How to Customize your Degree and Earn a 10.0 CGPA

As a thought experiment, I want to explore how one should go about a University of Ottawa degree if the sole goal is to optimize for a perfect GPA. While some of these ideas are specific to the Faculty of Engineering, many apply to the University of Ottawa in general.

1. Complete half of your degree outside of Ottawa.

Courses transferred over from other institutions are treated as Pass/Fail on your transcript. The fewer courses taken in Ottawa, the lower the probability of hurting your perfect GPA.

Even if you are quite confident in your abilities and believe you have a 99% chance of scoring an A+ in any course. If you take 40 courses at uOttawa, you’ll still only have a 67% chance of finishing with a perfect GPA, whereas your chances are 15% better if you only took 20 courses at home.

To take external courses, it might be necessary to plan (far) ahead and get a Letter of Permission from your faculty. Besides the wait time though, the process is fairly painless. Consider Athabasca University: courses are cheaper, easier, and more flexible.

2. Do a shorter degree.

How is a Bachelor of Science Major in Computer Science different from an Honours BSc Computer Science. Do you think employers know the difference?

Most have not heard of the former, and default to the latter. The Major in CS program is less demanding and expected to take only 3 years. In the same spirit of reducing variance, if there are fewer courses in a program, there is a lower chance of not getting an A+ in one.

Some other 3-year programs of this nature: BSc-General, BSocSc-General the new Multidisciplinary Program. Employers won’t care that you did a shorter program. 3-year programs used to be the norm, and it is still the norm in the UK, and some top US schools.

3. Take project-based courses.

… or take presentation-based seminars. They are not only more fun, they also often lead to nice portfolio items. But we’re not optimizing for learning here:

• SEG 3904: Innovation Research Project had a 10.0/10 average in Fall 2018. All 8 students who took that course got an A+.
• MAT 4376: Mathematical Genomics, a course with our legendary David Sankoff, consists of two 45-minute presentations, and had a 9.6/10 average.

Did badly on a midterm? Some professors will let you replace it with a project. Few students ever ask, thus profs generally respond positively.

4. Replace 1st/2nd year courses with 3rd/4th year ones.

As project-based courses demonstrate, a bigger course code does not imply a more difficult course. In fact, I believe most 3rd/4th year courses are easier than the 1st/2nd year courses that are designed to be “weeders.” And often, if you get a prerequisite waiver to take an upper-year course, you can ask the department to replace the prerequisite. For example, you can replace MAT 2375 with MAT 3377, and MAT 2141 with MAT 3341, etc.

Prerequisites are but a recommendation, and very little of that prior knowledge is needed most of the time. For example, MAT 2377: Statistics for Engineers is a requirement for CEG 3185, a computer networking class, but the course was more like a biology course (mostly regurgitating definitions) and did not require statistics. With an acceptable GPA, prerequisite waivers are not difficult to get.

5. Focus on easy courses.

“Easy” or “bird” courses have the same weight as your most difficult courses. Treat them with the proper respect: “in order to get 90 in [any course], it will require at least a 90% effort from you.” The University of Ottawa rewards students for being “well-rounded.” It is more optimal for your GPA to get 90% in 5 courses than 100% in 4 and 89% in the 5th. It would be unfortunate to ace all your courses, but have your achievements be undone by a B in Witchcraft (SRS 1110 is a great course, btw!). At convocation, the separation between plaque winners, university medal winners, and the governor general’s medal winner is often a few “easy”, non-technical courses like technical report writing and engineering ethics.

6. Reserve hard courses for the summer.

ITI 1121: Introduction to Programming II (Java) is one of the harder 1st year courses. Even some competent & experienced programmers do not get an A+, and complain about some of its “arbitrary” grading requirements. As a former TA for that course, I remember the inflexible grading scheme and deductions (e.g., -1 for failing to include a == null check). ITI 1121 is much easier in the summer. I suspect it might have something to do with wanting to accommodate students who already failed once in the winter term, and are doing a summer retake. This is the case for many summer courses (e.g., MAT 1320).

7. Consider doing an exchange.

Exchanges are not typically more expensive than regular attendance, thanks to the many sources of funding offered by the university, such as the Faculty of Engineering International Experience Scholarship valued at $6000, and various mobility scholarships. There are also funded programs like MITACS or the Canadian Learning Initiative in China. uOttawa’s competition pool for exchange awards, such as the Killam Fellowship, is also less saturated than many other participating institutions.

As aforementioned, courses taken on exchanges are treated as Pass/Fail. Furthermore, prerequisite courses (point 4) can often be skipped over through exchanges. Don’t ask permission; just ask forgiveness. If you’ve already completed an upper-level course at a different institution, it is too late to not grant you permission. Faculties are generally accommodating when it comes to exchanges, as other universities often have very different course sequences.

For example, if you never took MAT 2125: Elementary Real Analysis at uOttawa (a source of complaints from many applied math colleagues), but took a course called “Real Analysis” at an institution abroad. The overlap in content might actually yield you a credit for MAT 3120: Real Analysis, allowing you to bypass 2125. Exchanges are also great for taking electives, or breadth requirements such as ADM courses. In short, the difficulty and content of courses vary quite a bit between institutions, and you could, if you so wish, exploit that difference to your advantage. While equivalences are fairly generous in general, they are not so for engineering courses: engineering courses in Canada need to be taught by a professor holding a P.Eng. or equivalent for accreditation purposes.

