Bachelor of Arts in Sociology

The Department of Sociology is one of the largest in the Faculty of Arts. Our class sizes are small. Students and faculty work closely together. We offer minor, major, honours, and master’s programs.

As a sociologist, you will examine how society is organized and how everyday life is experienced. You can choose from among a variety of courses that focus on a range of social issues. These can be broad, such as anthropology, cultural studies, international development, and political economy. Or they can deal with addictions or criminology and deviance. You may be interested in the sociology of education or the environment. Or perhaps you want to delve into critical health and health care, disability, families, food, gender, queer studies, or race and ethnicity.

Whatever courses you choose, you will be encouraged to use your imagination and to think critically about your world. Social theories help explain why a society is organized as it is. They help us understand why we experience daily life as we do. Problems such as homelessness, addiction, or incarceration are often seen as the result of an individual’s poor choices. In sociology, you will investigate the social structures and institutions that make certain groups more likely to experience such outcomes. Learning about research methods will give you the research skills to better understand social phenomena.

Addressing major social problems, such as climate change, requires collective solutions. Social movements, sociology of knowledge, and sociology of inequality are areas that help us move away from relying on individual actions and toward collective solutions.

Admission from High School

When planning their secondary school programs, students should note that a number of courses taken in the first university year have secondary school prerequisites. Generally, students continuing university work in subjects available in secondary school are advised to have senior year secondary school standing in those subjects.

Only academic (university preparatory) high school courses are acceptable for admission. The University reserves the right to exclude inappropriate courses from among those presented.

All students must present a penultimate (NS Grade 11 or equivalent) high school year course in mathematics

Required courses:

• English 12
• Four additional Grade 12 Academic or Advanced course

Admission from the International Baccalaureate Program

Students will be considered for admission using the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma with a minimum score of 24. Students admitted to Acadia University with a score of 30 or higher on the IB Diploma will receive 30 credit hours (30h) of university credit.

Students who have completed IB courses but do not possess the diploma will be considered based on their coursework. Acadia gives individual credit for IB courses completed at the higher level with grades of 5, 6, or 7.

English Language Proficiency

TOEFL score is 80 (PBT 550) with a minimum score of 90 (PBT 580) with no subtest score below 20. Overall IELTS score of 6.5 (with no subtest score below 6.0), a CAEL score of 70 (with no subtest score below 60), a PTE Academic score of 61 (no subtest score below 60), Cambridge English: Advanced with a total of 176 (no subtest score below 169), and MELAB with an overall score of 80.