New Students

As you prepare to begin your Western journey, we encourage you to take a look at what opportunities and resources have been made available to you to ease this transition to University living. 

Western has a very comprehensive one-on-one support with an advisor for incoming first year students. This service connects you virtually with a peer advisor so you can feel more comfortable and confident in your course selection. For more information please visit the 1-1 Course Advising website. 

While you're visiting our page, please take time to familiarize yourself with our Admission requirements to our programs, and our Checklists for each module of interest to you. 

Students enter BMOS as a year 1 student. You are not yet in a module! You will select your module in March of your first year during the Intent to Register period.

Be sure to stay in touch with the Academic Program Advisors along the way.  We are available five days a week to provide you with advice on your course selections and program decisions.  

Do you have Transfer Credits?  Visit our Transfer Students page for information on getting them evaluated.

A few pointers in selecting your Year 1 courses: 

• A/F is first term courses; B/G is second term courses; E or no suffix are full year courses.  Some courses are offered in both terms.  You should only take the course in one of the terms (ie: MOS 1021A and MOS 1021B are the same course, but offered in two different terms).
• F, G, and E indicates that a course is an essay course.  All students must complete 2.0 essay courses before they can graduate (at least 1.0 must be at the 2000-level or higher). 
• All students are requires to complete breadth in their degrees.  This includes Category A (Social Science), Category B (Arts and Humanities/Languages) and Category C (Science). A full list of subjects can be found on this page: https://counselling.ssc.uwo.ca/registration/planning.html 
• Students should plan to take 5.0 courses each year over four years for a total of 20.0 courses.  If you choose to take a reduced load, be prepared to need summer courses or to stay on for an additional year/term to complete the requirements.  You must have at least 20.0 courses.
• Courses may have pre-requisites.  A pre-requisite course is a course that must be completed successfully before the next course can be taken.  For example, MOS 2320: Marketing is required to be completed before MOS 3321: Consumer Behavior can be taken. These are not negotiable.
• Courses may have anti-requisites.  An antirequisite course is a course that contains the same or similar content. and therefore if both are taken, only the most recent course credit will be retained for credit.  The first course will be noted as RNC meaning repeated, no credit. For example, if Statistics 2035 is completed successfully, and in the next term, a student then completes Math 1228A/B, they will lose credit for Statistics 2035 and will be missing their Statistics requirement.  Students are strongly advised to review pre- and anti-requisites VERY carefully!

Students with transfer credits do not enter BMOS right away. You will be admitted to Western as a senior student in the Faculty of Social Science in an Undeclared module. 

You will need to complete 5.0 courses at Western and achieve a minimum 70% overall average to be permitted to enter a Specialization (non-Honors) module.  If you wish to pursue Honors, be sure to review the requirements on our Program Admission webpage.

Since you are arriving with credits from your previous studies, you will need these courses reviewed for equivalency with us.  It is important that you do this during course registration so that you do not accidentally repeat a course for which you have received transfer credit. 
 
The Program Advisors will review each course and show you where it will apply to your proposed module.   They can also provide you with guidance about which courses you should plan to take with us. 

Head over to our page on Transfer Credits for more information.

Reach out to the Program Advisors on our Help Portal

Students applying to Western with an undergraduate degree, or returning to Western after graduating from their undergraduate degree will enter as a Special Student. You cannot access BMOS until you earn your way by completing 5.0 courses with a 70% average (for non-honors Specialization). If you wish to pursue Honors, be sure to review the requirements on our Program Admission webpage.

A Special Student is a designation applied to students who have already graduated from Western with an undergraduate degree or are attending Western having already completed an undergraduate degree.  For some students, they wish to remain a Special Student and complete a few courses.  For other students, they intend to complete a  Second Degree. 

Second degree students do not have to complete a full 20.0 courses to receive this degree.  In most cases, students will need between 10.0 and 12.0 courses to receive a second degree. The Academic Counsellors and the Program Advisors will work with you to determine how many courses you must complete.

Please note: if you have already graduated with a BMOS or HBA (from Ivey) degree, you cannot return to complete a second degree in BMOS.