Do you need help figuring out how to pick courses for your degree plan, electives and certificates?
Check out this videoby Dr. Meghan Norris, Undergraduate Chair in Psychology, on how to use the Academic Calendar to find your degree requirements. She discusses choosing Psychology courses, but the advice applies to all programs and is useful for all students!
The first step of course planning is to understand your degree requirements.
If you are in a Bachelor of Arts Honours (BAH) program these are the degree options available to you. Keep in mind that no matter the option you choose your degree must encompass 120.0 units in order to graduate.
| BAH Plan Option | Units | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Option 1: Major | Major 60 units | Electives 60 units | — |
| Option 2: Major - Minor | Major 60 units | Minor 30 units | Electives 30 units |
| Option 3: Joint Honours | Joint Honours (Arts) plan 1: 42 units | Joint Honours (Arts) plan 2: 42 units | Electives 36 units |
If you are in a Bachelor of Science or Computing Honours program these are the degree options available to you. Keep in mind that no matter the option you choose your degree must encompass 120.0 units in order to graduate.
| BSCH/BCMPH Plan Option | Units | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Option 1: Major | Major 60 units + Up to 12 supporting units | Electives 48 - 60 units | — |
| Option 2: Major - Minor | Major 60 units + Up to 12 supporting units | Minor 30 - 48 units | Electives 18 - 30 units |
| Option 3: Specialization | Specializiation 84 - 108 units | Electives 12 - 36 Units | — |
Once you know your degree requirements it is time to look at your specific plan requirements.
In the Academic Calendar, the Degree Plans List specifies what courses are required for each individual plan, and can show you what courses you need in order to graduate. The Courses of Instruction section can provide you with the course descriptions of each course that is listed under your plan in the Academic Calendar.
Further, you can run your Academic Progress Report (see below) to determine how far along you are in your plan requirements and what is still required.
Once you have taken a look at these resources you can use our Course Mapping Worksheet to help you map out your degree.
If you still have questions be sure to book an appointment with one of our academic advisors to go over all of your requirements to graduate.
Full-time Arts and Science students usually take five courses per term (this is a standard load.) If you wish to take more, SOLUS will allow registration in up to 18.0 units, or the equivalent of six courses per term. To take more than six courses in any term, you must seek special permission.
Keep in mind this permission is not granted lightly. Your decision to undertake such a heavy course load must be done with several key parameters in mind throughout the coming term.
First, engaging in a voluntary course overload does not constitute grounds for an academic petition should the workload become unmanageable later on in the term, or should your final grades in courses be lower than expected. This is a conscious commitment you are making, not an extenuating circumstance outside of your control.
You must be mindful of the relevant academic drop-dates for courses, and take the time to reflect on your academic performance, your health, and your work-life balance within the framework of those established dates to ensure that you are confident you can successfully complete this heavy load of coursework, not only at the outset of the term, but as the course requirements begin to add up. Remember that each of the courses you take in your undergraduate studies is an opportunity to learn and benefit from the knowledge of leading experts in their fields. If you feel that you are checking boxes for degree completion but you are not fully able to gain the learning and engagement that is the spirit of an undergraduate degree, you are short-changing yourself.
Also, there are other options if you need to make up missed credits, like taking courses over the summer or stretching out your degree requirements over a longer period of time. If you have questions or would like to chat with an academic advisor about these other options we encourage you to speak with an Academic Advisor.
Students are permitted to register in a maximum of 18.0 units per term via SOLUS. Courses must be added by the add deadline. (Please refer to Sessional Dates in the current Academic Calendar).
If you are seeking to take 21.0 units in fall or winter term, you may request special permission from the Faculty Office’s Academic Advising Team for a course overload, using this form to submit the request.
*We strongly recommend students take no more than 2 courses over the summer term. Course overload requests will be accepted for fall and winter terms only.
Students must meet the following criteria for a course overload:
Course overload requests will be evaluated once final grades of any in-progress courses are posted and the most current GPAs are available to check for eligibility requirements. NO requests will be evaluated early.
