Hi,
I am a Canadian citizen graduating from a US high school next year, all my schooling was done in USA. Interested in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Applied Math majors. Applying to Waterloo, Toronto and McGill. My stats upto end of junior year are below:
SAT: 1580 (EBRW 780; Math 800; Essay 19)
SAT 2’s: Math-2 (800), Math-1 (800), Physics (800), Chem (780).
AP’s so far: 5’s in 9AP’s and 4’s in 2 (mix of math, science and social sciences AP’s: Calc AB; Calc BC; Stats; Physics 1; Physics 2; Physics C M and E/M; Chem; World History; US Gov and Politics; Microeconomics )
Senior year courses: Multi-Variable Calc, AP Litt, AP Psychology, AP Bio, AP CS, AP Macro.
GPA: 3.8 UW; 4.8 W; school rank: top 5% (so far).
I know that Canadian universities mainly look at my grades - but our school does not have % but give letter grades. If they look at my overall unweighted average it is A- (this maybe mapped to 92-95% overall, not sure about the exact % though). If they consider weighted it would be 104% or something like that. So my main question is do Canadian universities consider the course weightage? One issue I have is that my grades in junior year dipped with couple B’s. Not sure how much of this would hurt my chances (one of that B is in a AP course - I aced the AP test but class grade suffered with work load).
My EC’s are decent but nothing spectacular. Have strong record in Math/Science competitions and 2 varsity sports, 2 club leadership roles and couple independent research projects in math/cs. No national level awards or olympiads (qualified for AIME couple times but no USAMO). State level wins in math/cs/science competitions. 250 hours of volunteering (half of those hours with math/cs based volunteer activity).
What are my chances? I am especially interested in Waterloo CS program.
@TomSrOfBoston - appreciate if you can share your thoughts on my profile.
Additional info: never took Euclid or CSMC or CIMC as they are not offered at our school (and Univ of Waterloo insist that I can only take them thru school) . Trying to take them next year - Euclid maybe too late for admissions but CSMC maybe useful (?)
UWaterloo waits to receive the results of the Euclid before releasing CS admissions. If you can at all take it, it would help your admissions to UWaterloo. Your AIME qualification would help there as well. Keep in mind that the admission rate for Waterloo CS is under 10%. Engineering looks at it all - extracurriculars, standardized test scores, job experience, video interview. It’s not as difficult to get in as CS is, but it’s still pretty difficult. Your chances are around 50% for computer/systems design/mechanical/mechatronics/electrical engineering and around 90% for the other specialties.
U of T does not look at extracurriculars or awards for CS admission. That is mostly on grades. SAT scores will help. I think you have an excellent shot at CS at U of T. Keep in mind that in order to be accepted to the CS major/specialist, you have to obtain a certain GPA in 2 first year CS courses. Only about 50% of students admitted under the CS program actually make it into the CS major/specialist. Engineering does look at extracurriculars, SAT scores and awards and they also have you do a video interview. Your admissions likelihood will depend on how well you do on that video interview. I think you have a great shot at U of T engineering.
Oops - for UWaterloo, should have said chances are less than 50% for biomedical and software engineering. @clgApp20
@bouders - thanks for the input. I am planning to take the Euclid - our school don’t have it earlier but I took initiative this year to try register (a last minute effort), there were enough interested students but we couldn’t find a faculty member to proctor. Hope we will be successful this year to bring it to our school/area.
McGill is pretty much a safety.