Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if you could do an honours program in 3 years instead of 4 by taking summer school courses. Does the number of years take precedence over the number of credits in this situation?

Contact the office of the registrar. They should know for certain. I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't be the case though.

Cool. I wouldn't want to do that though, I was just wondering hypothetically.

I'm pretty sure Honours means 4 years. Especially since a lot of the upper year courses may or may not be offered in the summer. Not to forget your thesis (if you choose to do one)!

Theoretically possible considering in 1 full year you can take 42 credits. An honours degree requires 120 credits. However, as mentioned, you'll most likely run into problems with course availability during summer (even in fall/winter some courses are only available every other year) especially if you are in a small program.

So long as you meet the credits you're fine, as jhan mentioned above (But jhan - You can actually take 48 units if you overload a course in each semester...except in your first year where you're not allowed to overload and can only hit a maximum of 42). My uncle took 8 courses per semester and got is bachelors and masters done in 4 years (Not at Mac).

However, this is highly improbable based on the core required courses, and the way Mac operates. Let's say you're taking Awesome Studies (your program is likely to be similar in format to this):

AWESOME 1A03 - Fall 2011
AWESOME 2B03 - Fall 2012 or Summer 2012 (Requires AWESOME 1A03)
AWESOME 2A06 - Fall 2012 (Requires AWESOME 1A03)
AWESOME 3H03 - Fall 2013 (Requires AWESOME 2A06 and 2B03)
AWESOME 4J03 - Fall 2014 (Requires 3H03)

In principle, I could complete the entire stream of mandatory courses and get an Awesome degree in 4 semesters, or 2 years, if I took enough courses in the summer. The hard cap of 48 units will pad this out to 3 years since I require 120 units for an honours degree, and can only attain a hard maximum of 48 + 42 = 90 units.

However, the mere logistics of the courses, when they're offered and their requirements, guarantees I would be here for four years.

You may be able to ask for a waiver, and maybe take 4J03 and 3H03 concurrently (or their analogous courses in your program).

It's possible if upper year required courses can be taken in earlier years.

You can, as mentioned, so long as you can complete your course requirements.

For a lot of the Humanities and Soc Sci classes (if not all), you won't see fourth year courses offered in the summer, so you would have to take your 2-3 seminars in the same term...which is quite challenging, especially if you're taking a full course load and even more so if you're overloading.

Originally Posted by Mowicz

. Let's say you're taking Awesome Studies (your program is likely to be similar in format to this):

AWESOME 1A03 - Fall 2011
AWESOME 2B03 - Fall 2012 or Summer 2012 (Requires AWESOME 1A03)
AWESOME 2A06 - Fall 2012 (Requires AWESOME 1A03)
AWESOME 3H03 - Fall 2013 (Requires AWESOME 2A06 and 2B03)
AWESOME 4J03 - Fall 2014 (Requires 3H03)

How do I get into this program?