hi! so i’m a grade 11 student and rn i’m taking college, uni and mixed courses. what i’m wondering is that would this affect my chances of getting into uoft (specifically the social science stream) since i took college level grade 11 courses? also for next year, in grade 12, all my courses that i’ll be taking are 6 u/m so would that help or?

hey there,

hmmm ok. i’m honestly not from ontario so this whole ontario high school course code system bewilders me. normalize being out of the loop because what is even.. going on.

*you remind me that i’m literally supposed to know this stuff.*

ahah but i do know the U of T system, so i’ll try my best to answer this.

for admission requirements, U of T requires that you’ve taken at least 6 grade 12 university (U) or university/college (M) courses. for the social sciences stream, one of those courses must be english (ENG4U). so yes, it’s good that you’re taking all U/M courses in grade 12!

U of T will look at your grades in ENG4U, plus five other of your top grade 12 marks in academic courses. based off this, i think would give you a better chance if you took a lot of U/M courses, because then you’ll have other marks to send in if you do badly in some, right?

meanwhile, based on the way that U of T describes how they consider applications, they don’t consider the difficulty of the courses you took in high school. i know that some other universities say they do, like UBC, who says they look at the range of your courses and how challenging they were. but i haven’t seen anything that implies U of T looks at this. the general vibe is that U of T mainly looks at your grades.

so overall, yeah. take U/M courses, that’s good. based on vibes again, i think taking college courses in grade 11 is also good, compared to taking workplace or open courses.

if you really want to know, like, specifics about admissions, something not a lot of people know is that you can literally ask a recruitment officer how to make your application really good. the name “recruitment officer” makes them sound so, institutional? but like they’re just people who have the actual inside scoop on this, so don’t be afraid to reach out!

hope this was helpful and good luck, i hope you have allllll the success!

over and out,

aska

hello,
i am currently a grade 11 student. last sem i failed the functions u level course with a 40%, so i’ll be retaking it this summer. i’m worried that i won’t be accepted to the social science program because of this. also, i think my current average right now is around 74%.
so my questions are that would failing functions affect my change of acceptance?
i am aiming to get better grades in grade 12 so will uoft look at my grade 11 marks or my grade 12 marks?
my last question is regarding supplementary applications, i am planning to choose the political science stream so would i need to submit my extracurriculars, volunteer hours, etc? because currently i only have around 45 hours of volunteering and no extracurriculars, would this also affect my acceptance?

thank you,
hope this makes sense.

hey there,

i like you. finally, questions that are within my realm of expertise.

1. will failing functions affect your acceptance?

no, it shouldn’t. as you can see here, U of T only looks at your top 6 academic grade 12 courses, which they use to compute your admission average. among those courses, one must be english 12. depending on the admission category you apply to, there may be other pre-requisites included — such as functions if you were applying to, say, computer science.

however, you are applying to the social sciences admission category, which only requires english 12. this means that U of T will only look at your english course + five other of your top grade 12 marks. so if you’ve failed functions, it won’t be included in your top marks and U of T won’t look at it! so like, moving forward, um wdym, you didn’t fail! that tOTally did not happen!

2. will U of T look at your grade 11 or grade 12 marks?

so again, U of T will only look at your top 6 grade 12 marks. however, if those marks haven’t been released yet, they will look at the corresponding grade 11 marks to make conditional early offers.

check out this answer i posted recently where i talk more about the weight of your grade 11/12 marks. the tldr is that if your grade 11 marks don’t make the cut, U of T will consider you again when your grade 12 marks are released.

3. will you need to submit extracurriculars for political science?

you will not need to submit extracurriculars to get into your program of study, thank GOD. as you can see on the arts & sciences calendar, admission into the political science program only concerns pre-requisite classes and your grades. i’ve never heard of a U of T undergrad arts & science program that required extracurriculars, or volunteer hours. so you’re good to go!

4. will U of T look at your extracurriculars/volunteer hours for admissions?

finally, U of T also does not look at your extracurriculars or volunteering hours for first year admissions. when you apply on OUAC, there isn’t even an option to put these in! if i remember right, you pretty much just upload your transcript lol.

anyways, university applications can be super hectic and so confusing. so i hope this was helpful and that it took a bit of stress off your back! good luck with everything, you’ve got this!

over and out,

aska