Hello all. I am a high school student in B.C. and ever since biology 11 I have been intrigued with plants. Sop much so that I have decided to make them my career ( become a botanist). How do I maximize my chances of getting into a good university (what courses to take) and how should I expand my knowledge (what are a few good books to read). OK thanks for listening to me and I hope I can be an active member of this forum. P.S. I am thinking of going to UBC or McGill
Go to UBC - they have fantastic gardens. (Insert shameless plug for the keepers of the site here...) If I were you, I'd start taking all of the biology classes I could cram into my schedule, along with organic chem, and anything agriculture-related.
@ lorax Well I got myself into Advanced Placement Biology, and I was thinking of taking Agriculture 12 but I would have to drop a course to take it. do I need calculus?
Good luck with it! Get some decent plant identification books, and learn and become familiar with all the plants in your area, both native and non-native.
The other thing to do would be to get ahold of a course calendar for UBC and/or McGill, and have a look at what the freshman year is for the Botany degree, and what the high-school prerequisites are for those courses (ie Pure Math 12, Biology 12, etc) then make sure you have those in your schedule. I'd also start asking whether your school has access to the online publications services (pubMed is for medical journals, but there are similar services for the botanical ones) and start reading as much as you can. Equally, you may be able to access these through the libraries at your closest University.
Yea, I am going to try to read as many books as I can over the summer. I have already checked and I am taking all the necessary courses to get into freshmen year both universitys. I think "Pure Math 12" is called "Principles of Math 12" here :).
I was an Albertan once myself and we called it Math 30 in grade 12. Mind you, I rode a horse to school. Unless you want to be an Engineer or a scientific person, knowledge of calculus will not be useful to you. But getting a good grade in calculus will be more than useful; it will be de rigeur. That is because it is universally seen as the means by which smart people are distinguished from everyone else.
