admissions,  rotman

if i pulled a hair out every time someone threw numbers at me i’d be bald

Hey! I’m currently in grade 12 and I was just wondering how Rotman looks at grade 11 marks. I would say it wasn’t my best year, my average was around 86-87%. But currently my average is around 90-92%. I have done tons of different volunteering, co-op, and been part of numerous clubs. I’m just wondering whether I should worry about my average as of now.

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hey friend,

i never wanna tell people they should worry about their average. this rotman webpage indicates that if you’re from ontario, you’ll need an average in the mid to high eighties. you can decide for yourself what that means for you. in terms of your extracurriculars, u of t generally doesn’t look at those, but if they’re asked for in your supplemental application (which rotman requires) then maybe they’ll affect your admissions decision?

what i’ve been told before is that how much weight is placed on your grade 11 marks depends on what your academic progress at that point looks like. i don’t really know how to explain this, but in some situations grade 11 marks are almost entirely irrelevant for your uni applications– say a student took a few classes in summer school, putting them a grade ahead in some of their core courses. by the time they got to the eleventh grade, they ended up taking the courses universities would normally consider for admission (english 12, chemistry 12, whatever). in this case, because the most important courses for their university admissions had final marks by the time they applied for universities midway through their senior year, those grade 12-level courses taken during the eleventh grade would be the most heavily considered. their eleventh grade marks would have almost no bearing on admissions.

this is because, apparently, eleventh grade marks are used primarily as a predictor of a student’s final grade 12 marks, which aren’t available at the time of university applications. so these 11th grade marks may be looked at if your core 12th grade courses are still in progress, as admissions officers have no concrete final 12th grade marks to go on yet. they may be overlooked if you already have things like english 12 in your pocket. i’ve also heard that large discrepancies between grade 11 and grade 12 marks may be taken into account.

it would be good to note that this is based on something i was told in conversation with an admissions officer a solid number of years ago, and for a different program. i have no way to verify if it’s actually true. but that’s the beauty of being an aska as opposed to a journalist: i can offer up these lil nuggets of hearsay, with full disclosure that i haven’t checked this over with anyone official, and you get to decide how seriously you take them. for better! more concrete! verified! and straight from the source! info you should contact rotman’s admissions office directly. in fact, please do. in this case, i’m not confident in the information i’ve given you and think you can get better tips from them.

i hope this made sense. we speakin’ from a caffeine-induced haze out here. i hate to perpetuate the stereotype that u of t is disproportionately difficult when i say that– i think most major universities have these kinds of weeks, and either way it depends on your program and the way you work. but yea. we goin’ thru a thing right now, and it won’t be over for a good couple weeks. sorry it took me a while to get to your question, that would be why.

be Boundless,

aska

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