Sometimes, applicants will ask what time applications close. The answer is simple. The application date must be January 15th. This allows for applications to be submitted after normal working hours. However, it is probably not in your best interest to wait until 11:59 pm to press submit. If anything goes wrong, you will not have time to resubmit.
I will leave you with some photographs that I took over the holiday break. I had a brief stay in Niagara Falls, New York where I was able to visit the Niagara Falls State Park and check out the fireworks display over Niagara Falls. Here are a few of the interesting photos that I took on the trip.
Our first admission offers to Ontario secondary school domestic applicants were sent out last week. A few select applicants to Architectural Engineering (AE), Chemical Engineering (CHE), Civil Engineering (CIVE), Environmental Engineering (ENVE), Geological Engineering (GEOE), Management Engineering (MGTE), and Nanotechnology Engineering (NE) received offers. The admission round coincided with our receipt of interim grades from Ontario secondary schools. We have also issued a few admission offers, on a rolling basis, to out-of-province domestic students. We have not issued any admission offers to visa students at this time.
Given our admission requirements, it is generally a challenge for us to give out a large number of early admission offers. Applicants from Ontario secondary schools must have enrolled in the 5 required courses, must be on a path to completing an Ontario Secondary School Diploma, and must have submitted all sections of the Admission Information Form (AIF) to be considered. Fewer than 1 out of 20 Ontario secondary school applicants typically meet these requirements at this point in the admissions cycle. On top of the admission requirements, we restricted our assessments to the certain programs (AE, CHE, CIVE, ENVE, GEOE, MGTE, and NE) and we set a minimum average requirement for early admission to ensure that we would not disadvantage any future applicants to these programs.
All applicants that apply by the official application deadline in January will be fully considered in our next round of early admission which is expected to produce a much larger number of admission offers. Our next round of admission offers will include offers to all programs. It will likely also include offers to visa applicants. We are waiting on further guidance from the provincial government and our university before proceeding with offers to visa applicants.
To help my blog readers get into the holiday spirit, I thought I would post a photo of some cookies that my wife and I baked on the weekend. It is hard to believe the the university holiday shutdown is less than two weeks away. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season!
If you live in Southern Ontario, and you are curious about university, the Ontario University Fair is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend on Saturday, October 5th and Sunday, October 6th. Details can be found on the website for the Ontario University Fair.
This annual event allows prospective students to explore the university programs that schools offer, speak with representatives of programs, and learn more about applying to university. We have a large team at the event to answer your questions. The event is also great for younger high school applicants who might wish to learn more about entrance requirements in preparation for future course selection in high school.
This year, I am not attending the event. I am travelling to Chicago to attend another university fair. I will be at the NACAC National College Fair at Navy Pier in Chicago. While in Chicago, I also hope to meet with some of our alumni working in the area.
This will be my second recruiting trip this Fall. Just over two weeks ago, I visited schools in New Jersey including the Peddie School shown in the following image.
The Peddie School
My trip to New Jersey was a busy one. I visited 5 high schools across the state. Our recruiting team is also actively visiting schools throughout Ontario and Canada. One member of our team will be visiting high schools near Victoria BC in a week. We do our best to visit schools that request us to visit them. As you can probably imagine, demand often exceeds our capacity to visit.
Thankfully, we have recently updated our website so that students we are unable to visit can learn more about our university and the programs we offer. In November, we also have our annual Fall Open House where prospective students can visit our school, tour our facilities, and speak with representatives. The Fall Open House is our most important recruiting event of the year by far. Thousands of prospective students attend.
As always, if you have any specific questions about undergraduate engineering programs or admission to these programs, feel free to email enginfo@uwaterloo.ca.
Spring is in full bloom as demonstrated by my flowering pear tree so it is time to provide a final round admissions update. This will be my last scheduled blog post until all admission decisions have been communicated to applicants.
We have started to receive midterm grade data from the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC) for Ontario Secondary Schools. Once we receive all the data we need, we will proceed with the final round of admission for the Faculty of Engineering. Our team will assess applicants over the next week with all offers being communicated prior to May 17th. During our final round, we will not be able to respond to individual inquiries regarding applications. Please be patient with our admissions team. We realize this is a highly stressful time for applicants, families, guidance counsellors, teachers, and school administrators.
