So, I am unsure if it is addressed on the forums but I have a few conflicts on my schedule regarding the McMaster/Mohawk Business certificates.

The issue: Courses required to achieve the certificate are Soc Sci 2AC3, 2BU3, 2EN3, 2HR3, 2MR3, 2PF3 respectively.

The Problem: During Term 1, 2HR3 and 2PF3 conflict with each other (Both of which are Monday/Wednesday at 4:30 - 6:20pm. I have looked through the McMaster Master Timetable to see if I can switch around the core classes, and to my surprise there is only one option, which is to take 2HR3 during term 2 (Which also conflicts with Soc Sci 2EN3 which ALSO has no other core class times to switch around).

During Term 2, 2MR3 and 2AC3 (Also required for the McMaster/Mohawk business certificate) conflict as well and they also do NOT have other core classes to try and fix the conflicts.

Now this comes as an issue to me because I am in my fourth year of study finishing off my B.A. (and pending my grades) my Honours B.A. in Economics since all I have left to take are electives. I thought it would be a good route to take since it fills my electives up and provides a nice certificate at the end of my graduation.

My questions are, if anyone has had experience in the past, is if McMaster will do something about these conflicting courses since they are a part of the same route to receiving the certificates or worst case scenario, I could just leave both courses as is and try and schedule a way to work it out during the school year.

It is quite frustrating to see this and I will be calling the social sciences office later today to shed some light on the issue.

Of course I will put in any additional information I find out on this post and if anyone else has this issue as well.

I know this is a wall of text so tl;dr: Signed up to finish Mac/Mohawk business certificate and 4/6 courses conflict between the two terms with no other cores to get a properly scheduled timetable.

Alright, just got off the phone with the Social Sciences office.

They apparently know of the issue and these courses were scheduled in a way so students do not fast-track and finish this certificate in one years time. Now, that sounded kind of inefficient and quite unjust in my opinion but there were options to get around it.

Their "best" way of approaching this problem as per their recommendation was to get something called a "Letter of Permission" where you would take courses similar to the course descriptions from Athabaska University (offered through online courses) and take them there pending they are approved from the social sciences office.

All in all this was a sound suggestion but who wants to go to the trouble of going through that process.

I also discussed the scenario of keeping the conflicted courses but their response was you could theoretically do it, but come exams if they are scheduled on the same date and time, there is absolutely no way to reschedule the exam. This is because we "took the risk of taking conflicted courses" and to such, these are the consequences if the exams are scheduled on the same day and time.

Now, this doesn't stop a student from making arrangements with the professor for an early write of the exam but that is to the discretion of the professor.

The last item we talked about was regarded towards taking summer school in 2014 for two of the courses to achieve the certificate without having conflicted courses and running the risk of not having an exam. I looked over this year (Summer 2013) schedule for the 4 conflicting courses and lo and behold, they offered all 4 at least once per term (except for 2HR3 which was offered both terms).

I hope this helps out whoever had inquires as to why they had conflicting courses with this specific problem but it doesn't look like McMaster is going to change any of the times of the core courses without running the risk of having students fast track through this certificate.

Good luck everyone!

Did they mention at all *why* they don't want students fast tracking through the certificate? That seems silly.

I was told at one point that the certificate is designed to be taken over four years and one of the reasons is to keep a consistent mix of 2nd/3rd/4th years.

Either way, my bigger issue is that it's such a hassle getting into the classes on SOLAR.

Originally Posted by Kudos

I was told at one point that the certificate is designed to be taken over four years and one of the reasons is to keep a consistent mix of 2nd/3rd/4th years.

Either way, my bigger issue is that it's such a hassle getting into the classes on SOLAR.

This is correct. They said in more or less words that the certificate was made to be completed through several years and the scheduling system was put into place so students could not finish the certificate in one year.

It is silly, but apparently McMaster doesn't want students to abuse the system and get certificates so quickly.

Originally Posted by ChrisAvakian

It is silly, but apparently McMaster doesn't want students to abuse the system and get certificates so quickly.

This doesn't make any sense. You don't get the certificate until you graduate, so even if you happen to somehow take like 5 courses in one year and 1 next year, if you aren't ready to graduate from whatever program you happen to be in the certificate still isn't given out.

Plus, it's probably impossible to take more than 2 or 3 of these courses in 1 year, depending on what your program's requirements are and how much they deliberately make them conflict.

The smartest thing is to take 1 or 2 in summer school.

I've managed to fit four of them into my schedule for this year, I think the way that they are doing it is ridiculous because someone may JUST need those courses that they are forcing a conflict for.