We will aim to process forms or follow-up within 3 business days. Any forms received less than 3 days before the add-drop deadline may not get processed in time so we encourage you to submit as soon as possible.
Additional courses can be added during the regular open enrollment (add-drop) periods.
Studying Arts and Science but interested in business? The unique Certificate in Business offered by Smith School of Business is an accelerated way to gain a competitive advantage in the job market. You will learn business fundamentals, financial and management accounting, marketing, finance and organizational behavior while completing your major within Arts and Science.
The Smith Certificate in Business has been designed for Queen’s University Arts and Science students who want to gain fundamental knowledge in key areas of business in order to broaden their career options upon graduation.
Please note: With the exception of students who have transferred from another Faculty or School into the Faculty of Arts and Science, a maximum of 6.0 units from courses offered by other Faculties and Schools (including the Smith School of Business) may be counted towards the Program and/or Plan requirements of any degree in the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Studying Arts and Science but interested in Law? This unique Certificate in Law is an accelerated way to gain a competitive advantage in the job market or to access post-secondary studies. You will learn about Canadian Law, Aboriginal Law, Workplace Law, Corporate Law, Public & Constitutional Law, Intellectual Property and International Law in addition to completing your major within Arts and Science.
ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Certificate in Law has been designed for ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Arts and Science students as an undergraduate Law program to be offered by the Law Faculty both online and in a blended format on campus.
The Certificate offers a series of seven introductory level Law courses. Students who successfully complete four of the seven courses will receive a ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Certificate in Law, which will be recognized on their final transcript. Two of these courses may also be counted toward a student's Arts and Science degree program.
Please note: With the exception of students who have transferred from another Faculty or School into the Faculty of Arts and Science, a maximum of 6.0 units from courses offered by other Faculties and Schools may be counted towards the Program and/or Plan requirements of any degree in the Faculty of Arts and Science.
The information in this section will help you interpret your Academic Progress Report (APR), available through SOLUS. The Academic Progress Report is designed to give you advice on what courses you will need to take to complete your degree, as well as warn you if you have broken any of the various rules that govern which courses may be used in a particular degree program. While the APR is a useful guide, the ultimate authority on all academic requirements in the Faculty of Arts and Science is the Academic Calendar; if there is a discrepancy, the online Calendar requirements take precedence. An APR may be run through SOLUS, and it is highly recommended that all upper-year students run a report at least once a year, before the summer class selection period. You should also run a report before applying to graduate. The APR has been designed to closely parallel the layout of the Plan requirements section of the Academic Calendar, so it may be useful to review these requirements before you run your APR.
Not sure what courses you need to take to meet your degree requirements? Start by running your Academic Progress Report (APR) in SOLUS.
Not sure how to interpret your report? View our Step-by-Step Guide: How to Read and Understand Your Academic Progress Report, or watch the tutorial below.
A program is comprised of an approved set of courses leading to a degree (includes the units making up the Plan plus elective units). The APR is designed to assess the total units and cumulative GPA required to meet the program requirements without taking into account the specific Plan requirements. These assessments appear on the APR before the Plan Requirements.
Unit - the academic value of a course.
GPA - the unit-weighted average grade point in a set of courses, based on a 4.3 grade point scale.
For detailed information regarding the number of units and GPA required for programs and plans in Arts and Science see Academic Regulation 16.
The Plan is a set of requirements focusing on a particular subject and is comprised of Core, Option and sometimes Supporting Courses. Students do not register in a specified Plan (or Plans) until they are entering Year 2.
A Plan is composed of:
Core courses are specifically required, or allow for choice from an extremely limited list of courses. The Core Course requirements are usually listed by increasing year level.
Option courses provide more choice allowing students to select from a broader range of courses. For example, a requirement might be for any HIST at the 300-level. The degree of choice varies according to the Plan. Option courses are generally listed by decreasing year level to ensure that the higher level requirements are filled with the higher level courses before lower level requirements which can be filled with lower level courses.
Supporting courses are courses in a Plan that complement the area of study. Some Plans have required supporting courses (e.g., mathematics courses in a Physics Plan); others do not.