Most, but not all, offers to Ontario Secondary School students will be communicated at one time. There are always a few offers that involve a bit more processing so these take longer. Offers to Non-Ontario Secondary School students often roll out in small batches. These offers have more complicated conditions that involve some manual processing. Our awards office will also be awarding entrance scholarships to selected applicants. All admitted applicants including those who have already received an offer of admission are eligible for these entrance scholarships in our final round. We must communicate all decisions by May 17th. All applicants will know whether they have been admitted and whether they have been offered a scholarship by May 17th.
New this year, some applicants to Civil Engineering will receive an email inviting them to request an admission offer to either Environmental Engineering or Geological Engineering. The Civil Engineering applicant pool is deeper than in previous admission cycles. We also anticipate that we will have available spaces in Environmental Engineering and Geological Engineering at the conclusion of our final round. We hope to fill these available spaces with students who might be interested in considering an alternate offer to Environmental Engineering or Geological Engineering. These programs share many courses with Civil Engineering and often lead to similar career paths. A special email will be sent to qualified applicants who have not been selected for an admission offer to Civil Engineering. This email will invite them to request an alternate offer to either Environmental Engineering or Geological Engineering. These individuals will have a short window of time to respond to the email. Otherwise, they will be denied admission to the University of Waterloo when the final round concludes on May 17th.
The reason for the short time window is related to ensuring that all admission offers can be made at least two weeks prior to the deadline to accept an offer. This also allows time for applicants to apply for residence while the residence guarantee is still valid. We considered giving out offers automatically to one of the two programs, but we felt it would be better to provide this select group of applicants with a choice of program. While both programs are similar to Civil Engineering, there are some key differences. Individuals will be given the opportunity to reach out to our faculty to find out more about these programs before making a decision. Agreeing to receive an offer does not require a firm commitment to accept an offer. Applicants will still have at least two weeks to decide whether they wish to accept the alternate offer. For those who are not currently applicants to Waterloo Engineering, I do not expect this opportunity to exist in future admission cycles. Our situation this year is unique and unexpected.
While we still have many offers to give out in the final round, I have no doubt that many strong applicants will unfortunately be denied admission to programs with highly competitive applicant pools. The reason is simply the competitiveness of our applicant pools. There will be students with high averages and strong extracurricular involvement that we are unable to admit. We have a limited number of spaces in our engineering programs. Hopefully, you will receive some good news next week.
Our admissions team has received many inquiries about the exact timing of our early consideration round. In Fall 2023, we introduced an early consideration deadline with the hope of completing our early consideration round a bit earlier. We are pleased to announce that our early consideration round admission offers will be communicated this week. We concluded our early consideration round about 10 days earlier than last year.
We are often asked why the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo is last to communicate admission offers to applicants. Our timing is closely aligned with the reporting of grades by Ontario secondary schools. In February, we receive first term final grades from schools that use a semester system and we receive midterm grades from schools that do not use a semester system. The exact timing is difficult to predict. The grades need to be reported by the high schools to OUAC, forwarded to our university for processing, and checked for errors. Our team only receives grades once most issues have been resolved.
We did receive most of the grades we needed on February 26th. This allowed us to do a trial run of our systems. However, at least one high school with a large number of applicants submitted incorrect grades for its students so we were advised to wait for a grade update. On March 4th, we received the grades we need for our early consideration round. On March 7th, we completed the assessment of all AIFs submitted by the January 15th deadline. This allowed us to proceed with assessing the applications that met our early consideration deadline. We completed our assessment of these applications on the morning of March 11th.
Offers to non-OSS students will appear on Quest this week. These offers often involve manually coding due to the complexity of the offer letters. Often, non-OSS students have more conditions that must be met. This may include providing official transcripts and test scores. For this reason, offers do not tend to appear all at once. We expect all early round admission offers to be indicated on Quest by the end of Friday, March 15th.
OSS offers are often coded in bulk. These offers all have similar conditions to be met. We expect these offers to be coded at one time during the middle of this week. Again, we expect all early consideration round admission offers to be indicated on Quest by the end of Friday, March 15th.
We always get asked how many offers we have given out. We are not allowed to disclose the exact number of offers. Our goal was to fill approximately 50% of our spaces in our programs by the conclusion of the early consideration round. For most engineering programs, we have met our goal.
