As I’ve received a lot of DMs from incoming Frosh on Discord and LinkedIn asking me to give feedback on first-year courses, I’ve decided to provide my advice for each course.

Fall Semester

APS100: Orientation to Engineering

• Grading for assignments is abritrary and harsh – so don’t skip tutorials (you might need the tutorial grades).
• Get to know your TA and listen when they talk about their experiences.
• Make note of the resources they provide – even though the lecture delivery is questionable, you might find yourself needing the resources.

APS110: Engineering Chemistry and Materials Science

• Take good textbook notes, then add extra content covered in lectures.
• Highly recommend attending Prof. Ramsay’s 9:00 AM lectures.
• Use Prof. Ramsay’s videos to revisit any content you didn’t understand the first time.
• Tutorials are generally good, and they’re helpful to attend around quiz/midterm time.

APS111: Engineering Strategies and Practice I

• Pay attention to the readings, they’re more helpful than you might first think.
• Buy full-year access to the Perusall textbook, there’s more material to cover in APS112.
• This semester will either genuinely make you wonder how some of your classmates were accepted into UofT Engineering or leave you with your new best friends.
• Make sure you use every opportunity to earn the extra PD points though, as only 10 PD points will add a whole percentage to your final grade!

CIV100: Mechanics

• Aaaah yes, the course with the highest first-year kill count.
• I wish I had put more effort into this course, especially by doing more practice problems, and asking my questions earlier.
• If you like it, good for you, but if you’re indifferent to this course, just do your best to pass and move on.

MAT186: Calculus I

• Essentially everything you’ve covered in calculus till date (with the addition of some topics in ODEs, I really hope they keep that this year).
• Midterms and assignments were a bit funky, and as class rep I always had people complaining that they got zeroes on the assignments because they forgot to sign the academic integrity statement (so don’t forget to do that).
• While I did poorly in this course, there are other reasons I wasn’t a big fan of it: I had a few run-ins with a TA and a professor that really jaded my view, and I made sure to let them know during course evals.

MAT188: Linear Algebra

• Pay attention to the course readings, and make good use of the textbook if you don’t understand any of the content discussed in class.
• This was also a course where I regretted not spending more effort to do more practice problems and past midterms.
• Learn MATLAB, you’ll very likely be using it in your upper-year courses.

Winter Semester

APS105: Computer Fundamentals (taken Summer 2024)

• A much better programming course compared to its counterpart (APS106).
• One thing that did strike me, however, is that the pace of the content was easily manageable in the summer despite being accelerated (fall-winter courses are four months, summer is less than 2); this made me wonder about the pace of the course during the winter semester.
• Overall, a good course, and it’s the only course that is mandatory for transfers into ECE.

APS106: Fundamentals of Computer Programming

• A generic first course in computer programming using Python.
• I went into this course with no prior coding experience, and found it extremely straightforward with consistent practice.
• Make sure you understand what’s going on in the labs, and use the lower averages to ride the curve to the top LOL.
• I will also say that as an Indy (industrial engineering student) at the time of taking this course, I found that APS105 (C) would have been much better preparation for second-year programming courses.

This course will at some point become EXT’d for me because I don’t need it as an ECE student. But until then, I’ll take the extra boost on my GPA!

APS112: Engineering Strategies and Practice II

• No comments. Like ESP I but worse in most ways.

ECE110: Electrical Fundamentals

• W course, W content, W professors (especially Xilin Liu). By far my favourite and one of the easiest courses of winter semester.
• Some of you may have an advantage in that you’ve covered part of the content. Use the textbook if you don’t understand the E&M concepts, and attend tutorials for the circuits part because it’s free practice for solving circuits (trust me you’ll be needing it).
• Don’t bother putting down past questions and exams on your cheatsheet, it’s not worth it – instead, focus on including important concepts and proceudres, see the one I used in my final exam, for example.

MAT187: Calculus II

• Well-taught course for the most part (I only really took issue with the methods used to teach the sequences and series unit).
• As an ECE/MIE/T1 student, you’ll learn all of the last unit (vector-valued calculus) in MIE100, and I have heard rumblings of that being taken out of the curriculum.
• Practice practice practice!!!!!! Learn your lessons from Calc I and Linear Algebra.

MIE100: Dynamics

• There’s generally a lot of controversy over which course is harder between CIV100 and MIE100. I think that it comes down to what you learned in high school physics; the Alberta high school physics curriculum puts more emphasis on dynamics over statics, which is why I found this course significantly easier.
• The teaching team is great, and the support they provide makes MIE100 a better course than CIV100 any day.
• Make sure you understand the assignment questions and the examples covered in class, everything on the midterm and exam will be a combination of something you’ve seen before.
• Oh, and don’t forget to draw reaction forces for simple harmonic motion diagrams! (see that happened to my buddy once)

MIE191: Intro to Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

• Great seminar course, highly recommend attending.
• You get to learn a lot of cool things about your discipline such as what industry and research opportunities are available.
• Keep in mind not all 191 courses are structured the same, for example, to earn a CR in ECE191, you have to attend 9/12 lectures, whereas in MIE191 you need to finish a short assignment at the start and end of the semester.