<p>I'm going to McGill next year in montreal and its weird because my freshman year courses all start in the 200s. For example, I'll be taking the lowest spanish (HISP 210), lowest econ (ECON 208), etc. </p>
<p>isnt that strange compared to american schools?</p>
<p>is it at least advantageous in that American schools will think i challenged myself right away?</p>
<p>Class numbers vary by school. At UT Austin, chemistry starts at 301 (I’m pretty sure). Differential/integral calculus is 408. Don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual at some American schools. As an English major at my school, for example, all of my core introduction courses start at 200-level. Biochemistry classes at my school start at a 300 level.</p>
<p>On the other hand, differential/integral calculus is 1 at Harvard and MIT. These things just vary a lot by school, even in the US.</p>
<p>100/200-level courses are generally lower-division, while 300/400-levels are upper-division. Beyond that, a 200-level course is not necessarily harder than a 100-level course unless it’s the next course in a sequence like math or a language. As to what constitutes lower and upper division topic-wise, that’s up to the specific school.</p>
<p>At some places
1-99 = Lower Div
100-199 = upper div
200-999 = Graduate</p>
<p>At other schools:
100-199 intro
200-499- upper
500+ graduate</p>
<p>If the intro classes in the catalog are numbered 200, they are still intro. If a junior level class is numbered 199, it’s still an upper level class.
Numbering is not standardized across schools.
Fairly common is
0-199 - intro
200 - 299 - mid
300-499 upper
500+ grad</p>
<p>Numbering is arbitrary and meaningless to compare college by college. Why is this even an issue?</p>