So basically I'm looking for people to share their honest opinions about 2nd year Commerce. From my understanding, it is the most difficult year in the program and it is quite a step up from first year given the coursework. What is your honest opinion or the workload and the difficulty? I have been on the fence of taking two summer courses to ease my workload for next year. This would also mean that I would not be able to work full time for the first half of the summer. What are your thoughts on this? Can you manage good grade in second year with a full course load?

not in commerce but just work and enjoy summer. hundreds of students every year deal with 2nd year commerce just fine. you shouldnt be an exception to that if you just go to class and do the work. and obviously you can get good grades with a full course load. thousands of kids do it at mac every year lol.

It is harder than second year but if you stay on top of things you will be fine. You may not be able to get high grades if you do all your studying last minute but it should be fairly managable

It's to get you ready for third.
Expect ruined weekend plans, arguments with groupmates in 2MA3, and having to focus far too much on accounting in contrast to other courses.

Honestly, it all prepares you for the real world with its deadlines, concurrent task management, so on and so forth.

Any other thoughts?

I'm currently in second year commerce. I like second year a lot more than first year because all the courses are much more useful. It is true that the work load is much heavier than first year, but it's manageable. You have to stay on top of assignments and deadlines, don't leave studying till the last minute (obviously). Despite all of this, I'm enjoying it more than first year, like mentioned earlier.
for second year you really need to be more serious unlike first year where it was pretty "chill"
There are definitely more assignments and midterms on fridays and saturdays unfortunately.

I took 2 courses (COM 2QA3 and COM 2BA3) in the summer to ease the work load and I'm glad I did. Currently I'm taking 4 courses per term.

As for your concern about working in the summer, you can always take night classes or even the day classes are only twice a week. And you get more than enough time off!

Good Luck!

Currently in 4th year accounting - 2nd year commerce is "difficult" because in first year you weren't pushed with the mickey mouse courses you were doing. When you get to 2nd year a lot of people aren't prepared and don't know how to manage there time after studying for an hour for Hannah Holmes Econ classes and not going to lecture. When I did second year we got screwed over with midterms since all your exams are either a friday night or saturday morning we got double headers with stats fri night and acct saturday morning the same weekend. Management your time well and your fine don't listen to the bull people say that its difficult.... it doesn't get difficult til fourth year if your going into acct Do your practice problems and know that 40 page citation guide for marketing which is > then what you actually write in those goddam reports.

Terms in work load, second year was a bit heavier than first year, but content/material-wise, second year is loads more interesting so chances are you will enjoy the courses, which should result in decent marks.

But as someone mentioned above, tons of students do a full 2nd year load and turn out fine so just give it your best effort, and once you're in 3rd year, prepare to breeze through a bunch of easy courses (not even joking)

I'd say from my personal view, the only course that can be classified as hard is Marketing, due to the amount of work needed to be put into those reports(midterms/final were actually quite easy,straight memorization).

Stats, HR and Info systems are the easiest courses in second year and could be potential grade boosters. Some people say Accounting is hard, but I feel it's still not much different from highschool accounting, mostly memorizing formats.

And of course if you really have nothing else to do in the summer you can take accounting or finance during the summer, I heard they are easier in summer school.

I would listen to ShreeBee, she is a real commerce guru

Originally Posted by Salik

I would listen to ShreeBee, she is a real commerce guru

LOL, I just want to put out the information I can to help

I have a question: do most of your marks come from assignments or tests?

Thanks!

easy as hell

Originally Posted by Brendan

I have a question: do most of your marks come from assignments or tests?

Thanks!

yes.
it depends on the classes. some classes have no assignments, only midterms (like accounting) and other classes have both (like marketing).

I'd still recommend taking a summer course or two, if you can. I took both the accountings in the summer and it really took off a lot of stress/studying time (plus no Saturday accounting tests!).

It might even be worth it to take some of the bird classes like HR or OB during the summer just to get it over with and free up time for things like finance, accounting, stats or that econ class they force everyone to take (I hated econ/finance and wish I'd take them in the summer since I heard they was easier). Basically finance, stats, econ and accounting tend to be the "harder" classes.

2MA3 is also the class lots of people hate, not because the content is hard but those reports are gonna screw over at least 50% of people. The tests are super easy so marks can be salvaged (it's gonna be like 1E03 with Rita Cossa all over again).