Application Insights

Chances for 2015

/ profbillanderson / 86 Comments

Here is an updated version of a post I’ve been creating for several years.

The 2015 Admissions brochures for Engineering and other programs have recently been uploaded.  We have continued to include a table showing admission probabilities (“chances”) for different programs and grade ranges.  It seems that many people find it useful for getting a realistic impression of their chances at admission, so that they can plan accordingly.  In the graphic below is a copy of the latest version.  This is based on the 2014 results and as usual we caution that 2015 may be different, since it all depends on the competition level (which is unknown in advance).  In 2014 the level of competition went up quite a bit, as illustrated in a previous post.  Maybe it will go down in 2015, since we know that’s the general direction of the demographics in Ontario, but we’ll see. Continue reading →

Admission Pressures

/ profbillanderson / 33 Comments

Many people are aware that the competition to get into engineering programs has been rising in recent years.  This is often seen in the rising admission averages required to get an offer, due to this increased level of competition.  Although many people acknowledge this, they may be surprised at some of the numbers so I’ve compiled some graphs to help visualize it.  First, let’s look at application numbers to engineering programs. Continue reading →

Is IB Worth It?

/ profbillanderson / 31 Comments

I get asked whether the International Baccalaureate program is “worth it” every year, and it’s one of those questions with no obvious general answer.  Certainly the curriculum and expectations seem to be good preparation for university, from what we see on our side.  But whether the extra challenge, time commitments, cost etc. are “worth it” has to be more of an individual family decision.  For example, if you had to commute 2 hours a day to an IB school and give up your sports and part-time job, maybe that’s not “worth it”.  I don’t know.  I can point out that Waterloo Engineering (and most Canadian engineering schools as far as I’ve seen) does not grant credit for IB courses, so it won’t save you any time or money in university from that perspective.

However, the other common part of the question is this:  “if I do the IB program, will my chances for admission to Waterloo Engineering be compromised?”.  The assumption here is that the grades will be lower than they could have been in a regular high school program.  This question I can answer (to a certain extent), using an analysis of our admissions data as follows. Continue reading →

Considering an Alternate Offer 2014

/ profbillanderson / 32 Comments

Here’s an updated re-post from 2013, which might be useful.

When people apply to Waterloo Engineering, they apply to the program of most interest but can also identify a second and third choice on their AIF.  That way, if they are not quite competitive for the 1st choice, we can still consider them for one of the other two.  We assume that the choices are ranked in descending order of preference, so we try to get the 2nd choice if possible, then the 3rd.  Typically around 300 to 350 people get one of these alternate offers to their 2nd or 3rd choice (not a target, just a typical number each year).  Some people are quite happy with their alternate offer.  Others, not so much.  Those holding an alternate offer will have to decide what to do with it, so here are a few questions that commonly come up. Continue reading →

Final Admission Round 2014

/ profbillanderson / 159 Comments

After many hours of review and work by the admissions team, the final set of admissions decisions are done.  I’ll just summarize a few things for now.

  1. Offers are being posted to Quest initially, and will get updated on OUAC in the next few days.  Ontario (OUAC 101) offers come out first (like today), and out of province (OUAC 105) offers take a few more days to process, so probably by the end of this week.
  2. Emails should go out shortly too (I think).  Mailed packages take a bit more time to assemble and deliver.
  3. As we suspected, competition for the limited number of spaces was higher again this year, about 1,000 more applications than last year.  At the end, we received a bit over 10,000 applications, and made about 3,000 offers.  This should give us about 1,600 new students in September, which is our target.  On the downside, there will be about 7,000 disappointed applicants.
  4. At first glance, it seems that the increased competition pushed up the typical admission averages by about 1% across all the programs.  We will have to update our admission stats for the 2015 cycle in the coming weeks.
  5. Some people will call the office to find out why they didn’t get an offer, or didn’t get their first choice program.  It’s a bit pointless however, since the answer is always the same…in the ranked list of applicants, the program was filled before we got down to that part of the list.  In many programs we were filling the last few spots with applicants having low 90s averages, and there were still 500+ applicants left in the list.
  6. We will have a waitlist for those who want to be reconsidered in June if there are any open spaces.  You can ask to be put on the waitlist by emailing enginfo@uwaterloo.ca with your name, ID# and desired program.
  7. I see that there are dozens of comments on other posts that I haven’t had time to address.  Sorry, but I’ll have to delete most of them and start fresh, unless they are key questions of general interest.

April 2014 Admissions Update

/ profbillanderson / 46 Comments

Things continue to be extremely busy, so many of my planned posts are postponed.  Here are a few random comments that might be of interest.

