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.
The Road to Engineering 
I know many OSS applicants who got an engineering offer today. You mentioned that OSS offers are coded in bulk and are expected to be coded at one time. Does that mean all OSS offers for the early consideration round have been released?
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Yes. To the best of my knowledge, all OSS offers are coded in bulk. I would expect them all to appear at the same time.
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Hello Mr. Bishop,
Are offers also communicated to visa students (international students) who currently live in Ontario, within this week? If yes, has there been an impact in their chances of getting admitted into Waterloo Engineering because of the recent international student cap put in place? Lastly, would they be considered as a 101 (Ontario Secondary School) or a 105 (Non-Ontario Secondary School) applicant?
Thanks!
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We are in the process of communicating offers to all applicants. I believe all offers to OSS applicants have been coded on Quest. This would include both domestic and international students who study in Ontario. Some offers to NOSS applicants have been coded on Quest. These offers take longer to code. There will still be NOSS offers communicated tomorrow and perhaps later this week. This will include both domestic and international students who do not study in Ontario.
With respect to the cap imposed on international study permit applications, we do not yet have clarity from the Province of Ontario on how attestation letters will be allocated to institutions and/or programs. An international student residing in Ontario and studying at an Ontario high school applies as an OSS (Ontario Secondary School) applicant. These students already hold study permits. There is a chance that they will be excluding from the cap but there is also a chance that they will need an attestation letter to switch into an Ontario university (or college) program. Until we receive further details in writing from the province, we will not know.
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Hello, Mr. Bishop
Would higher grades after the cutoff result in a higher chance of admission, in general, assuming one’s AIF scores are satisfactory?
You responded to a prior comment about a student with a 97% and a 3/5 on their AIF vs one with a 95% and a 4/5 on the basis that the grades seem to be irrelevant as a whole after meeting the threshold. However, that seems to disagree with Waterloo’s admission information available to the public, in which the calculation for admission is equal to Average – Adjustment Factor + AIF + Interview. Furthermore, your past graphs of admission chances as a function of average have indicated that higher averages result in a greater chance of admission.
Thank you
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We do not use an average cutoff or an admission score cutoff. We use individual selection. This is clearly stated on our website and in our brochures.
The admission score calculated using averages, scores, and adjustments is simply a starting point for our applicant review process. We will look at all information that we have when assessing an applicant.
It can be true that a student with a higher average has a higher chance of admission while also being true that a higher average does not guarantee admission. For highly competitive applicant pools, AIF scores and interview scores are often determining factors in our individual selection decisions.
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Hello Mr.Bishop,
I have a OSS student who has taken some AP exams in order to add more depth to the application, though the AP courses are not offered at their school in Ontario. Would the AP scores add any weight to the application if the scores are 4 or above?
Thank You.
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We do not track AP scores for OSS applicants to engineering. Some applicants list them on their AIF in the section on courses taken. AP grades are generally a good indicator of quality. The problem with AP courses is that many highly qualified applicants simply do not have the ability to participate in AP courses. We try to base admission decisions on data that can be compared for all applicants.
Based on what I have seen, our top AP applicants have course grades of at least 4. Grades of 5 are common.
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Hello Mr. Bishop,
When can one expect the May Round?
I have been hearing rumors that the release starts from May 1 till May 10. Is this true?
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This is not true for the Faculty of Engineering. We do not even have our OSS grades yet. Once we receive the grades, we will need to do assessments. Then we need to start the process of communicating offers. I can say with confidence that no offers will be communicated this week.
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Hello Mr. Bishop, I am wondering when are the non-OSS (105) decisions expected to be communicated. I have heard that a few got offers last week on April 23rd. Will they be this week or during the OSS round at the same time. Please let me know.
Thank you!
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I honestly cannot predict the exact timing of offers being communicated. I know with 100 percent certainty that no offers will be communicated this week or this weekend for Waterloo Engineering. We do not yet have grades for all school boards. There are a few issues causing delays. Many people are working to resolve these issues. We have a hard deadline to report all decisions by May 17th. The next week we will be very busy as we must select applicants for offers and select applicants for named entrance scholarships.
