Now that I'm almost a month into my 1B term and finally soaked in all of 1A, I want to give my own opinion and feedback on how 1A/first semester went.
Starting with when I got accepted to Waterloo in March, I was shocked when I read the email. I'm originally from Vancouver so my whole life I believed UBC would be my route – Waterloo was essentially a shot in the dark for me. My exact thought was, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." I remember reading Reddit pages where people said you "needed" a 99% average to get in and realized how competitive Waterloo actually was.
Fast forward to just before September, I fully processed that I was going to leave my family and friends. I became stressed out for university since I've heard how notoriously hard the ECE program was, and I began doom scrolling Reddit, Discord, and Google on anything related to Waterloo. Previous ECE student's complaining how hard the finals were, people telling us to use the summer as much as we can to relax since we won't have that free time when in university, and other posts made me petrified. Paired with this, my grandpa was not doing well health-wise, so my mind was everywhere.
Arriving at Waterloo
Having already toured Waterloo campus earlier in the year, seeing how the campus is again was not a surprise. Alternatively, I already had lower expectations on the campus because when I did the campus tour, it was during finals week so it felt like an abandoned area. Everyone was inside their dorms/apartments studying - you can imagine how it felt being there.
Orientation week was pretty fun, I was able to meet a lot of new people and the events planned by EngSoc were very well-made. The biggest letdown was that EdComm (iykyk) wasn't actually composed of the top performing engineers, but it was a very unique concept for orientation that definitely made it a positive experience for me. The best part was definitely the sunny weather for that week – I don't think I've seen the sun in a while.
Starting 1A
Sadly, my grandpa passed away when starting the term, so I was not mentally ready to start. But, the beauty of going to Waterloo is that you learn to push through and keep going.
To be honest, the semester was a lot more manageable than I expected. When I heard that we were taking seven courses, I thought I would be cooped up in my dorm studying without free time. In senior year of high school, I had 2-3 classes per semester as I was able to gather up enough credits in the earlier years to get free blocks in senior year, so jumping from 2 courses per semester to 7 courses would have been the death of me. Realistically, there are only 4-5 courses (depending if you count English since it is very prof dependent) that you would need to put substantial work in. As a result, I was able to get ~7-9 hours of sleep per night, meet many new people in and out of my program, and go to the gym daily.
Course Reviews
Taught by Professor Douglas Harder. The first day he taught us, I instantly knew his class would be very interesting. Harder is the one professor at Waterloo I heard about before I even started because of the endless memes about him. He's very passionate and sometimes goes off topic but even when he does, he still explains very interesting ideas. His website is very useful in studying as it contains his slides, problems, past exams, and numerous readings.
I already have experience learning C and object oriented programming, so much of this course was review for me, but it was still valuable in attending lectures to freshen up my knowledge. Harder is definitely one of the professor's in Waterloo who genuinely cares about us students and wants us to excel. Don't be afraid to ask him questions, he truly wants to help. He has very frequent office hours and he occasionally hosted optional lectures on his own time about programming to teach us more (not related to the course).
Tip: Spam past exams and genuinely understand what you're doing. Don't focus on memorization. Do the projects yourself and DON'T use AI. It is very easy to finish the projects with AI, but they include core concepts that will be tested on the midterm/final. Something I found funny was that he included a hidden "AI finder" message in one of the project descriptions where if you copy pasted the project description into AI, it would format the code in a way that he knows it's AI. The goat.
Derivatives and integrals taught by Professor Sachin Kotecha. Young professor but his notes are very organized and he's incredibly clear in his teaching. He reminds me of how a high school teacher would teach, which I enjoyed. No negatives about this course, all the professors teaching this from what I heard have been excellent and the material is a lot of highschool Calculus review (for BC, if you're from Ontario you wouldn't have done integrals yet).
Tip: Take notes in class, do the problem sets before every tutorial, and spam past exams. His teaching would be a little fast if you did not take calculus in high school, so try your best to keep up.
Taught by Professor Ryan Trelford. His notes are the best. He writes notes on the whiteboard, but they are very organized and he keeps them on for a while for you to copy. I didn't learn vectors and matrices in Vancouver, so the start of the course was a bit weird to me, but it wasn't too hard to catch up. Linear algebra has definitely been my favourite course so far in Waterloo. It's so interesting and satisfying seeing how everything connects and works together throughout the course. Understanding previous content throughout the course is crucial to understanding the upcoming concepts as they all somehow relate. 3Blue1Brown is an excellent resource to visualize linear algebra. Rather than being very computational heavy like calculus, this course is very theorem and proof heavy so having a good understanding of the material will help you much more than simply memorizing.
