Hello - I recently accepted my offer to McMaster Life Sciences. I'm really interested in quite a few areas, but as a Life Science student, I only get space for 2 electives (6 units total). I would really like to take a history course, a music course and an anthropology course (cultural anthro) - however, all of these courses fall under electives for me.

Would it be possible (and would it be a good idea) for me to take one of the three courses this summer? I don't want to lose the option of taking history, music or anthropology in my later years (where I get more elective room).

Advice would be most appreciated, and see you all in the fall!

You won't be able to take any summer courses this year as the second term of summer school starts in mid-June, which is before Mac gets your final grades. You may be able to request permission from your department to get this waived, but I haven't heard of it before.

However you can do it next summer, or take one of those courses as an elective in Year II.

You can definitely take one of the courses in the summer, or as lorend mentioned above, you can push these electives to your second year. (You are allowed to take 48 units of level 1 courses (16 half-year courses) before you graduate...for most people this isn't a problem)

I just thought it was worth nothing, that a potential problem with taking courses in the summer is that they simply may not be offered. In my experience however, the courses offered in summer school don't vary a whole lot from year to year (particularly the first year choices), so maybe take a look at this year's summer school course timetable (found here: https://adweb.cis.mcmaster.ca /mtt/).

Just change "session" to SPRING/SUMMER 2009, and search by Department (Music, etc.)

But the point is, if you don't see any of the three courses you'd like to take on there, they probably won't be offered next year either...at which point you'd have to push them to 2nd year.