Early Admission Offers

Posted on by William Bishop

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!

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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 a former Director of Admissions for Waterloo Engineering, I hope to share my thoughts on the road towards a career engineering.

18 thoughts on “Early Admission Offers”

  1. Hi Mr. Bishop, is there an estimate on the percentage of offers that will be sent out to 101 applicants before the May round? My grade 11 grades are not the highest so I am a bit worried.

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    1. There is no need to worry. When we give out early admission offers, we set appropriate thresholds to ensure that enough spaces remain for applicants with similar or better qualifications in the final round. In other words, if your grades improve to the point where you would have received an admission offer in an early round, you will receive an admission offer in the final round. We have studied our applicant pools and admission offers over several admission cycles. I do not feel that we have ever given out an early admission offer to an applicant that didn’t deserve to be admitted.

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  2. Hello Mr. Bishop, I was wondering if averages are looked at by the whole number or 1 decimal place. If the whole number is used, does it follow traditional rounding rules? Thank you for your time.

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    1. A single decimal place is sufficient when computing an average of 6 grades. All grades are integer values. There are a finite number of averages that will exist between the lower bound of 85% and the upper bound of 100% in the Ontario Secondary School (OSS) system. The rounding process is irrelevant since all grades are rounded the same way. If we have a single decimal place, it will never be the case that two “different” values round to the same value. A difference will always exist between adjacent averages when rounding to a single decimal place, regardless of the rounding process used.

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  3. Hi Mr. Bishop,

    I’m curious about how women in engineering at Waterloo are evaluated compared to men. Coming from a district where high schools often have a lot of misogyny and sexism, I’ve seen how these challenges can affect women’s grades, performance, and opportunities. My school in BC has substantially less women in STEM courses than men due to these biases, those who are interested are at the discretion of teachers who value their grades less, and purposely downplay their grades. Do you think these biases carry over into university evaluations, even unintentionally? And are there systems in place at Waterloo to address these challenges and ensure women are supported and evaluated fairly?

    Thanks you for your time

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    1. In an ideal world, such issues would not exist.

      We are aware that female students are sometimes discouraged from pursuing STEM. We are also aware that female students often have to deal with sexism in their high schools. Last year, I heard from a parent/alumnus that at least one high school in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) would not let female students enroll in certain (in-person) STEM courses due to a limitation on the number of spaces available in the course. In the words of the parent, the spaces were reserved for male students who might foreseeably enroll in STEM programs at universities. It is stories like this one that make the task of admitting students very difficult.

      However, the solution to fixing such issues is not to lower admission standards for female applicants. Doing so might create a perception that female applicants are weaker. I have not seen any credible evidence to support the notion that a particular gender is better suited for STEM. I have taught many excellent students of all genders. The right solution is to attempt to correct the bias that exists prior to university and the bias that exists in the broader community. We must strive to do our part. Awareness of bias is the first step.

      At the University of Waterloo, we try to address applicant pool imbalances through targeted scholarships and special programs (e.g., Women in Engineering, Living Learning Communities, Engineering Outreach Programs, etc.). We also work very hard to create an inclusive environment where students of all genders feel welcome to attend and participate in university life. When it comes to selection, all applicants are assessed using the same metrics. While there may be some high schools where bias exists against female students, we cannot assume the same bias exists at all high schools. We also have no credible way of quantifying the bias that exists in a high school course offering. Thankfully, I know many high school teachers do a wonderful job of teaching students. We are lucky to have teachers who take pride in their work and do their best to educate students free of bias. The system is not perfect and probably never will be perfect. We are constantly looking at ways of encouraging students prior to university to engage in STEM, reducing bias in admissions, and encouraging our university community to welcome all students. As a university, we also play a role in educating the broader community about bias that may exist.

      To answer the question about whether these biases carry over into university evaluations, I have no doubt that they do in some cases. We do have mechanisms in place to reduce bias on exam grading. When exams are graded, they are graded anonymously. This certainly helps eliminate significant bias in engineering courses since exams often count for more than 50% of a course final grade. It is not uncommon for 70% or more of my undergraduate course grades to be based on exams. Biases might come into play in other assessments such as presentations, assignment work, and course projects, unfortunately. Faculty, teaching staff, and teaching assistants receive training to help reduce bias. The training helps but it is not perfect.

      One example of gender bias in universities that is well established is bias in female faculty ratings. There has been significant discussion over the past few years about research that has shown that female faculty ratings are often lower than the ratings of male counterparts doing the exact same work. At the University of Waterloo, this has led to changes in the way the performance of faculty members are assessed.

