The first thing you notice as a life sciences student at McMaster is that you are one of many. LifeSciences is just about the biggest first-year program at McMaster. That’s not a bad thing either. While there is not a huge sense of a life sciences community in comparison to other programs like engineering, there are many opportunities for life sciences, and half the campus is potential study buddies. One of the great things about life sciences is that it is a gateway program so it is very broad, which is nice if you are not sure exactly what you want to do in the sciences. You get a decent amount of choice within a certain range when choosing the courses you take each semester. Thus you can give yourself a heavy course load or a light course load on your choice, which is nice to have as an option. Since there are so many people in each class, the course structure is very well designed compared to smaller programs. They are easy to navigate, and most of them are well structured on and offline. My experience with this program was that they in fact really do want you to succeed and make it possible to do so, as long as you are willing to put in the effort.