Fundraiser T-Shirts

Posted on by William Bishop

The University of Waterloo has a pretty good sense of humour sometimes.  Things are really hectic right now with the next academic term starting on Monday and the final round of admissions in progress.  In the midst of all this activity, the W Store has launched a set of t-shirts to fundraise for charities.  The t-shirts are great examples of the sense of community that students, staff, and faculty have at the University of Waterloo.  You can view the t-shirts at the following website:

Covid 19 Fundraiser Tees

I particularly like the slogans.  One t-shirt says, “I’m critical to the academic mission” in acknowledgement of the words used by our university president regarding the importance of continuing our academic mission during the pandemic.  The other t-shirt says, “I learned social distancing long ago…” in acknowledgement of the fact that we have to keep our physical distance from geese on campus but also likely meant to make subtle fun of our campus community being a bit introverted.  Shown below is an image of a Canadian Goose taken on our campus.

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The sense of humour enjoyed by our students, staff, and faculty is one of the things that makes the University of Waterloo special.  Even it difficult times, members of our community work together to make life a bit more enjoyable.  In this case, that humour is also raising funds for charity with 100% of the proceeds from the sales going to local charities.  The t-shirts are limited editions so they will sell out fast.

I should probably mention that our final round of admissions has now begun for the Faculty of Engineering.  We received our grades this morning.  I am in the process of setting up our database to run our final round for Ontario Secondary School students.  I expect offers to start appearing soon but they will likely continue to be going out for the next week or so.  The first offers to go out will be those for Non-Ontario Secondary School students.  I do not expect offers for Ontario Secondary School students to appear for a few more days.  Offers will likely slowly appear on Quest for about a week.  Scholarship offers will also start to appear but I am not sure when exactly.  We are doing our best under fairly challenging circumstances.  Please be patient.

 

Published by William Bishop

I grew up in the small town of Welland, Ontario in the heart of the Niagara Peninsula. In my youth, I enjoyed softball, golf, and the uniquely Canadian sport of 5-pin bowling. My high school years were productive. I excelled at my studies and had enough time to devote towards extra-curricular activities to earn a school letter. I was fascinated with computers having owned a Commodore 64 and having maintained a network of Unisys machines running a very early version of QNX at my local high school. I had part-time jobs teaching computer courses to both adults and children at local secondary schools. I worked hard in my final year of high school to excel at the now defunct Descartes math competition and earn a spot in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Little did I know that I would stay at the university for three degrees and eventually a permanent faculty position. Now, as Director of Admissions for Waterloo Engineering, I hope to share my thoughts on the road towards a career engineering.

28 thoughts on “Fundraiser T-Shirts”

      1. Hi Professor,

        I was wondering if offers are given out in any specific order. For example, the offers are coded and sent out in alphabetical order or something of the sort?

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      2. In the old days, you used to have to wait for Canada Post to deliver the results. That was really unpredictable sometimes. In fact, universities went to great lengths to try to co-ordinate deliveries. You didn’t have to open the mail to know if you got an offer. An offer always came in a big, heavy envelope because it was accompanied by additional information on residences and forms to return to the university. My classmates told me rejection letters came in a normal envelope.

        I wish I could tell you what time (exactly) to check Quest for an offer. I simply do not know. I suspect most of the 101 offers will appear at the same time.

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  2. Hello Sir,
    Firstly, I’d like to say that it is great to see UWaterloo’s effort in such a situation.
    My question is quite short…I just wanted to ask:
    Is there a specific date when scholarships will be announced for international students in Engineering? According to you, when should a student start looking at the portal ‘Quest’ to see such things?

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    1. I do not know of a specific date. We get the offers out as soon as our workload permits. There are many steps in the admission process. Some decisions, such as scholarships, are difficult to finalize prior to knowing all admission data.

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  4. Hey Prof. Bishop,

    I am a BC student who have already received an engineering offer, and due to the COVID situation, my physics interim mark has been delayed. Currently, I have no mark for physics 12. I expect the mark to be available at the end of the month. Would this affect my offer, or the only condition is to submit final marks by the deadline in the summer? Let me know if this makes sense,

    Thanks, Tony

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    1. Our database would flag the course as being in-progress. If any grades are missing or delayed, offers can still be sent out. Our offers are always conditional upon the receipt of grades at the end of the school year. A missing or delayed grade would not factor into our decision making process, particularly this year.

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  5. Hi Prof Bishop,
    I’m a Mechatronics Engineering applicant hoping for good news in the coming week.
    Just how competitive has that strand of engineering been this year?
    Wishing all the best, Mohammed.

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  6. Hi Professor Bishop,
    I have a question regarding the increase of a grade in a specific course from grade 11 to grade 12, and how that would affect my application. My grade 12 english mark increased 13% from grade 11, and I took both courses during normal day school. Would a penalty still be applied due to this large increase?
    Thanks

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    1. We look at any large increase or decrease in grades when evaluating an application to see if there is anything that might be a significant concern. We wouldn’t necessarily apply a penalty but we might think twice about an application if we see a large increase that worries us.

      In the majority of cases, we just assume you worked harder (or preferably, smarter!)

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Hello Professor Bishop,
    Do you know when we will have a definite answer of whether we have been accepted or denied to our program of choice. Also to clarify you expect most offers for the last round for 101 applicants coming next week?

    One more thing, to your comment further above you say “All of our programs are slightly less competitive this year than in previous years.”, why would this be true?

