Hi! I’m a Grade 12 who got accepted into UTSC. For the automatic entrance scholarship, I received $1500 (which is for an overall 90% average), which I figured out must be based off of my first semester midterms since my first semester finals gave me an average of 94.3%. My question is, am I stuck with the scholarship amount based from my first semester midterm? Is there no possibility that UTSC will increase my scholarship amount since they admitted me after first semester ended, when I had actually a 94.3% average?

hey there,

first of all, congrats on getting accepted AND on receiving a scholarship! geez those are some high grades, your future is blinding me. based on this question, i’m diagnosing you as an overachiever. source? me. credibility? i’m an anonymous blogger on the world wide web.

so i checked directly with a recruitment person at UTSC, and i can tell you that your entrance scholarship will not be reassessed (meaning it will not increase but also should not decrease).

but the good news is, there are more paths towards funding sources than just your automatic entrance scholarships. for one, if you really wanna be up and at ’em about it, you can connect directly with the UTSC recruitment team.

i also highly recommend that you submit your awards profile by the deadline, may 31. with the awards profile, you can be considered for multiple scholarships with just one application, and you can find a list of all these awards in the previous link. i definitely wish that i had filled this out when i was going into first year, so please don’t be like me and put it off until it’s too last minute to complete—you’ll need to get a reference letter!

and finally, if you’re still looking for more, check out the awards explorer to find other potential sources of funding—there are a lot though, so filter by key words to see the ones relevant to you.

anyways, i hope this was helpful! good luck with everything. they say don’t count your chickens before they hatch, but i’d say you’ve got some good chickens (grades) going for you.

over and out,

aska

If i have currently gotten no scholarship offers, does this mean i get no scholarships for my first year?

do we only get scholarship offers at the time of our admission?

hey there,

in general, admission scholarships would have already been offered in your admission letter, especially the larger ones. if you actively applied for scholarships, some may have been offered after admissions, but are most likely done by now.

however, you still have options going forward! there are three types of scholarships – scholarships for admissions, scholarships for “in-course”, and scholarships for graduation. even if you didn’t receive an admission scholarship, you can apply for in-course scholarships throughout your degree.

you can check out award explorer to search for scholarships. but be sure to filter according to what you’re eligible to, since there are thousands of awards on there. i’d recommend putting in key words such as “first year” or the name of your intended major(s). and, if you’re ever confused about a scholarship, just send off an email to the department offering it – for example, to ask when applications open. they’re normally very responsive!

over and out,

aska

Hello, I was wondering how UofT calculates their averages for qualification of their admission scholarships. I got admitted to the faculty of Life Science and did not receive a scholarship. My average when I calculated it all my courses was 97%, and my friends said their averages were similar or less.

hello hello,

as far as i’m aware, utm and utsc have specific ranges for admission averages (e.g. grade 12 top six marks required for the program you applied to) for their automatic entrance scholarships, in addition to some extra requirements on the eligible courses. for example, neither campus will take the second mark for a repeated course, utsc won’t count grades updated after admissions or courses taken the summer right before university, yadda yadda yadda. i’m assuming you’re interested in the automatic, grades-based scholarships, by the way — don’t even get me started on the applications-based scholarships, because there are just wayyy to many factors to account for there.

it looks like admission averages around the high 80% or 90% range would guarantee you scholarships at these campuses, so if you applied to utm or utsc, you can certainly send a strongly worded email to their admissions departments asking about your scholarships.

i have a feeling that you’re asking about utsg though, which, uh…

let’s just say they like to keep things mysterious. the uoft scholars entrance scholarship at utsg doesn’t seem to have any specific range in terms of grades. they do state that scholarships are specific to your campus/faculty/college, though, which does make everything more complicated. (great.) anyhow, to answer your question, i can’t really say for utsg, but it might depend on your college and what their cutoffs are for lifesci, too. if you find that your friends going to the same college/program with similar averages got an automatic scholarship, it might be worth asking the admissions department or college registrar about it, in case you were also eligible.

either way, congrats on getting through high school with those marks! entrance scholarships can be fickle and competitive, but it looks like you’re doing great regardless and will hopefully keep it up in uni! if tuition costs are an issue at all, you should definitely also prepare to apply for osap (if you’re an ontario kid), utaps, or other financial aid from uoft.

good luck!

aska

Hi there!! I was wondering if University of Toronto looks at all Grade 11 grades, even those which are just electives. See, I plan on taking up Life Sciences in U of T, and all of my required courses are high up in the 90s, while I have this one elective course (one I didn’t even want to do) that’s a 52. Will that render my acceptance or chances on getting any scholarships?

