The admissions work is now at full speed with most applications submitted by now. Before I review some trends, a few important suggestions:
- For those within reasonable travel distance, our March Break Open House occurs on March 10 2018. Highly recommended if you haven’t been on campus before. Also a good time to visit if you’re not in Grade 12 but are thinking ahead to future years.
- Our “Quest” system will be down for a significant software upgrade from February 16 to 22. Applicants won’t be able to work on submitting their AIF during this period. (also, when finished with your AIF don’t forget to click on “submit”. “Save” is not sufficient, and we won’t be able to review it.)
As far as application trends go, the numbers are up again this year to just over 13,000 for about 1,675 spaces in Engineering. An increase of about 1,500.
Applications for the Canadian spaces (about 1,450 available) are up about 10% overall to around 8,700. Some programs have a bit stronger increases, like Biomedical, Computer, and Systems Design. Nothing too unexpected however, just the normal fluctuations we get from year to year. I can’t go into details about specific program numbers, but generally there are 5 to 10 applicants per available space.
The bigger surprise is the applications for our non-Canadian spaces (about 220 available). These are up around 25% to well over 4,000. This seems to be the case across the whole university as well as many other Ontario universities. The theory among admissions and recruiting people is that recent political turmoil in the U.S. and U.K. have driven applicants to seek education in other English-speaking countries like Canada. I’ve seen articles about dramatic drops in foreign student applications to U.S. colleges, so the theory seems to make some sense.
We’ve added extra staff to handle the additional volume. It will definitely be challenging again this year to select the few applicants from among so many good ones.
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 
Thank you for keeping such a helpful blog!
What dates are early admissions coming out this year?
Thank you!
We’re working on it, but can’t give a date. It all depends on how various parts of the process fall into place, with the added complication of a Quest system shutdown.
Hi professor,
You said the per seat there is around 5-10 applications. Two things on that:
1. Does the “5-10 applications per seat” include both International and Canadian Applicants or just Canadian?
2. Is that how the admissions work, 1 seat is filled by reviewing those 5-10 applicants only, then making a decision based on them and neglecting the rest, or are the applications viewed collectively then decisions are made?
Thanks in advance.
The 5 to 10 refers just to Canadians (and Permanent Residents). The non-Canadians ratio is around 20 to 1. All applicants for a program are ranked and we go down the list until the program spaces are filled, so it’s a collective process.
Hi Professor,
Thank you for the helpful info!
Are international students considered as a whole in engineering or are they considered on a program by program basis e.g. are chances higher for international studentswhen applying to a less competitive discipline,
Thanks!
There is a combination of selecting the best overall, and also spreading the spaces out among the various programs. So the chances might be higher, but maybe not substantially.