  1. In late March we sent out a couple of hundred more offers to applicants from outside of Ontario.  By our estimates, most programs have now committed 40 to 50% of the available spaces.  We will give these remaining spaces away in the final round in early May.
  2. Currently, we’re waiting for the Ontario schools’ second semester mid-term grades to be uploaded.  And we’re frantically working through the remaining document submissions from the non-Ontario applicants.  Everything should be done by late April so we can do the early May offers.
  3. As soon as the early May offers are finalized, we will also make the scholarship decisions for all the offer holders (including those from the earlier rounds).
  4. Final application numbers are in, and it looks like we had a record number of applicants again this year.  Over 10,000 in total, for about 1,600 available spots.
  5. While scanning through some data, I noticed that one applicant had ranked Waterloo Engineering as #31 on OUAC (this might be a record in my experience).  As I have posted in the past, we don’t really care what ranking an applicant puts us as; if the grades are competitive we will make an offer.  But I have to wonder about people who are applying to so many programs (and spending so much money for the applications!).  And this is not an isolated case; there are a bunch that rank us in the 20s.  Surely they could be a bit more strategic and selective about their applications? When I was in high school (a long time ago, admittedly), we were only allowed to apply to a maximum of 3 programs.
  6. The AIF reading and scoring is pretty much done now.  Every year there are a bunch of applicants who didn’t press “Submit” for every part of the AIF (in spite of email reminders), so it doesn’t get read and scored because it’s not fully completed.  Unfortunately they won’t get any significant AIF bonus.
  7. We’re starting to finalize plans for our open house on May 24 for admitted students.  Hopefully the weather will be nicer by then!
  8. New this year, some of our 4th year design groups submitted 90 second videos to describe their “capstone” projects.  These can be viewed on our Youtube channel.  I haven’t had time to look at them all, but there are some very interesting ones, and they give a nice flavour of what some students do.
  9. Various other interesting items appear on our Facebook page.  I highly recommend it for exploring Waterloo Engineering activities and news, since it covers much more than I have time to look at.

That’s all for now.  More later, when I finish up some of the more pressing items.

 

Early Offers 2014

/ profbillanderson / 298 Comments

A revised and updated version of a post from 2013.

We just finished (February 20) processing our first round of offers for applicants who are Ontario high school students, and they have been posted in Quest.  It may take a few more days for OUAC to be updated and emails to go out.  Some of the processes were described in an earlier post, How to Get an Early Offer (which may be a bit outdated for 2014).  But to summarize, we took the data we had at that point and made enough offers to fill up to 1/3 of our available spaces in each program (more specifically, those spaces reserved for Canadians and Permanent Residents).  These are applications where we have enough data and it’s clear that they are competitive, based on previous experience.  We were quite conservative this year, and  gave out fewer offers than in 2013, since we want to leave lots of spaces for a fair competition in the final round in May.  In part, this is because application numbers are up significantly again this year and it’s hard to distinguish fairly between applicants when there are so many with similar grades.  So we think it’s better to hold off until the most complete data is available in late April.  We’ll be processing some non-Ontario applicant offers in the coming weeks.

Some universities give out a lot more earlier offers, but that’s simply because they have a lot less competition for spaces and can just go ahead with whatever they have. Continue reading →

Choosing Your Engineering Program 2

/ profbillanderson / 5 Comments

With application deadlines approaching, some people will be struggling with the decision of which engineering program to apply to.  I had a post on this topic last year, and here are some additional thoughts.  As a reminder, Waterloo engineering has direct entry to a specific engineering discipline, so you have to pick one of our 13 programs for your application choice.  For those who don’t know where to start, last year I recommended our Quiz for some initial choices, and I still recommend it.  However, it doesn’t currently include our new Biomedical Engineering program, so you have to keep that in mind.

With our quiz results or other ideas in mind, you should do some serious research to see which program catches your interest the best.  There are plenty of online things to look at, and Google or Bing will help you find it.  One that I recently remembered is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics site.  It has some interesting information on the nature of various engineering jobs.  Be careful on putting too much faith in their projections and forecasts however.

Some other ideas:

  • Students at Waterloo will be more engaged with their program and classmates if they are relatively sure and committed to their program.  If after doing some serious research and thought about different programs you still can’t decide at all, then certainly consider a university with a general engineering entrance program.  Then you can postpone deciding for a little while.  There are lots around Ontario, including Queen’s, McMaster, and Western, for example.  Other universities offer direct entry as well as an undecided/undeclared option, including Ryerson, Guelph, Windsor and York, for example.  Toronto has the “TrackOne” program which is a general first year.  Toronto’s Engineering Science is sort of a general first year too, since it looks like about 33% of the students move into other disciplines in 2nd year.
  • In spite of what I say in the above point, you don’t have to be 100% sure about your choice.  It’s normal to be somewhat uncertain.  But you should have some level of comfort and knowledge about the program you’ve picked, and why you are picking it.
  • There are potentially bad reasons to pick a program, including:  1) it’s the most competitive for admission; 2) family/friends say it’s the “best”; 3) some website says it’s the best paid, or has the best career prospects.  These are bad reasons, especially if your interests and aptitude don’t align with the choice.  Imagine sitting in classes where everyone else is keen on the material and projects,  and you’re not.  It’s probably not going to go well.  Every year we get a few of these cases.  Sometimes we can help them switch programs, but sometimes it goes so badly that they have to leave the university.  We would prefer to avoid this problem as much as possible.
  • Always remember that career paths can be very flexible, and choosing a specific discipline does not lock you into a specific career for the rest of your life.  Many engineering graduates eventually go into management careers, where the discipline-specific technical knowledge is less important anyways.
  • There is a lot of overlap between various disciplines, so it is not critical that you pick the “right” one.  If you pick one that you feel some affinity for, you’ll probably be fine no matter how your interests may shift over the coming years.  You should expect (and want) to continue learning new things throughout your career.
  • There is no such thing as the “best” program.