Originally Posted by amitoj

Thats true. Just your first semester gr.12 finals. They start to look at applications around December-January. So just do really well in your first half of high school, and your in. If you do mess up for some reason, you have a second chance to kill it for 2nd Semester midterms.

Also, to get a early acceptance, Mac requires atleast 3 courses.

One of my friend took 2 courses in his first semester and ended up with 89% (1st sem average). He thought he was gonna get into mac easily, so he started to slack off in his 2nd semester (skipping classes and EVEN tests!). Then he found abt the 3 courses thing and got screwed over. The cut-off was 81-83% (Engineering) and he got 81.3% (average of top 6 courses). He didnt get in cuz of that one foolish mistake. So try not slack off. We all did but know your limit.


Have fun in yur last year. Its probably gonna be your best year (in highschool). Good luck.

Yeah its so easy to slack, but I really just want to get into to MAC it looks so amazing!

Basically my dream school man!

Originally Posted by meikaelahmad

Im about to go to Grade 12 Highschool and I just had some questions...

1. Is it true that Semester 1 Midterm is what universities look at the most out of everything? Is it true that semester 2 is not taken into consideration as much as the first semester of senior year, or am I completely off ?

2. has the life sciences admission range changed ? higher or lower?

3. Can you get into Mac if your RIGHT on the mark around the cut-off ?


Thanks for the HELP

1. Not really, a really high early mark may get you early acceptance but the final grade it what's most important

2. Admission is based on demand, it may be higher or lower depending on the grades of the people applying.

3. Yes, it all depends on demand

Originally Posted by meikaelahmad

Im about to go to Grade 12 Highschool and I just had some questions...

1. Is it true that Semester 1 Midterm is what universities look at the most out of everything? Is it true that semester 2 is not taken into consideration as much as the first semester of senior year, or am I completely off ?

2. has the life sciences admission range changed ? higher or lower?

3. Can you get into Mac if your RIGHT on the mark around the cut-off ?


Thanks for the HELP

1. Final Semester 1 mark and Midterm Semester 2.
2. Changes every year. Could be higher or lower, no one will know, depends on the average on the students that apply.
3. Depends on if they feel generous.

Originally Posted by Freak705

Physics is easily the hardest science class in high-school.

Maybe for your highschool. Physics was ridiculously easy at my highschool. It was just memorization of equations and inputting the proper numbers into those equations. Chemistry was the hardest science subject at my highschool. I did more than 10% better in physics than in chemistry.

You can't just assume all high schools are the same. Even though the material learned is the same (and that's only true within 1 school board) the teacher is the one who makes the tests and labs.

Originally Posted by jhan523

Maybe for your highschool. Physics was ridiculously easy at my highschool. It was just memorization of equations and inputting the proper numbers into those equations. Chemistry was the hardest science subject at my highschool. I did more than 10% better in physics than in chemistry.

You can't just assume all high schools are the same. Even though the material learned is the same (and that's only true within 1 school board) the teacher is the one who makes the tests and labs.

The material should be the same for any public school in Ontario--publicly funded schools must follow the Ontario curriculum.

I definitely agree that it depends on the teacher, though, and you can make the same material easy or very difficult and teachers do add or eliminate topics even though they're technically not supposed to. For example, my grade 11 chem teacher was teaching is 1st and 2nd year quantum chemistry before we even knew what a mole is, whereas physics was incredibly easy. Some bio teachers made it extremely difficult, whereas others made it extremely easy. You will likely end up benefitting from having a difficult teacher though! You'll hopefully end up with a really good grasp of the material.

Originally Posted by nerual

The material should be the same for any public school in Ontario--publicly funded schools must follow the Ontario curriculum.

I definitely agree that it depends on the teacher, though, and you can make the same material easy or very difficult and teachers do add or eliminate topics even though they're technically not supposed to. For example, my grade 11 chem teacher was teaching is 1st and 2nd year quantum chemistry before we even knew what a mole is, whereas physics was incredibly easy. Some bio teachers made it extremely difficult, whereas others made it extremely easy. You will likely end up benefitting from having a difficult teacher though! You'll hopefully end up with a really good grasp of the material.

Like I said, it the curriculum depends on the school board. The public schools may all have one school board but there are so many more school boards. There are separate school boards for French and English and there are separate school boards for catholic schools depending on the region (Toronto, Peel, etc..).

