards manual. Any type of (Civil) Engineering you do will have some kind of standards. The Handbook of Steel Construction was expensive ($220-240 incuding shipping, after a major discount). This book (along with printouts of the Timber and Building Codes) are allowed aids on the exam. The professor recommends using sticky notes to denote important pages in the book, but these become less necessary over time as you familiarize yourself with the book.

The vast majority of examination grades in this course are from quantitative questions, though there are qualitative questions too (make sure to study for them). There is a final project worth 15% of your grade, which also serves as a good way to study the entire steel section of the course (apart from the qualitative questions).

CME321 (Geotech 1)

The assignment questions in this course were more difficult than the exam questions. To do well, you will need to spend a lot of time on them. If you do, they are pretty good for studying those sections of the course. I found the tutorials more useful for undertanding how to do the assignment problems than the lectures.

In 2025, there were no qualitative questions on the midterm but there was a small qualitative section on the final exam about a section not covered in the assignments. Ensure you study this section well as it is not covered in the tutorials either (only in the lectures).

CIV331 (Transport 1)

Transport 1 is heavily exam-weighted. The final exam is 55% of your grade, the midterm 25%, and tutorial quizzes 12%. As a result, it is best to use your time to focus on exams. The quizzes are open-book and collaborative, meant for your learning (they are good at doing this). There are two assignments, both of which would go very well on a resume if you went above and beyond, but due to their low weight (3% and 5%) it may not be worth the effort. The tutorial quizzes do a good job reinforcing the course concepts. Around a fifth of the final exam is qualitative questions, most of which is usually taken from the guest lectures and video assignment presentations. It is good to attend the guest lectures and take notes, having access to such notes on my aid sheet enabled me to do well in this section.

Transport 1 is a survey course, meaning it covers a lot of different concepts within transportation. As a result, even those who are most interested in transportation will find parts they do not like (myself included). The past exams are a good tool for studying, though Prof. Roorda intentionally shook it up a bit this year and may do so again next year.

CIV342 (Water & Wastewater)

This course has six lab sessions during the term. Each lab report is graded rather inconsistently, but not particularly easy among any of the TAs. Follow the lab report format and instructions well as the lab reports are worth a total of 25% of your grade in this course, as much as the midterm. Answers to the problem sets will only be shown during the tutorials, so it is important that you attend. The professor also leaves blanks in his slideshows, though these are generally easier to fill if you miss one (it still is not great if you do miss one, though).

CME368 (Economics)

Most students find this course to be easier than most of the others. It's the only one in third year applying to all parts of Civil Engineering (might even be worth moving to second year, perhaps swapping with CIV280). The written assignments (worth 22% total) were both more difficult than the midterms and produced my worst grades.

The exams feature few qualitative questions (though they are there). Most of the grade comes from quantitative questions, which often come quite easily to most people (whether or not they have paid attention in lecture). Understanding the math and having a good aid sheet are all you need to do well on the exams. I would recommend doing the problem sets, both for the participation grade (3% of your final mark) and for reinforcing the knowledge, particularly if you missed lecture (this course is the easiest to skip whether or not Prof. Posen decides to record lectures).

CIV375 (Building Science)

Prof. Touchie posts COVID-era modules on Quercus covering at least the vast majority of the course concepts. They are very useful when studying for the midterm and final exam. However, Prof. Touchie will put guest lecture questions and other difficult-to-get qualitative questions on the final exam (typically worth 60%, but this may change: For us it was 40% if you did better on the midterm and 80% if you did not).

In Fall 2025, the qualitative questions caught many students off-guard, as the review questions posted were mostly quantitative. Prof. Touchie will probably do something similar next year, so it is best to look at past finals and ensure you are good with the course knowledge.

Last updated: 12/19/2025