How to transfer to CS (from Geomatics) at the University of Waterloo

It’s the middle of November and applications finally open up on OUAC. You begin to google for the best CS programs in Canada and after some research, you find out that the University of Waterloo is where you want to be after high school. After applying on OUAC, you head to Quest, and begin typing up your AIF, highlighting the amazing work you’ve done — all the achievements that you’ve accomplished in the last 17 years of your life.

For the next 5 months, you join Discord servers, you make a post in the admissions megathread on Reddit asking for chances and check Quest everyday in hopes of getting an offer into CS.

Five months has passed and May comes around. It’s the final admission round and many people on Discord and Reddit have said that they’ve already been accepted and you’re desperately hoping that this will be the round that you get the news you’re looking for.

Then you get hit with the dreadful email:

CS rejection letter

You’ve failed.

I know that feeling all too well, because I failed too. I was rejected and deferred to Geomatics, a program that is constantly looked down upon and notorious for people rejected from CS. In my year, people were deferred exclusively to Geomatics and not Math.

But it’s going to be okay. You’re definitely not the only person who got rejected. Admissions is always finicky, in fact I’ve seen people in my year with high school averages of up to 98% get rejected from CS.

Hopefully, you applied to other universities too and have other options to choose from. If however, you’re like me and your mind is set on getting into Waterloo CS, read on.

To give you a little bit of background, my 6 course high school average in the middle of my second semester of grade 12 was around 91.5%. I definitely cared a lot less about high school than I should have. Throughout high school, I've only ever taken one CS course and that was a basic grade 10 course that taught HTML and JavaScript in the browser. The reason I didn’t take any CS courses afterwards is because I transferred high schools and my new school did not offer any CS courses. Keep in mind that despite this, I had extensive programming experience even before high school. I was also accepted for CS at other universities as well, although I still took the offer at Waterloo for Geomatics with determination to make it into CS the following year. Still, I’m not sure if I would ever recommend doing this unless you’re confident and have a strong work ethic. However, it is certainly doable.

The transfer process

Shortly after accepting my offer to Geomatics, I sent an email to the math internal transfer advisor stating that I accepted Geomatics with the intention of transferring to CS. They’ll give you some advice on what you should take if you want to transfer and answer any questions you might have.

During the very first day of orientation, I scheduled an appointment with a CS advisor to inform them of my intention to transfer. You will need to see a CS advisor in person before you can apply to transfer since they will put a note on your file. I also saw the math internal transfer advisor in person shortly after. There’s actually no need to see them this early since the earliest you’ll be able to transfer is in 2A (after your first year), but they can give you some advice on the process.

I will take you through the process that I took to transfer. To transfer from Geomatics to CS, you will need to apply for a transfer to both Math and CS. You will apply to both of these transfers at the same time. Keep in mind that the requirements to transfer can change every year and that only the minimum requirements are stated. For reference, on what you may need to transfer, I had a 96% in CS 136, a 92% in CS 135 and my math average was around 93%. The current requirements to transfer to Math can be found here and the current requirements to transfer to CS can be found here.

As of writing, to transfer to Math, you need to meet the following minimum requirements:

• Two or fewer failed courses
• A minimum cumulative average (CAV) of 75%
• Strong grades in at least three honours-equivalent math courses from Waterloo

As of writing, to transfer to CS, you need to meet the following minimum requirements:

• Have completed at least one term in the Faculty of Mathematics with a typical course load for a Computer Science major. For students taking a first-year CS course, a typical load includes one CS course, two math courses, and two non-math electives. For students taking second-year CS courses, a typical load includes two CS courses, two math courses, and one non-math elective.
• Have credit for CS 136 or CS 146.
• Have a math major average of at least 65% (calculated over all math and computer science courses) and a CS major average of at least 70%.

For the actual transfer, they consider a number of factors mostly related to your grades. In summary, the three main things they take into account is your CS major average, Math faculty average (the average of all your MATH courses including CS), and cumulative average. The full list can be found here.

While in Geomatics, I took courses that helped me fulfill requirements for a Geomatics degree and for a CS transfer simultaneously. It’s actually possible to ignore the Geomatics requirements completely, however, if things do not go as planned and you do not make the transfer, you will have wasted a term or two. If you follow the process that I took, you will have to overload a course in 1B and take 3 more courses in the following summer term. However, you will also end up ahead of other CS students in your year.