Recruiting for the upcoming admissions cycle has begun. Members of the Engineering Admissions Team have already visited select schools and events in North America.
I will attend my first in-person college fair of the season in Seattle. The NACAC Seattle National College Fair is being held today (Friday, October 6, 2023) at the Seattle Convention Center from 9:00 am to Noon. The fair will resume tomorrow (Saturday, October 7, 2023) from Noon to 4:00 pm.
The University of Waterloo booth at the Seattle National College Fair.
I arrived in Seattle yesterday and setup our booth for the fair. Shown above is a photograph of our booth. It is near the doors on the right as you enter the room. We are next to the University of Nevada – Las Vegas and across from Imperial College London.
For students in Silicon Valley, I will also be attending the Palo Alto College Fair on Monday, October 9, 2023 at Henry M Gunn High School from 4:45 pm to 7:30 pm.
I invite prospective students to drop by to talk to me if you are in the area. I will be happy to answer your questions.
This is a difficult time for high school students and their parents. Deadlines loom for accepting admission and scholarship offers to some universities. This is particularly true for out-of-province universities. Here are some simple rules that may help students make good decisions regarding admission and scholarship offers.
Always choose the program that is right for you.
While the advice of family and friends is important, you will be the student dedicating four (or more) years of your life to studying a program. You should definitely enjoy the challenges presented to you by your chosen program. You won’t like every course. You won’t like every instructor. You certainly won’t like every exam. There will be some tough days ahead. However, the good courses and the great days should outweigh the bad courses and the tough days.
I have heard some students say they are willing to study a program they dislike. These students hope that after graduation, they will finally get to do what they want. This is a flawed approach. If you don’t enjoy the university program you are studying, you won’t like the careers the program prepares you to do. You shouldn’t study an engineering program if you do not plan on using knowledge of the program in your future. If I hadn’t enjoyed learning about both computer hardware and computer software, computer engineering would have been a terrible choice for me!
Finances matter.
Financial pressures are real. They can affect your ability to succeed in your chosen program of study. Financial pressures can distract you from the things that matter when studying. You need to make a realistic choice given your financial means. There are many different ways to address the cost of an education. Choosing a program that allows you to live close to home or choosing a program with lower tuition fees are ways that you can reduce the cost of your program. Choosing a program that offers better co-op placements or choosing a program that offers better scholarships are ways that you can increase the income you receive while studying a program. Advisors often find that students who work part-time while going to university struggle to do well. The struggle is similar to the challenges faced by students who participate in varsity athletics or any other time-consuming extracurricular activity.
When evaluating scholarship packages, determine what level of scholarship is guaranteed and what level is contingent upon your continued performance in a program. Keep in mind that maintaining an average of 80% in university can be difficult at times. All universities offer upper-year scholarships and research assistantships to students who excel in their studies. These are other ways that you can address your financial pressures.
Every year, we hear from applicants who are faced with the difficult decision of either accepting an offer to Waterloo Engineering with a small entrance scholarship or an offer to an engineering program at another university offering a substantial entrance scholarship. All accredited engineering programs in Canada will prepare you well for the future. Most offer opportunities for work placements (e.g., co-op terms, internships, professional experience years, etc.). In general, if you have been awarded a prestigious scholarship such as the Schulich Leader Scholarships valued at $120,000 to attend an engineering program in Canada, you should probably accept the offer. The same would be true for any full-ride scholarship. A full-ride scholarship is any scholarship that pays tuition and living expenses for the nominal duration of a degree program.
Some deadlines are fixed; others can be extended.
At the University of Waterloo, the June 1st deadline for accepting an offer of admission to an engineering program is a hard deadline. If you do not accept an admission offer by this deadline, the admission offer is revoked. Unless there is space available in a program (which is highly unlikely), an admission offer cannot be reinstated. Do not leave your decision until the last hour on the last day. Be proactive. Make your decision and commit to it.
Some schools set earlier deadlines in the hope of having students commit to programs early. There is no harm in asking if a deadline can be extended. It may not be possible to extend certain deadlines, but you can always ask. This is particularly true for scholarship deadlines. In the past, some out-of-province universities have received extended scholarship deadlines for Ontario students.
If you absolutely need more time to decide your future, there is always the option of taking a gap year. Undecided students often benefit from taking a gap year. The extra year can be used to research programs of study, gain employment experience, save for your education, and prepare for university. It is my understanding that applications for Fall 2024 will open in late September this year for all applicants.