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Hi Prof William
Your blog is very informative and thank you for that.
I was wondering how would it work , as my grade 11 marks were not great and i made great strides to move to 95 at midterm currently and will end year at 96 i think
I am worried that since most seats are already allocated in engineering, would people like me be at disadvantage as we have to fight for the small remaining seats in demand programs like management engineering.
Thanks
Adak
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We believe we have left enough spaces to accommodate all students who merit an offer of admission in our final round. We can see how programs are filling based on early confirmation data. It is important to remember that many student grades improve from Grade 11 to Grade 12. There appears to be slightly less grade inflation in Grade 11 grades based on the data I have seen. However, grades in the mid 90s are very strong grades. Hopefully, you will get good news in the final round.
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Hello Mr. Bishop,
I was wondering if the round in April used the same marks available as the March early consideration round. If so, what was the rationale for making a round when no new information had been released?
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When we ran our Early Consideration Round in March, only applicants who applied by the early consideration deadline and submitted their AIF by the early AIF deadline were eligible to receive an offer of admission. When we ran the April “cleanup” Round, we had new information in the form of grades and AIF scores for the entire pool of applicants.
The April “cleanup” Round is something we have often done for applicants with pending offers to other universities in previous years. Based on past experience, many of our applicants typically have offers with May 1st deadlines to other universities that require a financial commitment. Rather than ask these applicants to provide proof of a pending offer, we chose to assume that all of our applicants had other compelling offers. To be fair to the entire pool of applicants, we felt it was best to reconsider everyone as we did in the April Round this year.
We feel we have left enough space in our most competitive applicant pools to accommodate highly qualified applicants whose grades improve by the final round. We gave out more offers in April to programs where space is not an issue. We have several programs where all applicants that meet our minimum requirements will be (or have already been) given an offer of admission.
Programs such as SE are actually less full this year than in the previous years. We can track how programs are filling based on early applicant confirmations. There are many offers still to give out in our final round. While we may not be able to give every highly qualified applicant a space in their chosen program, this would also be true if we had not given out any offers at this point. By giving out as many early offers as we can, we hope to reduce the stress of as many applicants as we can. After all, applying to university is already stressful enough.
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Hello Mr. Bishop,
For those who did not receive an offer in the early rounds, what criteria would be used to re-assess their application for this final round?
Would their AIF be reassessed again for this final round? Or would only their updated grades be used in determining whether an offer should be given?
Thank you.
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The AIF scores would not change from the April Round. All AIFs were assessed by the start of the April Round. For those who were eligible for admission in the March Round, their AIF scores were finalized in March.
In the May Round, we will have updated grades. The interview scores may also be used to select applicants that stand out.
In the final round, we simply select the remaining best applicants for each program until all programs are filled.
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Hello Dr. Bishop,
Other than the general university entrance awards that automatically get awarded based on grades, what other named faculty awards you distribute in May round? Are March round students still eligible for it as well? and can it be combined with the general university awards?
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All named entrance scholarships are given out in the final round of admission. These awards are given in addition to the President’s Scholarships and the Merit Scholarships. All admitted applicants are considered for these awards. We will be using all available information to make these decisions. It is definitely possible for an applicant admitted in March to receive an additional entrance scholarship in May.
We only have a small number of named entrance awards. Most are valued at $4,000. I would estimate that fewer than 3 percent of our engineering applicants receive one of these scholarships (unfortunately). We do make an effort to ensure that these awards are distributed across all engineering programs.
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On the graph you’ve posted showing an applicants average marked against their odds of admission to their program, the odds of admissions seems to drop off after 99 average. Are students with > 99 averages less likely to get in then students with lower averages??
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We have not provided graphs for the previous admission cycle. The older graphs use a mathematical function to smooth the data that can result in a few artifacts. It is most logical to assume that as grades increase, probabilities of admission increase.
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Hello Dr. Bishop,
In a previous comment you stated that some programs are not filled so those who meet the minimum requirements will likely all be receiving offers. What are these minimum requirements? Is this something that is documented?
