Academics
UTS is attended by students from grades 7 through 12, with 78 students per grade in classes graduating before 2001, 104 students per grade in classes graduating before 2009, and 110 in classes graduating thereafter.
UTS has enriched courses and a specialized curriculum, which are designed to challenge and educate at a higher level than at most public and many independent schools. Because potential UTS candidates are required to pass a rigorous entrance examination to attend the school, its curriculum is accelerated on the assumption that its students assimilate information faster. For this reason several higher-grade subjects are taught at lower grade levels. For example, Grade 10 students can take an enriched version of Ontario's Grade 11 courses in introductory physics, biology, and/or chemistry and Grade 7 students take both the Ontario grade 7 curriculum and grade 8 curriculum. As well, effort is made to enrich classes with extra material and more in-depth discussions.
UTS offers Advanced Placement courses, but does not have an International Baccalaureate program. In addition to the Ontario Secondary School Diploma, graduates earn a UTS Diploma, which signifies the completion of certain specialized courses, among them Latin and Romance of Antiquity (ROA), and attesting to an attainment level beyond the provincial standards.
UTS's rate of student achievement is commensurate with its selective admissions policy, both in academics and in extracurricular activities. Virtually all UTS students go on to university following graduation: in 2004, the University of Toronto, McGill, Queen's, Waterloo, McMaster, and UBC were the most popular destinations, accounting for more than two-thirds of graduates; of the rest, a majority attended U.S. universities (primarily Ivy League and other "top tier" US institutions). The school's alumni include 20 Rhodes Scholars and two Nobel Prize winners: physicist John Polanyi and economist Michael Spence.
UTS's grade level nomenclature differs from that used commonly in Ontario high schools. This nomenclature has varied somewhat over the many years, and is due in part to a curriculum whose courses do not fit neatly into the provincial grading system, and in part to what had until the elimination of Grade 13 in Ontario constituted a six-year course to seven grade levels. The grade level nomenclature, with rough equivalents, consists of:
- Foundation Zero (F0): Grade 6 students who have been accepted to and will begin attending UTS the following school year
- Foundation One (F1): Grade 7. Formerly known as Foundation Year (F)
- Foundation Two (F2): Grade 8. Formerly known as Form II
- Middle Three (M3): Grade 9. Formerly known as Form III
- Middle Four (M4): Grade 10. Formerly known as Form IV
- Senior Five (S5): Grade 11. Formerly known as Form V
- Senior Six (S6): Grade 12. Formerly known as Form VI
Prior to the double cohort in 2003, F1 and F2 formed both halves of the Ontario Grade 7-9 curriculum; M3 was equivalent to Grade 10, and so forth.
Read more about this topic: University Of Toronto Schools
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—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
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