When will I know if I am admitted or denied?
For engineering, our final round of admission will begin sometime next week. This round will take about a week to complete with decisions being communicated sometime in the second week of May. I cannot provide a precise date when offers will be communicated. Students denied admission will receive the unfortunate news once all admission offers have been communicated.
Let’s hope that you receive good news from the program you want the most. Good luck with your decisions!
This is a reminder that the University of Waterloo holds its annual March Break Open House tomorrow. If you forgot to register for the event, you are still welcome to register and attend. If you have registered but are unable to attend for any reason, you can view pre-recorded versions of the presentations online on our Waterloo Engineering YouTube Channel.
My understanding is that the weather forecast is not ideal for the Region of Waterloo tomorrow. For those attending in person, please take appropriate precautions travelling to and from the event. A weather advisory has been issued by the Meteorological Service of Canada that extends from Saturday morning through to Sunday morning. I recommend checking the weather online tomorrow prior to travelling to campus. The University of Waterloo Twitter Feed is often the first social media channel to announce any closures or cancellations affecting our campuses. I do not anticipate that our campus will close.
Applicants and their families are often most excited to meet our students and tour our facilities. We will be offering lab tours to attendees throughout the event. I encourage attendees to make a plan prior to coming to campus. There is quite a bit to see and do. You won’t have time to see the entire campus. For those interested in our engineering programs, you will definitely want to check out our Pearl Sullivan Engineering Ideas Clinic in E7 and our Sedra Student Design Centre in E5.
During the March Break Open House, I am scheduled to deliver presentations in E7 4043 at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm. The presentations are designed to provide prospective applicants with information on admission requirements and the admissions process. The same material will be covered at both presentations. We will setup the neighbouring room in E7 4053 to serve as an overflow room should it be required. E7 4043 only has room for approximately 140 visitors. If you are in the overflow room, we will have a mechanism for you to ask questions during the live presentation. Please note that these presentations are designed for future applicants only. Current applicants will find that their time is better spent on department tours and facility tours.
When I am not delivering presentations, I will be at the Engineering Admissions booth on the second floor of E7 to answer questions. To answer what is likely to be the most popular question, the early admission round will conclude soon. We are currently making early round admission decisions. I am not sure when the results will be communicated. As you can probably imagine, it takes quite a bit of time to process all Admission Information Forms. My team has been working long hours to assess them.
I will leave you with two photographs that I took of the ECE Capstone Design Symposium held this past week. The symposium was well attended. I was thoroughly impressed by the projects and the teams at the symposium.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at our March Break Open House!
Our Fall Open House is approaching quickly. This weekend over 5,000 visitors will tour the Faculty of Engineering. Many of these visitors are parents interested in finding out more about our university. For prospective students within driving distance of our school, this is a great opportunity to learn about the programs we offer. You will also get to meet some of our dedicated students, staff, and faculty. Best of all, you can tour our classrooms, labs, workshops, and study spaces.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Fall Open House this year. I am currently at the airport waiting to fly to Seattle. I will be participating in an event for guidance counsellors that focuses on Studying in Canada. I will also be representing the University of Waterloo at the NACAC Seattle National College Fair. This is a two day event that attracts thousands of local high school students.
Waiting for my plane…
For students in the greater Seattle area, the NACAC Seattle National College Fair is an opportunity to learn about studying at the University of Waterloo. I will attempt to answer questions on all programs that our university offers. Having studied and worked at the university for more than half of the years it has existed, I have a reasonably good understanding of most programs that we offer. Thankfully, I have materials to help me answer the hard questions.
I sometimes get asked why we recruit in Seattle. The answer is simple. We attract some excellent students from the region. We have also been making an effort to recruit from regions in the U.S. where our co-op students work. In these regions, our university is recognized as one that educates some of the best university students.
We attract both domestic and international students from the greater Seattle area. It is not uncommon for an alumnus to drop by our booth with a son or daughter interested in returning to study in Canada. Approximately 50% of the students we recruit from the U.S. pay domestic fees and are considered domestic students. Students pay domestic fees if they are a Canadian or permanent resident OR if they are dependent upon a Canadian or permanent resident.
I look forward to meeting excited applicants and some old friends on my recruiting trip. I will try to post a few photos of the trip when I return next week.