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Admission requirements are documented on our website. As an example of our minimum admission requirements for Waterloo Engineering, you can view the OSS admission requirements for Environmental Engineering. While I have provided the link for Environmental Engineering, the information is the same for all engineering programs with the exception of SE which has a programming experience requirement. I should point out that admission requirements vary by curriculum. Students studying out-of-province or abroad will have different entrance requirements. The University of Waterloo website is the only place where you can accurately determine the requirements for our programs. Third party websites often have incorrect information.
For OSS students, the types of requirements that typically apply are average requirements (85% or higher), course grade requirements (70% or higher), English language requirements (first language is English or proof of fluency in English), diploma requirements (on a path to graduate from high school), and of course, submitting an Admission Information Form (AIF). Required courses taken more than 3 years ago may also need to be updated.
We do have the ability to waive certain entrance requirements. For example, we can admit an applicant with an average below 85% or a course grade below 70% in exceptional circumstances. These exceptions are done on a case-by-case basis.
I expect several of our engineering programs to hit the minimums this year. When this occurs, we give out a significant number of offers to applicants for their alternate choice programs to fill programs in need of students. I believe that all engineering programs offer great opportunities to students. It is unfortunate that some engineering programs are simply less popular than others. All engineering programs offer interesting design challenges that would appeal to anyone who truly likes to create solutions to difficult problems.
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Hi Mr. Bishop
You mentioned how some of the less competitive programs at UW will most likely only require the minimum requirements to achieve an acceptance.
How has this related to a more competitive program like CE? Are the chances of admission more likely with low averages for this year?
Also, do you expect to give out more offers to 101 applicants due to the recent announcements by the government?
Thank you
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Some programs have increased in competitiveness and others have decreased in competitiveness. Show rates appear to be declining for programs where the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the workforce are still unclear. When application numbers are stable and show rates decline, we have to go deeper into the applicant pool to fill programs. I still would not expect entrance averages to decrease significantly for programs like Computer Engineering or Software Engineering. Next year, we may start to see a dip in applicant numbers in certain programs but these dips will be partially offset by increases in the overall number of high school students seeking to pursue university in Ontario.
A few years ago, I was asked on the blog whether I felt that grades would return to pre-pandemic levels. I am not seeing any evidence of a return to pre-pandemic levels, unfortunately. For high school grades to become more realistic and meaningful, there will need to be a large change to the system with support from the government, school boards, teachers, parents, and students.
It is very difficult to predict how recent government announcements will affect universities in Ontario. We did give out a few more international undergraduate student offers early in our admissions cycle to allow more time for students to apply for Provincial Attestation Letters (PALs). We also introduced a new deposit requirement for international undergraduate students to gauge student interest prior to giving out an attestation letter. However, we have not changed our targets for international undergraduate students. Realistically, we expect to have significantly fewer international undergraduate students than our targets. The provincial budget announcement was not good news for most universities as you have probably heard. With tuition being frozen for domestic undergraduate students for another 3 years, we will have to significantly reduce the cost of education delivery. The University of Waterloo is projecting a very large deficit this year that will likely require some very difficult decisions. Knowing that we are unlikely to meet our international targets, we have slightly increased some of our domestic targets. However, this decision is not ideal as it means that we will likely continue to be outside of our domestic funding corridor. When the University of Waterloo is outside its funding corridor, we receive reduced government funding for each domestic undergraduate student admitted. We can only increase domestic targets if doing so does not exceed our teaching capacity.
Put simply, all Ontario universities are in a difficult position right now. Faculty and staff salaries represent the largest portion of the expenses of universities. Deep cuts often require downsizing faculty and staff. One option suggested by some is that universities find new revenue streams. The problem with this approach is that it often reduces the focus on education and research. At the end of the day, universities exist to educate students and conduct research. Cuts can be achieved by eliminating low demand elective courses. By reducing courses, it allows universities to reduce the number of faculty and staff on salary. These measures have already been taken in previous years by universities. If deeper cuts are necessary, universities face the prospect of eliminating programs and implementing employee reductions across the board. Another more radical solution is the amalgamation of universities to reduce administration. I have heard that some local hospitals are currently pursuing this option as a means of cost savings.
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