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hey there,

when i was in high school i had the answer to this but boyyyyy i am getting old and had to look it up. lucky for you my memory sucks, because it was only once i looked it up that i realized things changed.

back in my day, i think (????) they used to only consider your top 5 or 6 grades, and there were a whole ton of courses they explicitly said they wouldn’t look at. it’s kind of whack that the policies are so different now.

get to the point, aska. if you’re not a domestic student, you should look up the admissions info for your specific country.  but if you’re a canadian high school student, according to the future utoronto website, u of t will consider all your grade 11 final grades as well as any available grade 12 final grades/midterm grades. they’ll emphasize grades in classes that are relevant to your program (ie. bio and chem courses if you apply to lifesci) but i guess this means they’ll incorporate your 52% into their considerations.

if it helps, i don’t think that 52% will wreck your chances at getting admission if you have high 90s in the rest of your classes, but it could… potentially… affect your admission scholarship chances? which is really just speculation on my end, i feel like scholarship considerations vary so much between awards, and there aren’t really any blanket statements to be made there.

anyway, maybe it’ll help to remember that not all scholarships will consider your full academic record. from the time you begin your applications process, u of t has this cool new award explorer that should help you find scholarships you’re eligible to apply for, often with other criteria that may take weight off of your high school grades. after you become a u of t student, u of t also has these snazzy automatic-consideration in-course scholarships that won’t consider your high school grades at all — basically, they’re awarded to students who do well in their u of t classes, or have particularly high CGPAs. on top of all that, if you find yourself part of a generous program or college (as i am), you may find yourself eligible for program-specific awards or leadership awards. my point is that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get an admissions scholarship.

my point being: there will be plenty of other opportunities to get that cash money!

don’t get too down about your 52%. it happens to the best of us. sucky teachers suck, what can ya do about it?

be Boundless,

aska

i am currently doing my A2 and want to join the enginnering science program at U of T. I gave my O levels and got 8A*s,above 90%,in all of them. I am also giving SAT currently and will get my AS results soon. I dont have many extra curricular activities but my father died when i was in grade 6 and since then I help my mother a lot.

Now can i get into University of Toronto with little ECA and get a scholarship? What are some ways to get scholarships or financial grants.

Thanks in advance

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hello friend,

thanks for waiting for this answer! i am super duper unfamiliar with your school system, but am assuming it’s some kind of UK/british commonwealth thing. guess it doesn’t matter too much, since i’m not an admissions officer anyway and can’t really deal with equivalents and conversions and … numbers. so i can’t really assess what your 90+ grades on your O levels really mean. however, i can point you to this lovely engsci website, which tells you that if you were an ontario student, you’d need low to high nineties. hopefully that gives you some sort of gauge. 

i’m sorry to hear about your dad and all. i can understand why, with more family responsibilities, it would be more difficult to invest in extracurriculars and such. 

you do happen to be in luck, though– u of t, generally speaking, does not give a crap what you do outside the classroom. not in a bad way. i see it as a good thing, especially for cases like yours. at least when i applied, all i had to do was plug my grades into some form and bada bing bada boom. more specialized programs like architecture and music definitely consider a bit more, but for the most part you will not need to worry about anything other than the numbers. hopefully that’s reassuring to you. 

as for your SAT– don’t know that it’s gonna do you much good here. it’ll be useful to you if you’re seeking to apply to the states, but other than that… i know you can tell canadian schools what your score was if you took the test, but i’m not sure to what degree it affects things. it’s not required here and most people don’t take it. 

in terms of scholarships, there are definitely avenues. if you are (as i assume) an international student, you’ll likely have different opportunities than a domestic one would. the most prominent international scholarship i know of is the good ol’ lester b, but you can probably try the scholarship sorter as well. 

best of luck with it all!

be Boundless,

aska

Hi, I just received an admission from U of T. I didn’t receive a scholarship in my admission letter but I was wondering if it is possible to get one from the school or college at a later time. Thank you.

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hi there!

ah, answering admissions-related questions.

…and that’s actually okay with me! real nice talking to people who haven’t had their souls sucked out of their bodies by overnight study at robarts yet (shoutout to the utsu for bringing snacks last night tho you the real ones).

bless your soul, and congrats on your acceptance– exciting stuff.

depending on which campus/faculty/program/college you’re in, there are definitely other scholarships you can apply for. the most centralized place is to check this database. don’t stop there, because it doesn’t list all the university’s scholarships, but it’s a good place to start. you can also check your college/program’s website, and see if further awards are available there.

even if you don’t get any scholarships right now, there will always be other opportunities later. a lot of colleges will do in-course scholarships based on academic achievement, that you automatically get if you reach a certain GPA threshold. amounts (and thresholds, i think?) vary by college, ’cause u of t is a bureaucracy and that’s apparently how we do things here! errything is in several different places. you’ll get used to it if you accept your acceptance.

if you choose to get involved on-campus, there will likely be awards available for you to apply for going out of your first year, as well. my registrar sent those out to me in an email. i’m not sure if all registrars do that, but that’s another way to find out about what’s out there.

anyhow, best of luck! i mean, there are always external awards and stuff. i wrote a 1500 word essay in march of my senior year on the perks of orthodontics doing my best to offset some tuition, but they ended up giving the cash to someone else. big sigh. it be like that. my point is, there are opportunities if you’re willing to put the work in, you just gotta find them. and beat the hell out of everyone else going for the money, yay competition.

not that relevant, but if you don’t hear a tune in your head when you read the title of this post… wyd man?

cheers,

aska