In my 1A term, I took the following courses:

• CS 135 - Designing Functional Programs
• ENVS 178 - Environmental Applications of Data Management and Statistics
• GEOG 181 - Designing Effective Maps
• GEOG 187 - Geospatial Data Science
• MATH 114 - Linear Algebra for Science

Instead of taking CS 135 and then CS 136 the following term, you can choose to take CS 115 instead. A consequence of this is that you may be forced to delay your transfer by a term since CS 136 requires that you have at least a 90% in CS 115 or have at least a 60% in CS 135. I definitely recommend taking CS 135 instead. If you’re attempting this transfer, you should be able to get above 90% in CS 135. The assignments should be fairly straight forward. Finish them as early as you can so you have time to focus on other courses that you may not be as interested in. I typically finished these assignments on the same day they were released or a day or two after. I found that just doing the assignments were more than enough to do well on the midterm and final. Occasionally there will be bonus questions on some of these assignments, definitely do them, they’re free marks and shouldn’t be too hard.

Instead of taking MATH 114, you can choose to take MATH 106 which should be fairly easier. It doesn’t matter which you take but the math internal transfer advisor told me to take it instead of MATH 106 since it was closer to MATH 136. I believe both MATH 106 and MATH 114 will be counted as a MATH 136 credit after you transfer into CS but make sure you ask a CS advisor if you plan on taking MATH 106 instead. If you choose to take MATH 114, the content should be fairly straightforward. There will be 30 assignments in total, 2 every week. However, do not underestimate the midterms or final (there is no curve). In my class, for both midterms, the average and median was 50 and 52 respectively (shout out to Uncle Conrad).

The other 3 courses are your standard Geomatics courses for first year. ENVS 178 is a standard stats course, GEOG 187 will have you doing some data visualization in Tableau and in GEOG 181, you will get to do what you love doing best, making maps! Memorize the projections in GEOG 181 and you should be good. The added benefit is that the understanding of different projections can be useful outside of map making.

In my 1B term, I took the following courses:

• CS 136 - Elementary Algorithm Design & Data Abstraction
• ENGL 109 - Intro to Academic Writing
• GEOG 101 - Human Geographies
• GEOG 102 - Global Environmental Systems
• GEOG 281 - Introduction to G.I.S.
• MATH 127 - Calculus 1 for the Sciences

CS 136 will be the most important course for your transfer so make sure you do well in this course. This course is fairly straightforward like CS 135. Make sure you do your assignments and you should be good for the midterm and final. Like CS 135, assignments will occasionally have bonus questions, do them.

MATH 127 is the course that I chose to overload. You will need to have at least an 80% average in 1A to take a 6th course. I took the online version of this course. The course is mostly review from high school calculus and should be fairly straightforward. If you think the course load is too high, you can choose to replace one of the other courses instead. I would personally replace GEOG 101 or GEOG 102.

The other courses are your typical 1B Geomatics courses. ENGL 109 is required to fulfill the communication requirement in Geomatics and will also fulfill the list 1 communication requirement for CS. GEOG 101 is human geography and GEOG 102 is physical geography. Both of these courses require a lot of memorization and were the two courses I disliked the most as well. GEOG 281 is mostly review from GEOG 181, you’ll also be making maps in this course. This course can get be a bit interesting in the latter half of the course as you’ll learn a bit about SQL.

Time to apply for a CS transfer

You’ve made it, you can now apply for a transfer to CS! After 2 terms of grinding and the grueling content of GIS which you have no interest in, you can finally apply. Make sure that you’ve talked to a CS advisor before you fill in these forms. These forms typically open up a month or two before the end of the term so apply before your 1B term ends and keep track of the deadlines.

You will need to fill in two forms located here:

• Transfer from outside of Math to CS (pending approval from Math)
• Transfer from outside of Math to Math

After this, the waiting game begins. You’ll get decisions back within the first month of the following term. If you get accepted to CS, you will also need to to get accepted to Math. After you’ve been accepted to both CS and Math, you will be transferred to CS in the Fall term.

I highly recommend taking a summer term so that you aren’t wasting your time and so that you can catch up on some courses that CS students have already taken. Since you will take these courses anyways, I highly recommend taking MATH 135, MATH 128 and a third course. Personally, I took ENGL 108D as a third course to fulfill my list 2 communication requirement. If you can take more courses definitely take more but make sure to speak to the math internal transfer advisor first. I was limited to taking 3 courses since it would affect my co-op transfer.

After transferring to CS, you will be in 2B provided that you took courses during the summer term. The transfer will not make you graduate earlier or later despite being slightly ahead of your other CS classmates. You will have completed your communication requirements, fulfilled many of your breadth requirements and should be one course from fulfilling your depth requirement (you can finish your depth requirement by taking GEOG 387 or GEOG 381).

If you’ve made it this far, I wish you all the best of luck in your transfers! :)