If you have A’s this semester, and a 3.0 last year, that makes your GPA for Canadian universities ~3.3, which means roughly 73-78 for entry criteria (ie., 83-88 in US terms).
my unweighted last year was 3.1 and my weighted was 3.94. I’m also in the national honor society idk if it makes my chances better at least for queens
I don’t see it. You can try but Queen’s expects A-/A (unweighted), not B’s.
well if my GPA senior year is A-/A?
I know it’s still a reach school, but I still want to try
Your GPA will be { junior year (Semester1+Semester2) + Semester 1 senior year ]/3, ie., 3+3+4= 10/3= 3.3.
3.3= ~76 in the Canadian system
If you want to attend school in Canada, apply to universities in the 73-78 range.
You’d qualify for the Foundation Year in Sciences at Concordia (Montreal) for instance, or for the BA. (If you want to skip the Foundation Year in Science, the B.Sc. requires you to have a B or higher in AP Calculus BC, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
But of course apply to Queens as a reach. Remember your odds are low, but you never know - most importantly, apply to a university where your odds are at least 50-50…
wait is it true Queens acceptance rate is 12%? I thought it was higher because even Mcgill has a higher acceptance rate. If it is that low I won’t apply I would rather apply to Mcgill. and yes i will look for schools within that range, any recommendations for a good school that I have a better chance of getting into? I really want to study in Canada.
You will not get into McGill. They only admit A/A- students, rank them according to course rigor etc, but cut anyone who isn’t at that level.
Only exception is Ag Sciences.
You DO have a shot at Food Science, which BTW is very lucrative.
Look at the cutoffs (those are NOT the average but the grades and scores of the lowest ranked student they admitted):
You have a shot at Lethbridge, Concordia, Bishop’s, Acadia, New Brunswick…
Look at the minimum threshold, 70-78:
I think your calculations are wrong because on this website of the grade point averages in Canada it shows different averages. For example, my gpa last year is considered an A in Ontario and a 70-79 average is a B. If anything my grade point average is higher
Were you studying in Ontario? I will admit that I have missed where you are attending high school. I may have assumed that since this is in the “study abroad” thread that you are not currently a student in Canada, but probably we really should have asked you about this a while ago.
There is an issue here that was discussed above but I might not have been as clear as I could have been so will try to be clearer: High school grades in Canada are not directly comparable to high school grades in the US (or anywhere else). In Canada a grade of 90 is excellent. In some high schools (including the high school that I attended) an average of 90 would make you the #1 or #2 top student in the entire high school. However in the USA an average of 90 would not put you in the top 10% of students, and might not put you in the top 20% of students. In my high school (in Canada) only a small handful of students (possibly less than 10%) had an average grade of 80% or higher.
The top universities in Canada understand this very well. They will compare you with students from the same education system that you are in. If you graduate from a high school in Canada at the very top of the class then you are pretty much in at any university in Canada. However, if you graduate from a high school in the US with the same % grade you might not be in the top 20% of your class, and admissions at the same university might not be possible. This means that looking at the grades that a Canadian university expects from a Canadian student might be misleading if you are studying at a high school that is not in Canada.
Queen’s is one of the most difficult universities in Canada to get accepted to. It has a well deserved very good reputation but is smaller than Toronto. Smaller means that some students would rather go there, but also means that they accept fewer students. It is hard to get accepted to and we are guessing that it would be a reach for you.
However, there are a large number of very good universities in Canada. The university system is very consistently solid in Canada, and as long as you are planning to study very hard it is hard to go wrong at many, many universities in Canada.
Some people on this thread have suggested multiple universities that are very good. I have not visited Lethbridge, Simon Fraser, or U.Victoria, but I have heard very good things about all of them. I have driven by two of them (Simon Fraser and Victoria) and the location looked good to me. We have visited Concordia, Bishop’s, Acadia, New Brunswick, Mount Allison, and Dalhousie and they were all very attractive. Bishop’s, Acadia, Mount Allison, and New Brunswick are a bit smaller which leads to smaller classes taught by full professors. The larger schools are more likely to be in large cities and are more likely to have a wider range of major’s available.
In our experience applying to universities in Canada is easier than applying to universities in the US. For example there are fewer essays. I have joked that they just want your high school transcript, a couple of letters of reference, and contact information so they can send you a response. This is not that hard to send in. As such I see no harm in applying to Queens, Toronto, McGill, and UBC. However, if you really want to attend university in Canada then I would strongly encourage you to apply to some of the very good universities that are easier to get accepted to. Also be aware that Toronto, Queen’s, McGill, and a few other top schools in Canada (McMaster, Alberta, Waterloo) are very academically challenging and grading is tough.
Given a somewhat inconsistent high school record with a significant uptrend, I would not be surprised at all if one or more universities were to ask you for your first semester grades this year. If these are all or mostly A’s, this might help you quite a bit.
Also, the various universities that have been suggested on this thread are somewhat different from each other. For example Mount Allison is in a very small town in New Brunswick. Acadia is on the banks of the Bay of Fundy in a very attractive small town in Nova Scotia, not very far from some of the wineries there (Nova Scotia has some surprisingly excellent wines). Bishop’s is a small rather self-contained university in a very small almost completely bilingual town, but right next to Sherbrooke which is a French Language moderate sized city. Concordia is right in the middle of Montreal just up the road from McGill. Dalhousie is quite close to downtown Halifax, not at all far from the ocean and the harbor. You should think about what you want in a university and feel free to ask questions about any of these schools (or other schools) if you want to know more.
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Are you attending a Canadian school?
If so what are your top 3 U/M grades?
My comments above were predicated on the idea you’re a US student at a US HS.
Queen’s acceptance rate is not 12%. Here’s the minimum average for each program at Queen’s. If you are in a US system, add 5-10% to your US grade to compare to this chart. Queens competitive averages
Yes I am a US student and I will definitely apply to universities that are easier to get into. I just wanted to see if I should even bother applying to these schools I listed. Do you have any recommendations?
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Thank you! I’ll probably apply for the arts program since its in the low 80s range
Oh okay yes I am a US student at a US HS
Ok.
Low 80s in Canada= low 90s in the US. Your gpa is mid 80s in the US, so you need to look for universities that admit students in the 70s.
80s in Canada are strong As.
Good universities for a B/B+ US studnt have been listed already.
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