At this time of year, applicants have often received two or more offers to a university program so the next step is to decide which one to accept. You could just randomly pick one, or survey your friends and family to see which one is the most recommended. But scientists and engineers tend to prefer more evidence-based and rational methods for choosing things, what is sometimes refered to as “decision analysis”. Most engineering programs introduce this, either formally or informally, at some point because engineers frequently have to decide from among several alternatives. Let’s illustrate it, as applied to the problem of selecting a university offer. Continue reading
admission decisions
Comparing Scholarship Offers
During our last round of offers in May, we also decide on entrance scholarship awards based on a combination of grades and the AIF score. (These are separate from the $1000 Merit and $2000 President’s scholarships that are automatically awarded based on admission averages over 85%. Almost all Engineering students get these.) Our engineering entrance scholarships range in value from $1,000 to $20,000, but the majority are around $3,500. Some are from the university, but many are gifts from alumni, companies, and other donors (thanks!). In total, there around 200 spread among the 1500 students that come in September, so I suppose the odds of getting one are about 15%. For those comparing offers, here are a few observations about entrance scholarships, at Waterloo and in general. Continue reading
Transferring to Waterloo Enginering
Another common question during our admission cycle is whether someone can start a program (let’s assume engineering) at another university, then transfer into Waterloo for 2nd or 3rd year. These might be people who didn’t get an offer to Waterloo, or maybe want to try another place first but keep their options open. The short answer is that yes, it is technically feasible, but the likelihood of successful admission to 2nd year is pretty low. Here are some of the major reasons why: Continue reading
Considering an Alternate Offer
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. This year, about 300 people got one of these alternate offers to their 2nd or 3rd choice (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
Decisions
It’s been a hectic few weeks with many of our Admissions team working late nights and weekends, but our last round of Engineering admission offers are starting to come out. The OUAC Form 101 offers (i.e. Ontario high school applicants) are posted to Quest (our internal system) and will show up on OUAC soon (if not already). The OUAC Form 105 offers are in progress and should show up on Quest in the next day or two. At this point in the admission cycle there will now be groups of happy and unhappy people, so a few preliminary observations to put it in context. I’ll try to post additional information and suggestions in the coming weeks.
This year we had about 9000 applicants to Engineering. About 5500 did not get offers, so our “selectivity” is around 0.39 (i.e. 39% of applicants got offers). In a previous post about selectivity, our number was 0.44. So it has obviously gotten more difficult to get an offer this year. This is not by design, it’s simply a function of more applicants for a fixed number of available spaces. We already run at the limits of our capacity in classrooms, labs, and teaching resources, so taking more students is not presently feasible.
This year the competition was significantly tougher for the spaces in Chemical, Nanotechnology, Software, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Mechanical seemed to be a bit tougher too. The other programs were at similar competition levels as last year.
It’s sort of shocking to have to turn down so many good applicants, many with grades in the 80’s and 90’s, and I’m sure they are shocked too. But we don’t have much choice. Too much popularity and not enough capacity.
Try Making Admission Decisions
Here’s your chance to see what it’s like to make an admission decision. The following is a hypothetical case, but not unusual.
Let’s say there is only one space left in our Fusion Engineering program (no, we don’t actually have a Fusion Engineering program; it’s hypothetical!). The following 5 applicants are next in the ranked list of candidates, and have similar total scores (overall average + AIF score). We will assume that they all come from typical high schools in Ontario and that there are no differences in adjustment factors, and no extenuating circumstances to consider.
Which one would you pick? The one with the highest average, or highest AIF score (indicating exceptional extra-curriculars or awards)? Or, one with better English, or physics? Leave a comment with your choice and an explanation if you like.
| Applicant: | |||||
| A | B | C | D | E | |
| English | 89 | 72 | 79 | 70 | 86 |
| Chem | 94 | 83 | 78 | 71 | 87 |
| Physics | 78 | 82 | 79 | 88 | 81 |
| Functions | 81 | 79 | 81 | 88 | 72 |
| Calculus | 79 | 82 | 80 | 88 | 72 |
| Other | 81 | 83 | 96 | 90 | 95 |
| Average | 83.7 | 80.2 | 82.2 | 82.5 | 82.2 |
| AIF Score | 1 | 4.5 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 3 |
| Total Score | 84.7 | 84.7 | 84.7 | 85.0 | 85.2 |
Why No Early Engineering Offer?
Last week (week of February 19th 2013) we finished processing our first round of offers for applicants who are Ontario high school students. Some of the processes were described in an earlier post, How to Get an Early Offer. But to summarize, we took the data we had at that point and made enough offers to fill about 1/3 of our available spaces in each program. These are applications where we have enough data and it’s clear that they are competitive, based on previous years experience. We are relatively conservative and don’t give out too many offers, since we want to leave lots of spaces for a fair competition in the final round in May. Some universities give out a lot more offers and earlier, but that’s simply a matter of less competition and so they have that flexibility. Continue reading
Boosting Grades at Summer School
While working through our application and admission data, we see quite a few applicants who have done a required course at summer school, especially among Ontario residents. (It doesn’t seem to be so common in other provinces. I wonder why?) We know that the theory/rumour is that you can get higher grades at summer school and thereby boost your admission average and chances of acceptance into the more competitive programs. We also hear concerns from other applicants and parents that this is an unfair advantage, because some are unable to attend summer school for various reasons. Currently we don’t penalize applicants taking summer school courses (unless it is to repeat a required course), but maybe we should? Since we like evidence-based decision-making, let’s use some data to see if summer school does give a significant advantage. Continue reading
Computer Engineering or Software Engineering?
Another common question we get from prospective applicants deals with the differences between computer and software engineering (and computer science too). Since it’s not my area of expertise, I generally try to get one of my colleagues to discuss this in more detail with applicants. They have also put together a webpage with some helpful information that compares and contrasts these 3 programs. This is a good starting point, but there are several other things to consider. I’m going to focus on comparing just the two engineering programs. Continue reading
Chance Yourself
On the College Confidential forums, there are whole sections where applicants ask others to “chance me” (a rather odd use of “chance” as a verb, but anyways). They post their stats and desired target colleges, and want others to tell them how likely they are to get an offer. It is primarily U.S. college focused, so I thought I would develop a system where you can “chance” yourself for Waterloo Engineering, as an extension of what I discussed in the post about cut-offs. Continue reading
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 