The REAL Difference Between High School and University Classes

Other than more challenging classes, there are other differences that make university classes unique.

This article was written by Macey Whiteside, a second-year student.

Before I started university, people often tried to scare me about how hard the classes would be and how much work I’d have to do. While it’s true that university is more challenging than high school, this isn’t the whole story. Yes, the classes are harder, but chances are you’re studying subjects you’re passionate about, making it easier to put in the effort to succeed. Here are a few other things that separate university and high school classes that you should expect coming to Western University:

Schedule

The biggest change for me was the shift in class schedules. In high school, your day is a set routine of two to four classes, often the same every day. But in university, your schedule is much more varied. You’ll likely have fewer hours of class each day, and those classes might not be back-to-back.

Classes often run just once or twice a week, meaning you won’t have the same course every day, giving you more flexibility and control over your time. However, due to the classes being shorter, you’ll likely have more hours of homework and independent work than you did in high school.

Personally, this is one of the reasons I prefer university classes over high school ones. I’ve found that I learn better with less class time and more independent work at my own pace. Although, this will be different for everyone.

Choosing classes

Selecting your classes at Western is done through the Student Center portal, which can be a bit more complicated than high school. In high school, you were told which mandatory classes you would have to take from grades 9 through 12. At Western, the process of ensuring you are selecting the right courses gets a bit more complicated.

To graduate at Western, you must complete a certain number of 1000-level courses, 2000-level courses and 3000+ level courses. Also, you are required to take 1.0 essay credits and 1.0 credits from each class category of A, B, and C. Here is a basic PDF documenting what you may need to graduate for your bachelor's degree graduation requirements.

Ensuring you have fulfilled these requirements and gotten the grades needed to progress adequately in your degree is much more self-directed than in high school. There are PDFs and guidelines that exist online for each selected degree which lays out exactly what you must take each year to ensure you are on the right track. However, these documents can be hard to find and are often buried in pages and pages on Western's website.

What I suggest is booking an academic advising appointment with an academic advisor in your faculty to ensure you are selecting all the right courses. This can be found on your faculty's website.

On the plus side, university schedules offer much more freedom. You can choose classes based on times and days that suit you, which is great if you know you're not a morning person or if you prefer to have afternoons off.

Classwork

The adjustment in course load and difficulty will drastically change depending on what high school you attended and what your program is. I felt my classes were significantly more work than high school, but still very manageable. Exam season has always been the biggest struggle for me as I did not do exams after COVID-19. I find it hard to balance studying for five exams, especially when they are close together and take place right after I have my final projects due.

Additionally, my program is a very essay-dominated program, and one of the biggest changes I noticed is how different and difficult the essays were. They were much more abstract than what I was used to in high school English, and the traditional way we were taught to write essays did not work in university. Thankfully, I had a mandatory class in first-year critical thinking and essay writing class.

Syllabus

One unique aspect of university classes is the variation in how each professor structures their course. Every professor creates their syllabus, outlining their expectations, class rules, and assignment deadlines. Policies on late submissions, AI usage, assignment extensions, and exams can differ widely. I’ve had professors who deduct 2% per day for late assignments, and others who give an automatic zero.

This means that professors also have different preferences for assignments, writing styles, exams, and forums. I have learned that a good skill to have in these types of classes is to recognize what the teacher is looking for and what they consider to be successful. The good news is that many professors are clear about their expectations, and you can learn a lot from their feedback. Be sure to take advantage of their office hours!

Overall, I’ve found that syllabi are incredibly helpful tools that is certainly an improvement from high school. I love having the entire semester’s plan laid out, so I know exactly when assignments and tests are due. At the start of each semester, I put all my due dates into a calendar so I can see when my workload will be heaviest.

Independence

In university students are in charge of their learning, unlike in high school where a teacher may ensure you are keeping up with readings, assignments, etc. Profs expect you to do the work and keep up week-to-week. Teachers in university may remind students in the classes leading up to tests and assignments but that is as far as they will go. They will not independently email or talk to a student because they have missed an important deadline. This means that it is up to you to rigorously check deadlines and test dates.

Keeping up with your own deadlines and homework on top of cooking, cleaning, and shopping for yourself can be a challenge. I recommend using organizational tools such as Notion, Google Calendar, or a notebook to write your deadlines and to-dos. Speaking from experience, I also recommend that you double check you have written the deadlines down properly and not multiple days after its due.

In the end, the shift to university classes isn’t just about harder coursework, it’s a completely different learning environment. The independence, the varied schedules, and the more complex assignments are part of what makes university a unique experience. It takes some adjustment, but once you get the hang of it, you might find the structure and freedom more suited to your way of learning. Personally, I am doing better academically than I was in high school because I am truly passionate about what I am learning and find the structure of university to fall better in line with my learning style.