When you receive your marks at Simon Fraser University, it will say A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, or F.
If you receive an F, you will not receive credits for the course and it will hurt your GPA significantly if you are in your first two years. If you did not receive an F and still got credits, then you passed the course!
WQB
The Simon Fraser University requires all students to do something called the WQB. This WQB requires the student to take 6 credits worth of writing courses, 6 credits worth of quantative courses, 6 credits worth of Social Sciences Breadth courses, 6 credits worth of Science Breadth courses, and 6 credits worth of Humanity Breadth courses. Breadth courses only count if the courses are outside of your department. I will explain this later. In addition to the 30 credits mentioned already, students will also be required to take two additional courses outside of the student’s major program. The two additional courses does not need to be designated as breadth.
Students that are in the Faculty of Arts doing a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Fine Arts are required to take 2 additional courses (14 courses in total as opposed to 12 courses).
Although I mentioned that students need to take 12 courses or 14 courses, this value may decrease. Say that you take Political Science 101 with Andrew Heard during the Spring semester, you will get 3 Social Science Breadth credits and 3 Writing credits. This allows you to “kill 2 birds with one stone”. Some students might look at the course schedule and see that COGS 100-3 gives you a B-Soc, B-Sci, and B-Hum course credit. Unfortunately, you can only pick one of those breadth to count.
I mentioned early that you will pass a course as long as you get a D. Although this is true, you will only receive WQB credits if and only if you get C- or higher in the course. Say that you and your friend gets D and C- respectively in Political Science 101, you will not get the WQB credits but your friend will.
Some friends have asked me why we need to do WQB. The answer is simple and it can be found off the Simon Fraser University website:
- A superior education, with greater applicability and relevance
- Our students will graduate as improved writers, with better quantitative reasoning skills and a greater breadth of knowledge.
- Better preparation for careers
- Many employers value writing and quantitative skills as well as depth of knowledge in disciplines.
- Better writing and quantitative abilities increase the probability of gaining admission to graduate schools (GREs) and professional schools (LSATs)
In the Faculty of Science, we are required to take courses that are from other departments. An example of this would be that a Biology major would be required to take CHEM 121 and CHEM 122. Currently, CHEM 121 has a B-Sci credit. Although your major requires you to take CHEM 121, you are still allowed to count your CHEM course as one of your B-Sci credits.
Prerequisites
Science courses are hard courses because they require you to think hard and will require you to understand the materials. In the Faculty of Science, we have something called a “minimum grade requirement”. With this minimum grade requirement, a grade of C- or better is required on all prerequisites. This means that if you want to take MATH 152 (Calculus II) and you only received a D in MATH 151 (Calculus I), then you may not take the course and you will have to retake MATH 151 if your program requires it.
Although the Faculty of Science has a “minimum grade requirement”, this does not apply to other faculties. The School of Engineering is in the Faculty of Applied Science and offers a course called Electric Circuits I (ENSC 220). ENSC 200 requires PHYS 121 and 131, MATH 232 and 310 as a pre-requisite. Although Physics and Mathematics are in the Faculty of Science, the minimum grade requirement does not apply. All you need in PHYS 121 and 131 is a D in order to get into the course.
MACM courses are a unit set of courses. MACM 101 (Discrete Mathematics I) is offered by the Faculty of Applied Science School of Computing Science and all other MACM courses are offered by the Faculty of Science Department of Mathematics. Since MACM 201 (Discrete Mathematics II) is offered by the Department of Mathematics, a grade of C- or greater is required. CMPT 275 (Software Engineering I) requires MACM 101 as a prerequisite but the course does not require a grade of C- or greater.
Retake
I mentioned early that you have to retake a course if your mark is not satisfactory. At Simon Fraser University, you can retake a maximum five courses in a normal degree program where you are only allowed to repeat a course once. If you need that limit to be raised, it can be raised at the descretion of the dean but your should see your academic advisor before applying.