Some Plans contain secondary requirements that are shared with the Core, Option and Supporting courses. They appear under "Additional Requirements" in the Plans portion of the Arts and Science Academic Calendar. For example, the History Major Plan requires the student to take 6.0 units from a course in Canadian History as one of their Core or Option courses. Similarly, a few Programs also have minimum or maximum requirements. For example, the Drama Major Plan allows a Maximum of 12.0 units from the DRAM_Subs. These additional requirements are not included in the total units required for the Plan or toward the Plan GPA with the exception of Science Minors. In some cases additional science courses to bring the total to 48 units are in the Additional Requirements section and they are included in the Plan GPA and Total Units required for the Plan.
Ignore the Not Satisfied with this requirement only. For students with more than the minimum number of units required for a program or who have completed courses that may not be used in their ASC degree program the courses not being used will show up in the section directly below Courses Used in Total Units Required on the ARR. This is not a requirement and therefore, can’t be satisfied or not satisfied, but the not satisfied designation cannot be removed due to limitations of the system.
A warning will appear if a student breaks a rule at the program or Plan level. There are several different types of warnings, but all of them mean that some of the courses that the Academic Progress Report is counting towards your program and/or Plan requirements are invalid. This means that you will need to investigate your program and Plan carefully to identify the invalid courses and choose a different course(s) to replace them; otherwise, you will not be able to graduate. You may also wish to seek academic advice from your department or Student Services in the Faculty of Arts and Science.
An exclusion is a set of two or more courses where both may not count towards the requirements of your degree. Students are not normally permitted to enrol in a course that excludes another that they have previously taken or in which they are currently enrolled, so this warning should not occur often. However, under certain circumstances departments may authorize an override of an exclusion and allow the student to enrol, on the understanding that both courses are not allowed to count. This can occur in cases where the student has changed Plans and needs the excluded course as a prerequisite.
If an exclusion warning appears, first check the course(s) that are excluded. Usually, the exclusion appears as “No more than 3.0 (or 6.0) units from (List of courses)”. The extra courses are still being counted in the Program unit count and so additional electives must be taken to make up the deficiency. If both excluded courses also appear in the Plan requirements, you will have to use other courses to meet that requirement.
In this situation please seek academic advice from Student Services so that the exclusions can be coded to remove the warning from your APR.
This warning does not usually occur unless a student transferred from another Faculty or School to Arts and Science, or holds a large number of transfer credits from other institutions (TR on the transcript).
This warning applies to students who have completed more courses of a specified type than are permitted in their Arts and Science program. Some of the maximums set are: 24.0 units in COMM; 24.0 units in ARTF (except for BFA students); and varying numbers of courses with TR grades (transfer credit), depending on the Program. See Academic Regulation 16 for specifics regarding transfer credits. Although the warning draws attention to the fact that the maximum has been surpassed, it does not exclude the extra courses from being used to satisfy the total unit count. Since the extra courses will still be counted in your Program unit count it is your responsibility to review your record and take extra electives to make up the deficiency. Note that this warning appears even if you have already completed additional courses to make up the deficiency.
In this situation please seek academic advice from Student Services so that the extra courses can be coded to remove the warning from your APR.
The Option Requirements of many Plans in Arts and Science allow you to substitute courses from outside the discipline. For example, the Department of History allows you to use certain CLST (Classical Studies) courses as substitutions for their upper-year History options. These options usually appear on a Course List. However, only a limited number of substitutions are usually allowed. If you receive this warning, it means you’ve exceeded this limit.
The courses listed in the warning may still be used towards the elective component (total unit count) of your degree, but you will have to choose one or more further courses within the discipline to use towards your Plan requirements. You may also wish to seek academic advice from your department.
Note that this warning appears even if you have already completed courses such that no more than the maximum will be used in your Plan.
In this situation please seek academic advice from Student Services so that the extra courses can be coded to remove the warning from your APR.
The Faculty of Arts and Science has a lot of programs and Plans, and students come from many different backgrounds. It is not always possible to foresee every possible course combination. If something seems to be wrong, it may be a mistake, but it is more likely you fit under one of the categories noted below. If, after checking out the following possibilities, you are still unclear as to what is wrong, you may wish to seek academic advice from your department or Student Services.
