I cannot figure out the timing. On the school websites they say you must have completed grade 12 classes with a certain grade but wouldn’t you be applying before those grades are completed? If the application opens in the fall for the following year, how do you handle sending transcripts and meeting requirements?
Also, has anyone transferred US dual enrollment credit to a Canadian university? My daughter does not have any AP credits but will have many dual enrollment college credits.
When my student applied to McGill a couple of years ago, his application was considered complete after he submitted first semester grades for 12th grade, which due to his school’s schedule I think was in mid January.
What Canadian universities are you looking at? Are you looking at the requirements for Canadian applicants or international applicants?
For example, here are McGill’s instructions. Choose “US high school” in the drop-down box.
Important deadlines | Undergraduate Admissions - McGill University
As with US schools, a student will be granted conditional admission subject to successful completion of grade 12.
Did he apply sooner and then add his first semester grades or do it all at once? Did he have any dual enrollment and if yes, how did they handle those?
On the school websites they say you must have completed grade 12 classes with a certain grade but wouldn’t you be applying before those grades are completed?
She’s looking at a few but haven’t finalized that. Right now I’m looking at Carleton University. They list US with high school students but she’s a US homeschooled student and the homeschooled portion seems to only apply to Canadians. She emailed McGill but didn’t get very clear answers.
He applied sooner, and then sent his grades once they were in.
His school didn’t offer any DE, so he only had AP. (They had ton’s of university-level courses, but they weren’t DE. 
McGill lets you know fairly soon, depending on the strength of the application. I think he heard back within 10 days for one of the programs he applied to, and within 3 weeks from the other (more competitive).
I don’t know if that is true with other Canadian universities.
I think they accept you with the right to withdraw the acceptance if the final grades aren’t acceptable. But that’s true of US colleges too.
What major is she interested in?
Applications generally open around October and should be submitted by mid-December. Transcripts should be sent at the same time as the application and they will ask for an updated transcript around the end of January. They will also need a final transcript. If you are admitted to a program, it’s an offer contingent upon your final grades. They do rescind and it’s a lot more strict than US schools. Rescission generally happens early August.
Most Canadian schools will not accept the dual enrollment credits. Most AP credits aren’t accepted either.
Other factors: Canadian programs may have a lot more prerequisites than US programs. The prerequisites for students educated in the US will be different than for students educated in Canada. Science/math programs will require calculus, for example. Google “admission requirements University X” and then look for US patterned education. Rejections are not released at the same time as offers. Rejections usually come around June. Canadian schools in general only award merit aid, not need-based aid.
She is looking at commerce and it says the prerequisites are:
Advanced functions
Calculus and vectors
It does not specify a different requirement for YS students. Do you have any idea what classes these are equal to in the US? I was assuming calculus and vectors is variable calculus but I have never seen that offered in high school, wouldn’t it be calculus 3?
Calculus and vectors should be equivalent to calculus in a US school. There are some programs that require calculus and vectors for Canadian students and AP calculus BC with a score of 5 for US students (looking at you, UWaterloo math). You will need to check the requirements for US students carefully for each program.
Tagging @DadTwoGirls and @gwnorth.
We live in the US. Both daughters applied to universities in Canada and one attended university in Canada (and did well, and got a job back in the US after graduation).
In our experience we sent in the transcripts that were available at the time, which included grades 9, 10, and 11. Both daughters got acceptances before any grades were available from grade 12. My vague recollection is that the acceptances were contingent on successfully completing high school.
What I have heard is that admissions at universities in Canada is largely based on academic strength, and depends upon your most recent 2 years of high school (assuming that you are applying out of high school to become a freshman in university). If you have very strong stats from grades 10 and 11 and are way over the cutoff for admissions then you are likely to get accepted early. If you stats are closer to the cutoff then they might wait to see how you do in grade 12 (and ask for and wait for mid year grades). I do not know whether they are slightly easier on students who are Canadian citizens, but it would not surprise me.
I grew up in Montreal. I have a vague recollection from way back when I was in high school and was applying (in-province) to McGill, that some students got their acceptances early and some were asked to send in mid-term grades before they got their acceptances. For these latter students I am pretty sure that they applied early, sent in the transcripts that were available at the time, and then were specifically asked to also send in mid-year transcripts.
Our daughter who attended university in Canada had attended a high school that did not offer any AP classes, and she never took any Dual Enrollment classes. She did self-study for one AP exam, and was given university credit. Her university transcript shows credit for freshman year Spanish with a grade of “Pass”.
None of us applied to Carlton.
I might add that the speed with which we heard back varied quite a bit but was mostly relatively fast. Some schools told us about merit aid at the same time that we got our acceptances, while some told us about merit aid later. We were not offered any merit aid at McGill but were not concerned about it.
I will make the caveat that my experience is specifically with Ontario universities though the application process is generally similar across the country.
Students apply in the fall of their grade 12 year. Applications for Ontario universities typically open in and around October with the deadline being the beginning of January. Application is made through a common portal, OUAC. For non-Ontario universities you apply directly to the university. Unless a student is applying with all final grades (e.g. if they took a gap year) all admissions offers are conditional upon satisfactory final grades and meeting the requirements for high school graduation. What those satisfactory grades are will be detailed in the admissions offer (though the average needed to be maintained to keep the offer is often times lower than the average needed to get the offer in the first place which is one of the reasons why getting an early offer can be advantageous).
If grade 11 marks are high enough, it is sometimes possible to get an offer before the application deadline, typically around Christmas/early January. This tends to only happen with programs that are relatively non-selective. It is more typical to get offers around mid-February to mid-March once first semester final marks have been received. Offers made at that time will use the corresponding grade 11 mark to fill in for any missing grade 12 marks. It should be noted that not all programs make early admission offers and the more selective a program is for admission the less likely it is for early offers to be made. This is especially true of programs requiring supplemental applications. For those programs that don’t make early offers students have to wait until mid to late May, once 2nd semester midterm marks are received, to find out if they’ve been admitted.
With regards to what courses students need to present with, that will be program specific.
At a minimum students will need to present with grade 12 university level English. STEM, Business, and some social science programs will also usually require grade 12 Advanced Functions (Pre-Calculus) and possibly Calculus and Vectors (roughly equivalent to AP Calc AB). STEM programs also usually require 2 of grade 12 university level Biology, Chemistry, or Physics though which ones specifically are program dependent (and some universities like Guelph and possibly McGill and UBC require all 3). Every university will detail on their international admissions page what the equivalent courses are for students applying from the US.
With regards to the ability to receive transfer credit for IB/AP/DE, every university and often even every program at every university will have their own policy including what score is required if credit is awarded. Details can be found on each university’s admissions website.
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