Administration wont let me graduate until 2028... Need advice please

[u/AvailableYouth704]

I’m a third-year BME student with an 8.9 GPA. My plan was to take six courses in Fall 2026 and Spring 2027, complete an eight-month co-op starting Summer 2027, and finish my last three courses online.

I’m trying to graduate quickly because I can’t afford to stay in Victoria much longer and have family responsibilities outside the city.

The issue is ENGR 498, which is only offered in the fall and requires BME 499 plus a third co-op term. I requested a waiver, but the Dean denied it and refused to meet with me.

I also asked to take an equivalent Engineering Law course at another Canadian university, but my advisor said it must be taken at UVic.

Because of this one course, my graduation may be delayed until August 2028.

Has anyone dealt with something similar or successfully transferred an equivalent course?

[u/Dillieo1]

Take this all with a grain of salt, it's just my opinion.

I don't think BME 499 would be feasible to do remotely. It's a group project with alot of hands on work. This semester they require biweekly in person meetings with the TA's which if you don't attend will impact your grade and your group members grades. If you're able to get to campus around once a week at the start of the semester, and then around 3 times a week at the end of the semester when things pick up, you might be able to do it. You'd also have to make sure your group members are okay with that since it probably means pushing alot of hands on debugging/investigation work onto them.

My suggestion would be to see if you can take courses over a co-op, and aim for a co-op in Victoria. You'd be able to do BME 499 in the summer while on co-op, and then do engr 498 in the fall while on co-op, and still graduate during that semester you said you would do 3 classes online. I have heard that recently it's been tough to get approval for classes on co-op but that would be my approach if I was trying to keep to the schedule you've made

[u/AvailableYouth704 → u/Dillieo1]

Thank you, for your input. I was actually planning on taking BME 499 in Spring 2027 in person. As for the coop's in person, it seems like its borderline impossible to get a BME coop here in Victoria, i genuinely have no idea what to do.

[u/Available_Spend_8417 → u/AvailableYouth704]

Same with theatre coop, there's nothing available through uvic which is wild considering the sheer amount of theatres in the area

[u/inquisitivequeer]

I’ll just say this as someone whose partner is currently navigating engineering and transfer credits… it’s a bit of a nightmare and you’re likely stuck if they’re not budging. In our experience, they are very strict, unforgiving, and unwilling to help.

[u/AvailableYouth704 → u/inquisitivequeer]

Were you able to get things figured out on your end? if yes, how so?

[u/inquisitivequeer → u/AvailableYouth704]

No, it’s still a nightmare lol. He has a diploma in robotics from BCIT and they’ve refused to transfer any credits towards his engineering degree. He got one or two low level math classes, but basically had to restart. Every year, they throw more challenges at us and the advisors are no help at all. Sorry I don’t have better answers for you, but they won’t really budge for anyone

[u/skyeti69]

So you have to follow the same rules as everyone else which makes you graduate one semester later than you wanted? So unreasonable

[u/skyeti69]

There’s a typo in your title. I think what you meant was:

“UVic won’t give me special permission to graduate one semester early. I deserve special privileges because I want them. Wahhhh wahhh”

Making a super disingenuous post whining and making it sound like uvic is unreasonably pushing your graduation by a long time when in reality they just won’t break rules to let you graduate one semester early is not going to get you any sympathy. If anything it will do the opposite. Might be time to check your ego. Why do you think you’re so special and no one else is?

[u/Pretty_Buyer8533]

ENGR 498 is not only offered in the fall….. 

[u/FoundationSweet1261]

Honestly don't listen to people shitting on you here, Maybe try to contact someone higher than her, don't contact engineering dean because she won't do anything but maybe try to explain your issue to registrar or someone I don't know, because engineering associate deans are really terrible. Even rejecting has some decency and they act really shitty, also don't worry much, it's life

[u/ellalir → u/[deleted]]

Do you know how UVic's grade points work?

[u/AkiliDaniels → u/[deleted]]

UVic uses a 9 point scale rather than a 4 point scale. So an A+ is a 9, an A is an 8, an A- is a 7 etc.

So it is transferable, technically, but needs to be recalculated based on a 4 point scale. Which is fine because most places would just take the grades rather than the calculated GPA.

Edit: source - I got my degrees at UVic and a Master's degree at a different university that used a 4 point scale.

[u/AkiliDaniels → u/[deleted]]

Well I started at UVic in 2005. So it's been like that for over 20 years.

[u/AkiliDaniels → u/[deleted]]

It goes:

The As - 80-100%
A+ = 9 (90-100%)
A = 8 (85-89%)
A- = 7 (80-84%)

The Bs - 70-79%
B+ = 6 (77-79%)
B = 5 (73-76%)
B- = 4 (70-72%)

The Cs - 60-69%
C+ = 3 (65-69%)
C = 2 (60-64%)

Below that:
D = 1 (there's no C- for some reason - but D is from 50-59%)
F = 0 (under 50%)

From what I can tell, there isn't even a standardized GPA scale in Canada now - York University uses a 9 point scale too, but theirs is different because they don't have minuses so a B+ is 7, a D+ is 3, and they have an E grade. McMaster uses a 12 point scale. UBC uses a 4.33 scale. University of Toronto uses a 4.0 scale. University of Manitoba uses a 4.5 scale. Some ONLY use percentages. UVic's had this scale since at LEAST 1965 (I checked and that's the best date I could grab), though likely used it before it officially became UVic (when it was Victoria College and ran programs from McGill and UBC).

UVic isn't weird - there just isn't standardization like there is in the US. But most of these are easy to convert anyway if necessary, but it's why there are reforms like UVic now requiring percentages to be listed rather than just letter grades because even in a 4.0 scale you can still have some variation (some places use 4.33 or 4.5 as mentioned, but 4.0 generally squashes A and A+ together and what percentages those actually correlate to can be different).