Since the ASC1 (first year) Plan has no specific requirements the report will read “Requirements report is unavailable” for all students in ASC1 (first year).
If the detailed requirements of your Plan have not been entered into the PeopleSoft system, you will see a message that the “Requirements report is unavailable”. There are over 2,000 Plan combinations in the Faculty of Arts and Science. While the Academic Progress Report includes the majority of these Plans, those that have been discontinued were not implemented. Therefore, if you are completing a Plan that has been dropped from the Academic Calendar an APR will not be available to you.
If you stop out (leave your program for an indefinite period of time) your APR will be unavailable during the time you are not registered at Queen’s.
If your APR is not available you can still use the Academic Progress Report to tally your unit count. You may consult the Academic Calendar to determine Plan requirements, or seek academic advice from your department or Student Services.
A course might be missing for one of the following reasons. If you transferred from another Faculty or School the course may not be accepted in an Arts and Science program. If you are in a Major-Minor Plan combination the issue may be overlap. A course used as Core or Option in the Major Plan may NOT also be used as Core or Option in the Minor Plan.
If you believe a course is missing in error, please consult with your department or Student Services. It is possible departmental consent is required to permit you to use the course, or a course from another Faculty/School needs to be approved, or a course has gone to the wrong requirement and needs to be directed to the appropriate one. These situations can be handled with a student exception (see below).
Students who transferred from other Faculties or Schools to the Bachelor of Arts, Science or Computing degree programs may hold courses that do not count towards their new degree requirements. Such courses are treated in various ways. To find out more on what the Academic Progress Report will do, click on the Faculty/School you were in before you changed to Arts and Science.
Smith Engineering uses a different unit weighting system than the Faculty of Arts and Science. For this reason, virtually all Engineering courses have been deliberately excluded from the Arts and Science part of the Academic Requirement Report (APR). If you have transferred from Smith Engineering to the Faculty of Arts and Science before September 1, 2011 many of your courses may not be counted. In this case, please consult your original letter sent by Undergraduate Admissions when you transferred to Arts and Science to see which courses have been transferred, and how they are being counted towards your degree in Arts and Science. You may also request to have a student exception made to your APR to fix the problem. If you transferred on or after September 1, 2011, we will amend your APR, so it should report properly. However, if you later change Plans, it may once again need to be fixed and you may again need to request a student exception.
The Academic Progress Report should be fully functional for students who transferred to an Arts and Science Program from the Bachelor of Commerce Program. Note that a maximum of 24.0 units in COMM courses may be counted in an Arts and Science degree, so if you hold more than this you will receive a "WARNING: Maximum Limits Exceeded (Programs)" message.
The Academic Progress Report should be fully functional for students who transferred to an Arts and Science Program from the Bachelor of Nursing Program. Note that only a very limited number of NURS courses count towards Arts and Science degrees, so if you hold any NURS courses, you should expect to see only a very few included in the total unit counts.
The Academic Requirement Report should be fully functional for students who transferred to any other Arts and Science Program from the Bachelor of Music Program. Note that some MUSC courses (primarily the ensemble courses) only count towards the Bachelor of Music degree, and not to any other Arts and Science degrees, so if you hold any such MUSC courses, they will not be included in the total unit counts.
The Academic Requirement Report should be fully functional for students who transferred to any other Arts and Science Program from the Bachelor of Physical and Health Education Programs. Note that PACT courses only count towards Physical Education degrees, and not to any other Arts and Science degrees, so if you hold any PACT courses, they will not be included in the total unit counts.
Dual and Second degree programs are very complex. At this time, the Academic Progress Report is not reliable for Dual Degree students. Therefore, students registered in a Dual Degree program should consult the Academic Calendar and your Department or Faculty Office if you need advice on choosing courses and checking degree requirements.
A Student Exception is a modification made to a student’s Program and/or Plan requirements due to special circumstances. There are three common situations in which an exception will be required:
