<p>If you’re admitted to U Toronto but not Rotman, you will study economics but not business. Plus pay attention to major declaration; you may find yourself having to declare an additional major unless you chose to shoot for the economics specialist degree.</p>
<p>Ya one other thing with UofT which Catria sort of alluded to is that they are not that big on having a ton of electives. Most people do a double major or a specialist that eats up most of your credits on requirements for your major. The plus side of this is that if you want to focus early on, uoft is excellent. If you want to explore and take more of a grab bag of courses, this system is really not the best for you.</p>
<p>Key for that UofT and most other Canadian universities is what department you apply to, because the admission requirements very hugely. A B student can stand a good chance of getting into Arts or education but departments such as life science or engineering or business rarely accept students with a gpa less than A-</p>
<p>Okay so I’m practically in the same boat as this kid, we share the same GPA and ACT scores, and share interest in similar colleges. can you guys chance me for: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1552469-chance-me-jmu-ubc.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1552469-chance-me-jmu-ubc.html</a></p>
<p>and if you guys have any other thoughts on colleges to apply too, mostly in canada / virginia, that would be apprectiated.</p>
<p>Good thing I posted on here, I had no idea about major declaration and programs. </p>
<p>So you’re saying that even if I do get into say, NYU - but not Stern - I can’t major in business? Can I take some business-related courses during my freshman year and qualify for Stern the following year? I’m planning on majoring in both Business Administration and Economics/Quantitative Analysis. </p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback International95, I’m going to add Northeastern as a safety (they really like my school…80% acceptance rate).</p>
<p>Rebound, check my list on the previous page and consider some of the targets/safeties I have chosen. Do keep in mind that my upward trend is a lot stronger than yours though (started from low 2.0s and ended with near 4.0s + APs, while yours fluctuates per year which may indicate a problem).</p>
<p>edit: That would be Economics/Finance (I did not realize that Quantitative Analysis was a graduate degree)</p>
<p>New updated list, old one was too high/unlikely.</p>
<p>Reach
U. Michigan
Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>Target
New York University
University College London
Georgia Institute of Technology
King’s College London
Boston University</p>
<p>Safety
University of Rochester
Northeastern University
University of Toronto</p>
<p>Any thoughts? I really need to get the list finalized and begin working on essays.</p>
<p>Again with a only a 3.05 gpa even UofT arts i not even close to a safety (especially for an international applicant) so don’t bank on being a shoo-in by any stretch. As it stand righ now even arts is pushing into low reach territory, however a good grade 12 could change that drastically in your favor. Toronto’s Rotman school of management is a definite far reach (ie. similar to Stern). I also think you might be underestimating the difficulty of Kings College London and University College London. Outside of Oxbridge these are the two of the top schools in the UK (also LSE), and again applying with only a 3.05 will put you at difficult odds against other international applicants.</p>
<p>With your grades you might want to target more in state publics to be safe.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the help you’ve given so far!</p>
<p>I consulted with my counselor with admission into departments (ie Arts, Management) and he said that usually you don’t have to declare a major/transfer into a department until your second year. I don’t doubt that my college grades will be eligible for transfer into the departments afterwards. </p>
<p>I can’t seem to find too much information on UK schools. They seem to follow a admission criteria which is strictly academic based (which is quite good for me) and they list minimum requirements (ie 5/5/5/5/4 on AP exams for UCL). I’m fairly certain that I can reach this criteria, but they offer it conditionally such that if I do not achieve those scores the offer is retracted. </p>
<p>GPA-wise doesn’t seem to matter for UK schools, as they seem to be mostly concerned with APs and senior year. I do understand that my cumulative GPA is very low for most of these schools, but I’m hoping that a significant up-trend and high scores can make up for it. </p>
<p>Is a school like Boston University not a target for me? My GPA these last two years and scores are already overqualified (though cumulative is obviously lower), and I haven’t prepared at all for the SAT/ACT so I can expect a nice boost to them when I sit in November/December. </p>
<p>I’ve put Toronto/Northeastern as my safeties due to the ~80% acceptance rate for my school and my scores are over the mean. Would you recommend I balance it out with more safety-targets?</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor is right that you dont declare a major until second year (at least for uoft). However, to be able to declare a specific major, you have to have the right prerequisite first year courses (again my experience is as a UofT alumnus), and the students who get admitted to a specific department have first access to enrolling in the courses offered by those departments. For example at UofT a freshman student in say the philosophy department could (if they have the perquisite high school classes) take a course like organic chemistry (CHM138) which is in the faculty of life sciences, however they would only be able to register for this course AFTER the registration period for life science students has already passed. For the major freshman year prerequisite courses there are most often few to no seats left over after the within department students have signed up. This means that if you plan on applying to one department then declaring a major in another department at the end of your freshman year you will likely not be able to get into all the prerequisite courses necessary and will have to make up these courses in summer school.</p>
<p>Again, I can only speak from experience at Toronto, but I have a feeling this is a problem you may run into at many universities on your list.</p>
<p>If the UK schools don’t care about your gpa outside of your last year then that’s great! I would definitely suggest you focus on acing those applications for those schools, because they are both very good (pricy to live and study in London though!)</p>
<p>Where did you find out that: “~80% acceptance rate for my school and my scores are over the mean.” for Toronto? I have not seen a such a page where they post previous year admission scores and would be grateful if you could post a link to this, so I could refer other people on the UofT thread to this.
