Rank: Frosh
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/20/2008
Posts: 10
Location: toronto
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I got an alternative offer to social sciences at UTSC (applied to life sci).
I have no clue what to do. I applied through 105D so I only applied to this school (I was encouraged by friends that I would definitely make it).
What is social sciences? I heard there is a lot of essay writing.
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Rank: Frosh
Groups: Member
Joined: 3/10/2008
Posts: 43
Location: Toronto
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Social sciences deals with the studies of human society, social lives, culture, etc. So the most common courses under social sciences generally consist of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Yes, it's true that there's a lot of essay writing. Whereas say in life sciences, you'll have more tests/labs for evaluation. Social sciences is mostly writing and presentations.  Sorry to hear you got an alternative from life sci... especially for it to be social sciences doesn't really make sense because both those programs are quite different from each other.  Too bad you only applied to UTSC, even if you're sure you'd make it.. you still should have had a back up school. Ah well, good luck! 
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Rank: Senior Student
Groups: Member
Joined: 4/17/2008
Posts: 66
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Social sciences also includes geography, applied nutrition, and psychology. Within each of these areas you should be able to take a science course. Like for example in Geography you can take biophysical geography which is more about particles and cells, sun angle/albedo, fluvial processes, etc, which is a bit more sciencey/mathy, and I think that's what you wanted from life sciences (the sciencey/mathy part, not the geography part). Nutrition is completely science, all about amino acids and proteins, etc. and they never tell you this in high school but psychology is really biology in university. The good news is, you have a lot of free choice in social science about what to take, so you can probably get away with taking 1 or 2 life science required courses, and then as long as you don't slack off and fail all your courses, just switch into life sciences next year. If you play the game right you'll be fine and graduating from life sci on time.
Oh and to answer your other question, if you don't take the sciencey social science courses, it's more essay writing than you ever though possible. You'll be typing those things up like nobody's business, but unlike high school, you generally get to choose your topic and nobody's standing over your shoulder telling you how to write it. And word of advise, if the paper is minimum 10 pages plus, start it well in advance. You can't do it over night (well theoretically you can) but every class will have a paper and you can count on them all being due in the same week.
Hope this helped! Sorry about your luck!
University of Guelph '10: International Development, Environmental Governance
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