I am a US high school student and am considering applying for top Canadian universities, but have no clue how the admission process works.
Is the admission process holistic, or do they only care about grades?
In terms of grades, do they only look at certain years or all years? Are certain years seen as more important?
I also checked U of Toronto’s website, and Canada’s grading system is numbers from 1-100, while America’s grading system is a 1-4.00 GPA. What does this mean, and how can I convert my grades to the Canadian grading system?
You do not convert grades. Go to each university’s website—>admissions—>undergraduate—>international—>USA.
Most Canadian schools will look at your grade 10, 11 and 12 and SAT/ACT scores.
U of T and other Ontario universities only look at grade 11 and 12 grades and SAT/ACT scores. Some competitive programs are holistic. Applications to Ontario universities are done through OUAC. Competitive programs will send out a supplemental application after the application to OUAC is received. Decisions are sent out in waves. Some decisions will be sent out in December, January, February, but the majority will be sent out in March, April and even May.
Universities in other provinces will have their own application system.
In our experience the admissions process was pretty easy at Canadian schools – generally easier than for US schools.
One daughter applied to McGill, and only needed to send in SAT scores, high school transcript and references, and a relatively simple application form. I think that she self-reported AP results. Both daughters applied to some smaller universities for which SAT scores were optional, but we sent them in anyway. I don’t think that either daughter did an essay for any of the universities in Canada that they applied to, and I don’t think that either were asked about ECs. Some other universities (I think that UBC is an example) may ask about ECs and may have essays.
You don’t do anything to convert your grades. Universities in Canada get plenty of applications from the US and know how to interpret US grades and US transcripts.
We also found the admissions staff at nearly all universities to be very helpful. The speed with which they replied to emails did vary quite a bit.
Thank you so much! Do Canadian schools look into extracurriculars for certain majors or do they just not look at them at all?
Aome look at EC’s, some look at EC’s for certain majors, others do not look at EC’s at all.