If you do have the stats make sure you are looking at the averages for “International applicants” rather than Ontario/Canadian applicants (UofT is generally easier for Ontarians to get into than internationals). Also make sure you are looking at the average gpa to get accepted NOT the percentage score because Ontario high schools work off a very different grading scheme (50-59%=D, 60-63=C-, 63-66%=C, 67-69=C+, 70-73%=B-, 73-76%=B, 76-79%=B+, 80-85%=A-, 85-90%= A, 90%+=A+)</p>
<p>Sometimes Americans read these numbers and are really excited. Unfortunately all Canadian high school averages are deflated in comparison (there are very few 90s ever given out) and the aggregate Ontario student has pretty much the same gpa as the average US student, but a much lower raw percentage score. It is just a different method of weighing grades.</p>
<p>Therefore if you are looking at the percentage values for Canadians, uoft will look a lot easier to get into then it actually is (ie. my graduating year had an entry average of 85.7% for grade 12 (was told this during the Dean’s speech at my convocation), which doesn’t look special from the US high school grading standpoint, but which put my class at about a gpa of 3.7 (A-), and was pretty much the only the top 20% of the distribution at Ontario high schools.</p>
<p>I hope I am not being too much of a downer for you. For the record I think it is very unlikely that you will not get an acceptance from at least one of your list but being rather paranoid, I would personally put a non-competitive state school or two as a true iron clad safety.</p>
<p>If the OP only got into some low-key school and then decided that U Toronto might be a better fit, how much does the OP need to achieve at that school (for economics, for example) in order to transfer?</p>
<p>@Catria
Sorry, I honestly don’t know much about transfers into UofT. I would imagine it is not particularly easy, particularly for the competitive programs (Rotman Business, Life Science). I personally never met a transfer student at UofT, but this isn’t exactly saying much because the main campus has 45 000 people. If the OP want to consider this strategy, it would be best to talk to guidance and/or uoft admissions first.</p>
<p>Again, the strategy of applying to an easy to get into program (eg philosophy) and then declaring a major in a competitive department (eg. life sciences) can work, however the OP will likely have to take a summer course or two because they probably wont get into all the prerequisite freshman courses. Key to remember here is this strategy does NOT work for jumping across faculties (you can technically transfer between faculties but there is a lot more paperwork and it is much more difficult). You could not for example, declare a business major at Rotman if you have done your freshman year as a faculty of Arts and Science student (same would go for other faculties such as engineering).</p>
<p>Also just a note; Rotman Management is very tough Freshman year, plenty of people end up dropping out or transferring to other faculties (I had a friend who went in to computer science after flaming out of Rotman in freshman year). You see virtually no one transferring into Rotman. After freshman year the flow of students in Business is pretty much unidirectional.</p>
<p>By the way, Rochester and Northeastern are not safeties at all - they’re targets.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for all the help so far, Nameless. It’s great seeing how things work on the inside from an alumnus’ perspective.</p>
<p>I’ve spent a little time looking at the department requirements, and most are like what you said - they have a list of prerequisites and inability to enroll them means I have to take it over summer. I do have certain APs however that will satisfy some of the credits. AP Macro/Micro and Statistics is generally accepted as replacement credit for most introductory (first-year) programs, and as for math I will be enrolling in Multi-variable Calculus or Linear Algebra (both of which are typically second or third year courses) so I should be able to satisfy most of my requirements off the bat. If not, I am prepared to take summer courses.</p>
<p>As for the Toronto statistics, I actually couldn’t find any data regarding their admissions as well. The figure of 80% is for applicants from my school only (we use a software called Naviance), and discrepancies between standard admission rates and my school’s rates can vary a lot (Northeastern for standard applicants has a 38% acceptance rate…for my school it has a 78%).</p>
<p>I have replaced Georgia Tech (originally a low reach) with Purdue - which by my stats should place this as a solid safety. I’m help to hear you say that it is unlikely that every single one on my list rejects me, as my goal was to raise the standards high enough such that I can minimize the amount that actually do accept me. In other words, a typical applicant’s “portfolio” results in about 5-7 acceptances (out of 10) and they choose the best or their favorite one from there. I personally feel like the other 6 is being wasted, so I skew the standards higher until that amount becomes 2-3. Does not go very well with admission counselors however!</p>
<p>I apologize for not updating this thread in awhile; I’ve been quite busy.</p>
<p>ACT Scores were released! Good news, it exceeded my projected score of 34.</p>
<p>After superscoring
Composite: 35 (Top 0.03%)
English: 34
Reading: 34
Mathematics: 35
Science: 36</p>
<p>Current list (in order of difficulty):
Reach
University of Pennsylvania - Wharton
Cornell University - Dyson
London School of Economics (Management)
New York University - Stern</p>
<p>Target
University of Rochester
Boston University
King’s College University</p>
<p>Safety
Pennsylvania State University
Indiana University at Bloomington</p>
<p>In addition, I included all the UC’s that have a business-related program (from Berkeley to Riverside) to diversify my portfolio a bit. Less than 7 weeks to get your applications in!</p>
@Addyman what did you get in?