Our recruiting cycle for Fall 2023 has begun. We have started receiving inquiries from prospective applicants regarding Waterloo Engineering. If you are a Grade 11 or Grade 12 student interested in attending an Ontario university in Fall 2023 or Fall 2024, plan to attend the upcoming Ontario Universities’ Fair to learn more about the University of Waterloo and its programs. This year, the Ontario Universities’ Fair will be held in-person at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. For those unable to attend the in-person event, there will be three virtual sessions held on October 11th, November 9th, and December 1st that may interest you.
It is once again time for my most popular blog post of the year. In this blog post, I will attempt to answer the question:
“What are my chances of receiving an offer of admission to an undergraduate engineering program at the University of Waterloo?”
As I have pointed out in previous years, this is a difficult question to answer since every applicant is different. When selecting applicants that are likely to succeed in our undergraduate engineering programs, grades remain a significant consideration. Excellent grades in high school can be a strong indicator of future success in university. However, grades are not the only consideration.
Our admissions process uses several assessment tools to select applicants. We require all applicants to complete an Admission Information Form (AIF) which we use to assess skills, employment experience, volunteer service, course work, extracurricular activities, and notable achievements. We strongly recommend all applicants complete an optional online interview which we use to assess motivation and resilience. Interview scores are used to assess applicants for certain entrance scholarships. Our assessment tools help us gauge applicant interest in our programs and applicant fit for our programs.
We assess all applicants that we believe are potentially admissible. For our engineering programs, applicants are required to have an admission average of 85% with no grades lower than 70% in any of our required courses in their final year of high school. We then use a combination of the admission average with our other assessment tools to individually select applicants. Students with higher admission averages are more likely to be selected for admission but they are not guaranteed to be selected for admission. Our assessment tools give applicants with lower admission averages a chance to compete for spaces in our engineering programs.
Using the Ontario Secondary School applicant data for the Fall 2022 admission cycle, I have produced two graphs that show the probability of an Ontario Secondary School (OSS) applicant receiving an offer of admission to undergraduate engineering programs at the University of Waterloo. I have grouped our engineering programs as follows:
OSS Tier 1: Biomedical and Software
OSS Tier 2: Computer, Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronics, and Systems Design
These groupings are the same as the previous four admission cycles. Clearly, not all programs grouped together have exactly the same admission offer probabilities. Groupings are necessary for the purpose of a statistically significant analysis.
The first graph summarizes the probability of receiving an admission offer for Canadians and permanent resident students applying from the Ontario Secondary School system given a particular admission average. The vertical axis represents the admission probability and the horizontal axis represents an applicant’s admission average. The admission average is calculated using the grades reported by OUAC. The admission averages are shown prior to the application of adjustments.
The graph is similar to the ones from previous years. The admission averages have continued to increase. We had more OSS applicants last year and the grades of applicants tended to be higher than previous years. Fewer applicants with averages in the 85% to 90% range are receiving offers of admission. Inflation appears to be a problem that is affecting more than just the economy. Last year, 477 applicants to Waterloo Engineering from the Ontario Secondary School system had averages of 98% or greater at the time of admission consideration. We only allow students to apply to one Waterloo Engineering program so this means at least 477 high school students in Ontario had averages of 98% or greater last year.
The second graph summarizes the probability of receiving an admission offer for visa students applying from the Ontario Secondary School system given a particular admission average. I was very hesitant to post this graph this year as we did not have enough data to produce a meaningful result. The vertical axis represents the admission probability and the horizontal axis represents an applicant’s admission average. The admission averages are shown prior to the application of adjustments.
Waterloo Engineering attracts a very small number of visa applicants from the Ontario Secondary School system. The graph exhibits some clear artifacts due to the lack of sufficient data. In general, one should assume that all admission probabilities increase as admission averages increase. Demand for qualified visa applicants continues to outpace the supply of qualified visa applicants.
I used the same approach this year as I did in the previous year. It is important to remember that these graphs may not accurately predict the Fall 2023 admission cycle. In any given year, admission probabilities may increase or decrease. A drop in applicants can cause probabilities to increase. A surge in applicants can cause probabilities to decrease. Applicants should not read too much into the admission probability graphs. If you are truly interested in a program, you should apply.
The Road to Engineering 