SCH4U Grade 12 Chemistry: What It Covers and How to Keep Up

What SCH4U is, and who actually needs it

SCH4U is the course code for Chemistry, Grade 12, University Preparation, in the Ontario curriculum.

The Ministry of Education describes it as a course that "enables students to deepen their understanding of chemistry through the study of organic chemistry, the structure and properties of matter, energy changes and rates of reaction, equilibrium in chemical systems, and electrochemistry."

Who needs it is less predictable than most families assume. Engineering programs generally require it outright. Elsewhere it splits: some programs name chemistry as compulsory, and others let a student pick two Grade 12 sciences from a list of three, so chemistry becomes one option among several. Two programs at the same university can differ, and further down this page there is an example of exactly that.

The short version

Your child needs SCH3U first, and only SCH3U. The course then covers five strands, none of which they have seen before. It is not required to graduate. Whether it is required for the programs your child wants depends on the program, not on the university, so the requirement has to be checked one program at a time.

The one prerequisite, and what does not count

The curriculum lists a single prerequisite for SCH4U: Chemistry, Grade 11, University Preparation. That is SCH3U.

SCH3U in turn requires Grade 10 academic science, SNC2D.

Two things follow, and both catch families out.

A student who took Grade 10 applied science cannot walk into SCH3U, so the decision that gates Grade 12 chemistry is often made in Grade 9 or 10, years before anyone is thinking about university.

And SCH4C, the Grade 12 college chemistry course, is not a version of SCH4U. It is a different destination. A student who needs SCH4U for an admission requirement cannot substitute it.

What SCH4U actually covers

Five strands, in the curriculum's own words:

Running underneath all five is a sixth strand the curriculum calls Scientific Investigation Skills and Career Exploration. It is not a unit with its own test. It is the lab work, the calculations and the write-ups, assessed inside the other five.

What SCH3U covered, and why Grade 12 feels like a new subject

Here is the part almost nobody tells parents.

Grade 11 chemistry covers matter and chemical bonding, chemical reactions, quantities in chemical reactions, solutions and solubility, and gases and atmospheric chemistry.

Compare that list to the Grade 12 list. Not one unit appears on both.

The two courses share a name, a lab and often a teacher. They do not share content. Grade 11 builds the toolkit (moles, balancing, stoichiometry, solutions). Grade 12 spends ten months using that toolkit on five subjects your child has never met.

This is why the usual reassurance is wrong. "She was fine in Grade 11" does not predict Grade 12 in the way it does in most subjects. What carries over is fluency, not content. A student who could do stoichiometry slowly, with the formula sheet in front of them, was fine in SCH3U. In SCH4U that same student is doing stoichiometry as the setup step of a longer equilibrium problem, and slow is now the problem.

"Is SCH4U hard?"

It is one of the harder Grade 12 courses, and the reason is specific rather than general.

The difficulty is not that the concepts are advanced. It is that the questions stack. A single equilibrium problem can ask a student to write the balanced equation, set up the expression, do the arithmetic, and then explain in words what happens when the temperature rises. Four skills, one mark scheme, and a student can lose the whole question on the step they were already shaky at.

Grade 12 biology, SBI4U, splits students the same way for the opposite reason. Organic chemistry is hard in a different way. It rewards memory and pattern recognition more than calculation, which flips the study method that worked in every previous chemistry course. Students who are strong at maths often find organic the harder half. Students who are strong at biology often find it the easier one.

What programs actually ask for: three real examples

Requirements vary more than families expect, so here are three, quoted from the universities themselves.

University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. Admission requires "a minimum of six grade 12 U or M courses including: English (ENG4U), Advanced Functions (MHF4U), Calculus & Vectors (MCV4U), Chemistry (SCH4U), Physics (SPH4U), One additional U or M course." Chemistry is not optional here, and neither is physics. The two mathematics courses named there have their own decision behind them, which is covered in Ontario senior math streams.

University of Waterloo, Kinesiology. The Grade 12 requirement is any 4U English, Advanced Functions or Calculus and Vectors, and "Any two of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics", each with a minimum final grade of 70%. A student can meet that with biology and physics and never take chemistry.

Now compare Kinesiology with another program at the same university. Waterloo's Health Sciences requirement names Biology and Chemistry outright, each at a minimum of 70%. Same university, same year, one program where chemistry is a choice and one where it is compulsory.

The programme is what varies. The university name tells you very little on its own.

What "requires SCH4U" actually means, school by school

The phrase does at least three different jobs, and they are not interchangeable.

At some schools it is an admission gate. Without the course, the application does not proceed.

At others it is one of a set. Two of three sciences, or two of four, and chemistry is one option among several.

And at others the course never appears in the admission requirements at all. It is simply assumed on day one of first year. The student is admitted, then meets a first-year chemistry course written for people who took SCH4U.

The third case is the one that hurts, because nothing on the admission page warns about it. If your child is heading into any program with chemistry in the first year, check the first-year course list as well as the admission requirements.

How much science your child needs just to graduate

Very little, which surprises people.

The Ontario Secondary School Diploma requires 30 credits in total. Two of them are science credits, and Grade 9 and Grade 10 science satisfy both. Students also have to pass the literacy test and complete 40 hours of community involvement.

Nothing in the diploma requires a Grade 11 or Grade 12 science course at all. Every senior science your child takes is for what comes after school. The diploma itself is already covered.

Where students actually lose marks

Four places, and none of them is "did not understand chemistry."

Slow algebra. Equilibrium and thermochemistry questions are multi-step. A student who is a beat slow at rearranging equations runs out of time rather than out of understanding.

Treating organic as memorisation only. The naming rules can be memorised. The reactions have to be predicted, and a student who has only memorised has nothing to fall back on when the question shows an unfamiliar molecule.

Writing nothing. Many marks are for explanation, and students who can do the calculation often leave the sentence blank, or write one that restates the question.

Waiting until the mark drops. Chemistry marks tend to hold up through the first unit and fall in the second, because the first unit is the most self-contained. A October mark is not a reassurance.

Working backwards to the right course

Start at the programs. The timetable comes second.

List the three or four programs your child is actually interested in. Open each one's admission requirements page, the university's own rather than a third-party summary, and write down the Grade 12 courses it names. Then look at the overlap.

If SCH4U appears on every list, the decision is made. If it appears on some, the question becomes what your child gives up by taking it, because a Grade 12 timetable has a fixed number of slots. If it appears on none, taking it anyway is a reasonable insurance policy, but it should be a decision rather than a default.

Do this in Grade 11, while the Grade 12 timetable is still being built.

Four mistakes that cost a year

Assuming Grade 11 predicts Grade 12. It predicts fluency. It does not predict content, because nothing repeats.

Leaving the prerequisite check until Grade 12. SCH4U needs SCH3U, which needs Grade 10 academic science. The chain is longer than it looks.

Treating SCH4C as a lighter SCH4U. It is a different course leading to different places.

Reading one university's requirements and generalising. The two examples above are from the same province and the same year, and they do not agree.

Sources

Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: Science, 2008 (revised)

Ontario, High school graduation requirements

Ontario Ministry of Education, Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools

University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, admission requirements

University of Waterloo, Kinesiology admission requirements

University of Waterloo, Health Sciences admission requirements