It’s hard to believe, but we are pretty much done with the 2016 admission cycle and are starting to gear up for 2017.  I’ve been quite busy over the last few months with research and academic matters (and admissions of course, although this is actually only a small piece of what I do).  As one example, we recently organized and held our 3rd annual Resource Recovery Partnership Workshop for researchers, industry, and government people interested in solid waste management, recycling issues, and energy from waste opportunities.

As far as engineering admissions for 2016 went, here are a few potentially interesting observations:

1. We met (or exceeded!) our targets for all the spaces in our programs.  There were very few offers available to be made from our waitlist, about 6 if I recall correctly.
2. Most of our programs are packed to capacity for September.  We’re not able to offer any switches into programs like Software, Computer, Electrical, Mechanical, Mechatronics, Biomedical, or Systems Design.  This is why it’s so important for applicants to carefully consider what they want, and not rely on possibly changing programs later.  In many cases this will not be feasible.
3. About 1 in 3 Canadian applicants received an offer.  About 1 in 5 visa student applicants were successful (it’s more competitive since there are  fewer spaces available).
4. This year there will be over 500 females in the entering class, about 30% of the total, which is a new record high over the past couple of decades.  By program, some are around 45 to 65% female (Biomedical, Chemical, Environmental, Management, Systems Design), others are around 25 to 30% female (Civil, Electrical, Geological, Mechanical, Nanotechnology), and the rest are about 20% (Computer, Mechatronics, Software).  A big increase this year was in Mechanical, which has historically been in the 20% or less range, but Computer, Electrical and Software all saw increases too.  Just to confirm, we don’t have affirmative action or preferential admissions for females.  This is just the result of a decade or more of programs to encourage young women to consider study and careers in the STEM fields, and it seems to be working.

For those interested in 2017 admissions, there will be a few changes and new initiatives, and I will attempt to describe these over the coming months.

Things have been unusually busy lately, with coursework, research projects, student supervision, and admissions (of course).  So, this blog will suffer somewhat and my ability to respond to comments is limited.  But here’s what is new or coming up shortly:

1. We recently said farewell to our Associate Director of Admissions, Ally Morrow.  An opportunity suddenly came up which was an excellent fit for her personal and career goals, and she is now the Assistant Director for MBA Marketing and Recruitment at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.  Some of our Engineering graduates might encounter her if they want to pursue MBA degrees later.
2. We are wrapping up the last of the AIF reviewing, for the ones that were submitted by the March 18 deadline.
3. For the next few weeks we will be finishing up the review of transcripts and documents sent in for non-Ontario applicants.
4. Once we receive the grades for the Ontario high school second semester (in late April) we’ll start the final round of offers.  The exact dates are uncertain, but offers will likely flow in the first week of May, together with our scholarship decisions too.

It looks like this year we received about 12,000 applications to engineering (not including our Architecture program), so that’s up about 1,500 from last year.  I anticipate that we will have lots of hard decisions to make in this final round of offers.

This week we checked and saw that over 1,700 people had already submitted their “AIF”, so we’ll be starting to send them out to the reviewers.  For those who haven’t started yet, I’ve updated our suggestions and information about the Admission Information Form.  Nothing much has changed from past years, but I’ve just clarified a few minor things.  You must submit the AIF to even be considered for an offer to Engineering.

One source of confusion in past years was the deadline and how we communicated it.  So this year the official deadline for submitting the AIF for Engineering is March 18, 2016, and it will not be extended.  However, if you are hoping to be considered for our early round of offers it must be submitted by February 5, 2016.  If it’s not submitted by then, we will automatically put your application into the large final round in early May.  (As usual, if you submit your AIF but don’t get an offer in the early round, you will still be considered again in May.)

Things have been quite busy for me lately with admissions, teaching, and research activities.  I’ve heard (although I haven’t seen any specific data yet) that our application numbers are up between 10 and 20% again so far this year.  Looks like it’s shaping up to to be another very busy admissions cycle, and to complicate matters we’re a bit short on staff.  We will have to sort that out in early 2016.

A common question we get is about how many spaces there are in various programs, so here is a summary of what we’re using for the 2016 classes:

Number of Available Spaces
Biomedical  55 (an increase of 5 from last year)
Chemical   140
Civil   125
Computer + Electrical  360 (combined)
Environmental  70
Geological  30
Mechanical  210
Mechatronics  175  (an increase of 5)
Management  65
Nanotechnology   115
Software  125
Systems Design  90

Another common question is how many applicants there are.  This is a bit complicated and somewhat variable, so I’ll just break it down by number of applicants per available space in a more generic way.  This is based on the applicant choice on the OUAC application, not including second & third choices specified on the AIF.

Number of Applicants Per Space
Biomedical:  about 17
Chemical, Civil, Computer + Electrical, Mechanical, Software:  8 to 9
Environmental, Geological, Management, Mechatronics, Nanotechnology, Systems Design:  4 to 5

If you compare these numbers with the Chances post, you might notice something interesting.  Some of our more competitive programs (e.g. Mechatronics) don’t actually have as many applicants as some of the lesser competitive ones (e.g. Civil).  The message from this:  it’s not necessarily how many applicants there are, but it also depends on what their marks are like.  Software and Civil have similar numbers of applicants per space, but obviously a lot of the Software applicants also have quite high marks, so the competitive grades are higher.

This may be interesting, but for an applicant it’s not all that important.  As always, we encourage people to apply to what most interests them, and just hope for the best.