Hi, my daughter is Canadian citizen and attended high school in New Zealand. Her last year’s high school score was not so great. She has some ECs and used to be culture captain in her high school. she just finished the first year univ study in New Zealand. The average score of 1st univ papers is 88.1 which is equivalent to GPA 3.8 out of 4. She wants to transfer to engineering, economics, or commerce programs in top univs in Canada in 2019. what is the chance and which university should apply for? She hasn’t taken SAT and not planned to sit SAT exam.
thanks.
Her GPA is great. Transferring to a top engineering or commerce program will be tough though. You’ll have to check each school’s criteria for a transfer. Some programs, such as Rotman commerce at U of T, don’t allow transfers. She’ll need to apply soon. For example, the deadline for a transfer application for U of T engineering is January 10.
She doesn’t need a SAT score.
What program is she studying now?
she studies health science in the first year. We know that her yr1 average score is only 88 and not high enough for engineering or commerce in top universities such as U of T or McGill, UBC. She applied for actuarial sci at U of T and UBC bachelor and master of management duo program so far. not sure if she will succeed in either of them.
so would like to apply for another two universities not so competitive, interested in engineering or business. one potential would be engineering at U of Alberta, any other recommendation as backup so that she can be accepted into at least one Canadian university? Thanks.
You might want to look at the Maclean’s rankings:
https://www.macleans.ca/education/best-engineering-universities-in-canada-2018-ranking/
I don’t know why they have “western” listed as “wester”, or two listed at #2 instead of at #1. Otherwise it looks like a good list to me. I would be inclined to ask admissions at a few of the schools in the middle. Somewhere such as Concordia, Simon Fraser, or Western might be worth considering. We quite liked Dalhousie when we toured it a couple of years ago (my daughter went for a smaller school).
I assume that you know that as a Canadian citizen your daughter would pay the Canadian student tuition rates.
Your issue with transferring to engineering is that she may have to repeat part of first year as her credits earned in health science won’t cover all of the first year engineering curriculum. If she is ok with that, her GPA should be very good even for top engineering programs since university GPAs tend to be on average 10% points lower than high school. They won’t be looking for the same marks from a university transfer student as they would from a student applying straight out of high school.
U of T Engineering states:
.
https://discover.engineering.utoronto.ca/admission-requirements/transfer-applicants/
Provided she has those courses then I’d say she has a shot. I wouldn’t necessarily rule out other top engineering or business programs.