    Thanks for all your help.
    John

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    1. With respect to offers for 101 applicants, my team completed the list of offers around 5 pm today. The list gets forwarded to the Registrar’s Office for processing. I am not sure how many days it will take for the offers to appear on Quest. There is a slight chance offers will appear on Monday sometime but it could take a few days longer, depending upon whether they run into any problems. We are currently working on scholarship selection.

      There are a few Ontario schools that are providing grades on Monday. I will attempt to review this applicants no later than Tuesday. Offers to these applicants will appear later in the week. I expect all final round offers to be out by Monday, May 18th at the latest.

      The reason I stated that all of our programs are slightly less competitive than previous years is that we have given out a few more offers this year in recognition of the fact that some students will defer their offers to the Fall of 2021. The university funding model does not allow universities to fall below 97% of their targets without incurring a significant reduction in grant funding. All universities (worldwide) appear to be preparing for smaller class sizes in the Fall and significant reductions in funding.

      Students starting in Fall 2020 may benefit from slightly smaller class sizes. For Waterloo Engineering students, this also means better odds of getting great co-op positions, particularly when the pandemic ends. Fortune favours the bold.

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  8. Hello Professor Bishop,

    I am a high school junior, hoping to attend university in September 2021. I’ve heard that many students who have been accepted for the September 2020 round are deferring their applications and want to start university in September 2021. Will the deferrals have any drastic impact on our admissions process? Will it be more competitive due to the increased number of students competing for spots?

    Thank you so much for your guidance.
    Jasmine

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    1. At this point, it is impossible to tell what impact the pandemic will have upon our show rates for Fall 2020 or the admissions process for the 2021 admissions cycle. I should be able to provide better guidance about the 2021 admissions cycle once we know more about the size of our incoming class.

      In general, if a significant number of applicants defer admission offers until Fall 2021, it will likely increase competition for available spaces in Fall 2021. This will likely be true at all universities and colleges.

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  9. Hello Mr. Bishop,
    There have been reports of 101 offers being released. Are they all released at once or will they be rolling over a few days?

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  10. Hello Mr. Bishop,

    Have all the 101 engineering offers been released on quest and just the schools who sent there midterms later remain or is there still more offers for those who sent there midterms earlier?

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    1. We received updated grades for 59 applicants yesterday. We will be issuing a few admission offers sometime today or tomorrow. Most of these offers will be given to applicants whose grades were revised.

      While we had many exceptional applicants to our programs, we unfortunately have a limited supply of available spaces. We were not able to offer admission to everyone that applied.

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  11. Hello Professor Bishop,

    I was wondering are there plans to make the Fall 2020 semester online or would it be in person as usual?

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    1. I do not believe our plans for Fall 2020 have been announced by our university (either internally or externally). I have heard that other universities are just starting to announce their plans for Fall 2020. I would expect an announcement from our university sometime prior to the June 1st deadline for confirmation.

      I know we are currently planning for all contingencies. There are also plans underway to offer programs to prepare students for Fall 2020. More information will be forthcoming in the near future.

      The University of Waterloo has been a leader in Distance Education. I know we will offer compelling programs with compelling outcomes regardless of how we deliver our programs.

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  12. Hello Prof,
    I accepted my ECE offer (YAY!). Is it possible to defer it to a later term if the fall semester is online due to COVID-19? I don’t know how comfortable I’d be starting Uni online especially a rigorous program like ECE. I hope that makes sense!

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    1. Congratulations! It is always possible to request a 1 year deferral. There are pros and cons to doing so. We will probably talk about this in our upcoming webinars for admitted students. I will also try to explain the process in a later blog post.

      There are many thing to consider. University expenses have been outpacing inflation. If this trend continues, it will be cheaper to study as soon as possible. From a career perspective, it is always best to enter the job market as soon as possible. From the perspective of finding a full-time position after graduation, it is better to enter the job market when fewer students are doing so.

      Also, I would be much less worried about universities teaching online courses than high schools. Universities tend to have entire departments dedicated to online education. I speak with some experience. As a university student in the early 1990’s, I took a course in Management Science via distance education from the University of Waterloo. I enjoyed the course and found that I learned quite a bit from it.

      It also seems that many universities, including the University of Waterloo, will be offering summer programs prior to the Fall to prepare students for the transition to university. These programs will not only help address some gaps in knowledge due to the abrupt ending of high school teaching but also give students a taste of our online courses prior to needing to make a final decision. Deferral decisions are usually not required until the end of July.

      I am currently teaching a course online this term and so far, it seems to be going well. Technology can do some pretty amazing things!

      Liked by 1 person

  13. Hi Mr Bishop,

    I applied to CS/BBA, but on quest I received an offer to just CS this morning, even though I didn’t apply to just CS, I applied to double degree. Does this mean I was deferred from Double Degree?

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    1. I am not involved in admissions for the CS program but based on what you have described, you have likely been given an offer to just CS.

      I am personally not a big fan of double degree programs. They are quite a bit more work but they don’t often result in better outcomes after graduation. When you get hired for a permanent position, an employer will hire you for your skills. Most jobs in the real-world are highly specialized. They will either want you to design software or they will want you to be a business administrator / manager. They won’t hire someone out of university expecting that person to be highly capable in both areas.

      You can always take business courses (and our popular options) as part of any degree program to learn the fundamentals of business administration, management, and entrepreneurship. Also, you can always take a business degree (MBA, MBET, etc.) after graduation from your undergraduate program. An offer to one of the top CS programs in the world is still a pretty attractive offer. I am sure there are thousands of applicants who would be very happy to be in your situation.

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