8. Develop strong presentation skills.

In the long run, making this a priority will have more value than mastering most of the academic content in some of your more esoteric classes. Changing the tone a bit, and giving more of an earnest take — I strongly believe that most university courses we take are head-fakes, as Randy Pausch would call it. Most of the content and material we study does not inherently matter, rather they serve as fodder to allow us to think about a topic deeply. The true goal is for us to be shaped into strong writers and speakers that can think critically. In many engineering courses, the presentation of a project matters more than the technical aspects of the project. For engineering capstone projects & honor’s projects, if you want to optimize for a good grade, put in as much effort in the presentation, as you do the rest of the project. It is possible to ace SEG 3125: UI Design, with a last-minute project, presented charismatically. The converse is untrue.

In preparation for presenting projects in more grade-lenient seminar or project-based courses (point 3), consider honing your presentation skills by working on your ability to haggle for grades. Present your perspective to TAs and professors by arguing that questions were worded ambiguously or that your answer was misinterpreted by the grader. This is not only great practice for your presentation skills, it often also makes a grade point difference. It’s what you make of it; treat it as a game. I’ve seen success gaining an additional 2% on one’s final grade in Professional Practice, arguing there was ambiguity in, of all things, the phrasing of the multiple choice questions.

9. Take Challenge Exams.

For non-engineering courses, there is a little-known mechanism known as the challenge exam. It allows you to take the final exam of a course, and conditional on getting a sufficiently good score, earn the course credits without having to take the course.

These exams are occasionally Pass/Fail, but usually the grade on your exam becomes your final grade. This set-up would be beneficial for people who score better on exams than school assignments. There is precedent for this process in mathematics, where most introductory material is generic, identical between institutions and can be self-taught. There is some precedent of challenge exams in ITI1120 and in science. Consider speaking to the department heads (Steven Desjardins is a very kind person!). Professors who have previously taught the course are generally very helpful, and would often provide you with study materials and give advice.

10. Retake courses to improve grades.

There is no shame in re-taking a course. At uOttawa, your tuition is the same, no matter how many courses you take. You can take and drop courses as many times as you’d like before the deadline. You can even retake a course in a different language (and the material is often quite different). Ultimately, only your last (and likely best) attempt will be counted in your GPA.

Conclusion

I guess it turns out gaming your degree for a 10.0 is really a head-fake for making the most out of your undergrad. By doing these optimizations, the end result is a customized degree focusing on courses and projects that make best use of your time and talents. You will become a good presenter capable of negotiating with professors. By splitting your degree across multiple institutions, you would have broadened your horizons. You’d have become a well-rounded person due to your respect for breadth courses. You would have a stronger academic understanding from retaking courses in which you did not excel. Challenge exams and project-based work would have led you into an independent and practical learner. You would develop skills useful in industry that are often orthogonal to what is traditionally taught in class. The undergrad experience becomes a game driven by interest rather than a prescribed sequence — an approach that would continue to yield dividends long after graduation.

And from a practical point of view, the outcome could be that you finished your degree in less time or that you got recognized with a plaque or a medal at convocation. In the end, neither are the true reward. My beliefs about university are somewhat idealistic. I don’t believe school should be about being trained for a job; instead, it should be more about becoming a well-rounded and articulate person. Ultimately, that’s the best way to have an impact, make a change and become a powerful person. By gamifying the process, it becomes easier to aim for this rather abstract goal. Finally, do try to have fun playing the game! Our college days might very well be our best days, and I’m sincere in believing that the bulk of the value in a degree is in the friendships formed along the way.

For the reader who stuck till the end, here are a few more ideas:

• The CSI, CEG, SEG, ELG program share essentially the same first year courses. However, tuition for CSI is cheaper, and also CSI/SEG students have the option to do co-op an entire year earlier. Even if you are interested in CEG or ELG, consider being in CSI/SEG for your first year. Co-op experience is very desirable. It is fairly easy to switch between programs. Trust me, I’ve done it many times.
• Consider applying for SASS accommodations. An increasing portion of students find themselves qualifying for academic accommodations. A mere 5.9% of students at uOttawa are registered, which is lower than the provincial average. While I am not a recipient of SASS accommodations, I have seen first-hand the positive impact it can have on the academic outcomes of students that have started receiving it. Let there not be stigma around accommodations; if you believe you can qualify, consider putting together the documentation. Having 1.5-2x the time to do an exam has a meaningful impact on outcomes.
• There is quite a bit of flexibility in course-sequence planning. The cost of doing 4 courses is the same as doing 8. We can take advantage of that by signing up for courses we don’t actually plan on taking now, and testing them out, before dropping them later. This could be a great way to get the course syllabus and content in preparation for actually taking it in the future. Course sequences are but recommendations; there are no hard constraints on the order you finish classes. Final exams can be deferred for up to a year, giving more time to prepare (collisions are bound to occur when enrolled in 8 courses).