Originally Posted by jhan523

Like I said, it the curriculum depends on the school board. The public schools may all have one school board but there are so many more school boards. There are separate school boards for French and English and there are separate school boards for catholic schools depending on the region (Toronto, Peel, etc..).

Yes, but any publicly funded school in Ontario (French, English, Catholic, Public, and all the different regional school boards) must follow the Ontario curriculum as a condition of receiving funding. The goal is that regardless of where you live/what school board you're a part of, you will learn the same curriculum. You can look up the curriculum online or possibly at your local library if you are so inclined

Originally Posted by nerual

The material should be the same for any public school in Ontario--publicly funded schools must follow the Ontario curriculum.

I definitely agree that it depends on the teacher, though, and you can make the same material easy or very difficult and teachers do add or eliminate topics even though they're technically not supposed to. For example, my grade 11 chem teacher was teaching is 1st and 2nd year quantum chemistry before we even knew what a mole is, whereas physics was incredibly easy. Some bio teachers made it extremely difficult, whereas others made it extremely easy. You will likely end up benefitting from having a difficult teacher though! You'll hopefully end up with a really good grasp of the material.

omg lauren you wuldnt happened to have dr pererra (oh man bad spelling) wuld you? it sounds exactly like him

Originally Posted by nerual

Yes, but any publicly funded school in Ontario (French, English, Catholic, Public, and all the different regional school boards) must follow the Ontario curriculum as a condition of receiving funding. The goal is that regardless of where you live/what school board you're a part of, you will learn the same curriculum. You can look up the curriculum online or possibly at your local library if you are so inclined

Ah, ok. I totally read your other post wrong... I didn't know that... kind of weird. Peel region teachers must alter their curriculum a lot... me and my cousin learned a lot of different material.

Originally Posted by jhan523

Ah, ok. I totally read your other post wrong... I didn't know that... kind of weird. Peel region teachers must alter their curriculum a lot... me and my cousin learned a lot of different material.

Yeah, they're technically not supposed to, but teachers can take some creative license lol I think that as long as they're not teaching you something entirely different, no one cares enough to do anything about it.

Originally Posted by nerual

Yeah, they're technically not supposed to, but teachers can take some creative license lol I think that as long as they're not teaching you something entirely different, no one cares enough to do anything about it.

I think the reason why no one cares about it is because the students have no idea what the curriculum even is. I'm sure parents don't even know themselves.

While the curriculum does outline things, there's a considerable amount of leeway that teachers have. I remember my chemistry teacher occasionally going into "ignore this if you're not taking university chemistry" mode and going beyond the curriculum.

Jhan you're right, I shouldn't have generalized. However I do feel there's a stigma attached to the difficulty of physics. I was lucky to have extraordinary teachers for all my science classes, but from my experience at least I thought physics was the trickiest. Our teacher really pushed us by creating problems that were more difficult than the standard "throw what you have into an equation." Our questions were often multiple layers, solving for one thing, throwing that into further calculations etc, using algebra to solve for unknowns with multiple equations. Overall the volume of work I found was much more than chemistry or biology. So while it was hard it was absolutely great preparation for university physics.

Originally Posted by Freak705

While the curriculum does outline things, there's a considerable amount of leeway that teachers have. I remember my chemistry teacher occasionally going into "ignore this if you're not taking university chemistry" mode and going beyond the curriculum.

Jhan you're right, I shouldn't have generalized. However I do feel there's a stigma attached to the difficulty of physics. I was lucky to have extraordinary teachers for all my science classes, but from my experience at least I thought physics was the trickiest. Our teacher really pushed us by creating problems that were more difficult than the standard "throw what you have into an equation." Our questions were often multiple layers, solving for one thing, throwing that into further calculations etc, using algebra to solve for unknowns with multiple equations. Overall the volume of work I found was much more than chemistry or biology. So while it was hard it was absolutely great preparation for university physics.

I feel there's a stigma attached to the difficulty of chemistry. I've never had such a hard course as grade 12 chemistry (until Organic Chemistry in second year). Our physics questions were also multiple layers, it went from using the basic formulas to the derived formulas. But if you knew all the basic formulas then you can derive any formula.

University physics wasn't that much harder, I found it to be similar with the addition of simple theory.