I just want to open a thread and hear some thoughts about my situation with Graduate studies at Mac this year.

I am in Math & Stats, and this year, the Stats grad program only accepted 9 new people and they are cancelling courses because there is not enough enrollment (they need at least 4 I believe). So they cancelled a course I wanted to take last term, and I just found out today they cancelled another this term.

I did my undergrad at Mac, and I was so gung-ho about stats I took all the 4th year ones available. And now that Im a grad student, the 4th year ones are cross-listed as 600-level courses that I am not allowed to take because I took them already. Basically this eliminates 2 courses last term and 2 this term that would've been available to a student not coming from McMaster.

To graduate I need 8 courses without a Thesis, or 6 with a Thesis. Thankfully I did decided I wanted to do a Thesis, otherwise there's no way I would've been able to fill my year with 8 courses. Out of the 6, 4 are mandatory.

So somehow, Mac has made it very very difficult for me to fill these 2 elective slots, because they keep cancelling courses because they dont want $Payed by students - $Payed to Prof <0. They also arent offering very many choices in the first place! When I was deciding on going to Mac, I looked at the "course listings" and there were so many and I was very excited to take a lot of them! But no where do they tell you its luck of the draw with what will be offered, and if they're having a shitty year with funding, income, etc.

I guess what I am getting at is has this happened to anyone else? Is it worth me complaining to someone? If I had known this is how the year was going to go I 100% would've gone to UofT instead. I'm pretty frustrated right now.

Thanks for listening MI.

Not quite the same situation for me --- I've found there are a tonne of out-of-department courses I can take towards my Masters, that are actually quite useful. I've also discovered that Mac (Eng at least) has a deal where I can take courses at U of T or Waterloo for no additional cost.

Maybe these are Avenues you haven't considered yet?

Well it certainly can't hurt to complain to someone. The math&stats department seems like the first place you should go to complain about it.

Is transferring to UofT an option? Or taking courses from their to fulfill your requirements at Mac?

That's really odd. I definitely agree with stafrish, it's worth complaining to ensure that this sort of things stops happening, or at the very least opening it up for you to be able to take courses outside of the department or that are offered by multiple departments to ensure that enrolment numbers are sufficient and courses aren't getting cancelled so late.

I am allowed to take courses from other departments but they have to be related, which is tricky. There's one or two stats courses in the Health Research and Methodology department, and one in Econ but that one isn't being offered.
I never asked if I could transfer to UofT but I would imagine it would be complicated at this point.

I will complain - I have to find out who the guy is who is cutting courses, hiding in his little office, crunching numbers and cancelling classes.

I think this might just be a bad luck year for enrollment, funding, budget etc, because when I talked to previous students about this program no one mentioned any issues like this. But its pretty shitty that I'm just stuck, and have to be at the mercy of their course list that I could count on my two hands.

I've found a course that I can take in the summer, but I shouldn't count my chickens because they might cancel that as well.

Originally Posted by Melanieee

I think this might just be a bad luck year for enrollment, funding, budget etc, because when I talked to previous students about this program no one mentioned any issues like this.

I completely agree, but I wish people would give a more truthful view of the program instead of just telling you how amazing it is, which everyone tends to do. That's my biggest fear for any grad program. I heard the HRM courses are great, so hopefully it'll still be a worthwhile experience!

Hang in there though, it really sucks that the courses that are actually interesting to you aren't offered. But hopefully if you complain, they can maybe figure out some sort of collaboration with another department or even school to get to the minimum enrolment numbers and not cancel courses for the summer at least!

Chem Eng has an uber-popular stats course at the 600-level :p It's called Stats for Engineers, but a better title would be Process Improvement Using Data.