General News
- Check the FAQ for enrolment issues common from year to year.
- The University calendars are now available online. Consult them for all information on degree plan requirements and course descriptions. There are occasional errors, which we will correct here when we find them.
- For information about changes from previous years, see the enrolment news archive.
Change of Plan for Upper-Year Students
During the same time as first-year plan selection, we consider applications from upper-year students who wish to switch into Computing (via the plan change process outlined on the Arts and Science website). We make decisions about acceptance at the end of the application period, based on the same criteria as the pending list, which may allow accepting a limited number of students with GPA below 2.6.
After the end of the enrolment period, we consider applications for switching into Computing based on the same criteria we used during plan selection, but with no promise that seats will be available this year in classes. This process uses Academic Change Forms found on the Arts and Science website under "Registration-Related Forms."
CISC 121 Fall is full
Both Fall sections of CISC 121 are full. We do not have access to bigger classrooms and are unable to add students to full classrooms. We will respect the waitlists so students there can move up if some enrolled students choose to drop the Fall offering.
Please consider taking CISC 121 in the Winter or Summer terms.
CISC/CMPE 365 Fall
Computing students in 3rd year must take CISC 365 in the Winter term. The Fall session is an adjunct to the CMPE 365 engineering course, and is reserved for students needing it to qualify for Winter capstone courses (CISC 497, CISC/COGS 499).
CISC 499 and 500
CISC 500: This requires permission of school. We will automatically enroll those who arranged a proposal earlier this summer. It is now too late to sign up for CISC 500 if you haven't already made arrangements.
CISC 499: If your graduation plan requires CISC 499*, please read the course website at https://courses.caslab.queensu.ca/cisc499/. You must sign up for it now instead of waiting for the winter, because you need to use OnQ to submit a project proposal by late October or early November (date to be announced on OnQ and the web page by the start of fall classes). If you can't get in to it because of a low CISC 365 grade, mail advising@cs.queensu.ca and the undergraduate chair will consider whether your overall grades in 3rd year Computing courses justify waiving the prerequisite.
* Exceptions: You don't take CISC 499 if you are in COCA, SODE, and the internships, or if you are doing CISC 496 or 500 instead. COGS student please use COGS 499.
CISC 499 Time Conflicts
In past years CISC 499 timeslots were not used for most of the term. With increasing numbers of students, and increasing prevalence of group work, some supervisors may need to use the scheduled class slots for meetings. We are allowing conflicts with a single session, but will be reluctant to allow more than one.
Plan Selection For Students Finishing First Year
The plan selection period will open on SOLUS from May 16th to May 27th, 2022. See the Arts and Science description of plan selection, a few parts of which are summarized below.
At the end of first year, students who have completed 24.0 units must select a degree plan for second year. Any Arts and Science student who meets the plan selection requirements may select any plan in Arts and Science, not just the ones for the degree program in which they first registered. To automatically get into any Computing plan, you need a B in CISC 121 or 124, and a 2.6 cumulative GPA. A B- and 2.3 GPA get you onto a "pending list" from which we accept a limited number of students after the plan selection period ends.
This year, the Computer Science Specialization has 6 subplans, which used to be options:
- Fundamental Computation
- Biomedical Computation
- Data Analytics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Game Development
- Security
All plans are treated equally; there are no separate quotas for individual plans.
If you are not accepted, you can apply at the end of enrolment, as soon as you do qualify, via an "Academic Change Form" found on the Arts and Science website under "Registration-Related Forms."
There will be MS Teams meetings from May 12 to May 26 on work days for assistance with plan selection.
- Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 1:30-2:00 (Ms. Karen Knight) - Teams Link
- Exception: Ms. Knight is not available on Friday, May 20th
- Tuesdays and Thursdays 15:00-15:30 (Prof. Yuanzhu Chen) - Teams Link
Plan Selection Presentation
4th Year AI courses
This year we are only able to offer three AI courses: CISC 452/COGS 400, CISC 455, and CISC 474. Students in the AI sub-plan and COGS have seats reserved for them in these courses until the end of the reserves period (July 26th). Since AI and COGS students only need to take 2 of these courses, please kindly only sign up for 2 to make room for other students. The School is proactively growing its AI capacity so the situation should improve next year.