Tip: Read the online textbook, it's genuinely one of the greatest pieces of literature written. Many problems, in-depth proofs, looks visually appealing, you name it. This course is pretty fast paced as well, but as long as you attend all classes and keep up with the problem sets and do past exams, you can pass this course with a good grade.
Taught by Professor Jamie Forrest. This was THE course of 1A. Every time I entered a lecture, I left feeling even more confused. Professor Forrest is a very knowledgeable and smart professor; however, it is incredibly difficult to understand what he teaches during the lectures.
He doesn't show all his steps and randomly pulls out equations. You need to go back home and review it extensively before it clicks and realize everything he's teaching is right (even though during the lecture you thought he was speaking gibberish). He also teaches using an overhead projector, so it's sometimes difficult to write all his notes before he moves his paper away.
In his defence, he was also dealing with turning into course coordinator after the previous coordinator tragically passed away, so he had a lot of things on his plate as well. He genuinely wants us to pass and have a good mark in the course, so he was very helpful when answering questions and providing clarification.
The satisfying thing about this course and being in ECE in general at Waterloo is that we were all in it together, so even if I leave the lectures/exams feeling confused, everyone else around me was feeling the same. After the 30 page final exam for this course, I did not know what to expect. I remember putting my pencil down after the exam ending and looking around. Everyone was staring at each other and had pure shock on their faces.
Somehow, I managed to complete this course with a much higher grade than I expected. Thank you, Professor Forrest. This course makes you use your highschool knowledge of physics to the extreme. Like always, genuinely try to understand the material since there's only a certain amount of "different" types of questions he can ask. Working together with your class mates to solve problems or figure out concepts is a very good idea.
Basically an engineering course where we learned about ethics, values, rules of being engineers, etc. Professor Dan Davidson is a very organized and well-spoken professor, so it is a shame that he was the one teaching us 190. Many people skip lectures, but it is a good idea to go to them so you don't really need to cram it all for the midterm/final. Not much to say about this course other than to study more than you think you need to, the midterm/final is harder than you would expect even though it's all multiple choice.
This course is led by Professor Saini. We started out with workshops in random groups playing around with Arduino, breadboards, circuits, etc. I never had any opportunities in school to have a computer engineering course or any course that specialized in hardware, so this was a very fun experience for me. Being able to work hands-on with all the equipment was much more fun than I thought as a more software-inclined person. After the workshops, you form a group of 4 and work together the rest of the semester to make one project that you present at the end of the semester. Pretty easy and manageable depending on the TA marking you and how high-level you want to go with your project.
Even though ECE takes all of the same courses in 1A, this is the one course where it could be one student's hardest class and another student's easiest. For me, it was the latter. I got taught by Professor Kate Wells where she taught us public speaking. She's a very passionate and easygoing professor. Participate in class, don't talk when she's talking, complete assignments, and you will get a good grade in the course.
I heard other people in my program had a very different experience where they had to do hundreds of pages of readings, numerous quizzes, presentations, etc. Luckily, having done a lot of presentations for school fairs and other activities, this course was not difficult. Stay on top of your work and you should be fine for this course.
Tips for Incoming 1A Students
Stay on Top of Lectures
The pace will be a lot faster than high school – don't let it sweep you away. I know how tempting it is to skip, but attending lectures makes a huge difference.
Practice Problems
Do practice problems and past exams religiously. Understanding concepts through application is key to success.
Prioritize Yourself
Get at least 6-7 hours of sleep and eat/drink well. We're doing this for 5 years straight with no summer breaks. Find a balance.
Balance Co-op Search
If you're in stream 4, try to balance your time between searching for co-op and school. Optimize your resume, do interview prep/leetcode, and apply, apply, apply.
Final Thoughts
All in all, 1A was not a bad semester at all. I met many new people and I was able to deal with the workload a lot better than I thought. No caffeine needed (yet).
1A is not a weeding out term, it's a term to get you used to university.
Last note: When you're eating, take that time for yourself. Don't try to keep studying to maximize efficiency. We're human, we need breaks. The terms only get harder, what you need to find is an optimal balance between academic and personal life.