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  4. Hello Mr. Bishop, I was wondering if the University of Waterloo will admit students in the early round who only have 2 prerequisite courses complete by the end of the first semester, and the other 3 in the second semester? I will have advanced functions and chemistry 4U courses completed by the end of first semester, and was wondering if it is possible to be admitted in the earlier round, or if my application will be held until the May round?

    Thank you,

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    1. We do not require a certain number of courses to have final grades. Some students studying at high schools that do not use semesters may not have final grades in any required courses at the time of admission. In some curriculums, only predicted grades exist at the time of admissions assessment.

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  5. Hi Mr. Bishop, I have a question about the AIF. I’m applying to software engineering and I only have 3 extracurriculars, 2 minor and 1 major. My major extracurricular is game development and I spend every weekend, every break, plus a few hours during weekdays working on it. It’s basically my whole life outside of school and I love it. I estimate I spent about 1200 hours in the last 12 months working on it, so I put that on my extracurriculars list, but my classmate told me that that many hours is suspicious. I can prove I’ve created a game that has taken many hours; it’s on social media and gaming platforms like Steam. But I don’t feel like I have many places to describe this on my AIF. Would admissions be concerned/suspicious when they see the 1200 hours? Can I send in extra notes with links to my pages etc to prove myself? Thank you!

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    1. It is always possible to provide a link to evidence of work over time. Some students provide GitHub links to establish work over time for large projects. We do not always have time to review every link submitted but it is one way of addressing the issue of “suspicious” hours.

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  6. Hello Mr. Bishop,

    I hope this message finds you well. Thank you for providing such valuable information to applicants. I have a question regarding second-year CEGEP applicants from Quebec applying to Waterloo Engineering. For admissions, will the top 6 grades from the listed required courses or the overall CEGEP average be used to calculate the admissions average?

    My understanding is that the overall unweighted average might be used to set an initial threshold for eligibility, after which the top 6 grades from the required courses, along with the AIF score, online interview, and adjustment factor, will be used to evaluate candidates individually. Could you kindly clarify this process?

    Thank you for your time and assistance.

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    1. We do not use the overall CEGEP average. We compute an admission average using specific required courses as described on the university website. For an example of the requirements for an engineering program, refer to the following page.

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  7. Hi Mr. Bishop,

    I have English (ENG4U) as a course next semester and I am taking Studies in Literature (ETS4U) this semester. Can ETS4U be used in my top 6 as a English requirement, and if not will my ENG 4U grade be predicted based on my Gr 11 ENG3U mark or this semester’s ETS4U mark

    Thanks!

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  8. Hi Mr. Bishop!

    On the website for the university (2024 decision basis), it is stated that management engineering has moved up in terms of minimum average needed. Generally, on other locations of the website, it is said that mid to high 80s are usually the range.

    Has management engineering gone significantly more competitive? How much is individual selection important ? I am a low 90s student (~11% adj factor using last publicly available data) with 4/5 of the required courses in first semester (just calc left) and with what I hope is a very solid AIF. Due to have finishing most of my required courses by Feb, I was hoping for early admission, so that I could focus on working on projects outside of academics. I’m a person who can never just do school, and always tinkering with some other random side project, and while I wasn’t able to this semester, I was hoping to for most of the next.

    Due to the number of mid and high 90 students likely applying, will a high AIF scoring still help me out? Does the admissions take any account to a student with a heavy course load, which I would assume generally would mean a slightly lower average than a student with higher grades and fewer tough courses?

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    1. The Management Engineering applicant pool quality varies from one year to the next. This year, for example, it appears that domestic applications to Management Engineering have decreased slightly. If the decrease is due to self-selection (i.e., applicants not submitting an application due to a perception of not being competitive), it may be that the admission averages will be similar to last year. However, if the decrease is due to other factors, it is likely that the admission averages will be slightly lower than last year.

      The numbers presented for the 2024 decision basis reflect the actual data observed in the 2024 admissions cycle. The numbers presented in our predictions for this admission cycle represent our best guesses at what applicants should expect in terms of competitiveness in the 2025 admissions cycle.

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  9. Hi Mr. Bishop, could you please explain why did Saskatchewan’s adjustment factor go to average in 2022 after being high for many years? Does it mean fewer students were accepted from Saskatchewan so no adjustment factor could be made or have their results improved?

    Thank You

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    1. There are multiple reasons why a school or jurisdiction might not have an adjustment factor. The first possibility is that the sample size is too small to determine a reliable factor. The second possibility is that the adjustment factor of the school or jurisdiction is too variable to predict. The third possibility is that the adjustment factor of the school or jurisdiction is too close to the Ontario secondary school average adjustment factor. Most often, it is a combination of factors that leads to an adjustment factor disappearing.

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