"relative standing of the applicant in their program" - what does this mean?

[Cutz]

On the UofT website, it says the following:

"Undergraduate academic achievement is assessed through MCAT scores and GPA. The coherence and rigour of the program of study, and the relative standing of the applicant in that program will be assessed in the interpretation of GPA."

 

What is that supposed to mean? Are there a limited number of spaces for applicants for a particular program, say, biochemistry, and only the top x number get invited?

[Smurfette]

Hey, it's probably a line to encourage people not to take programs just because they're easy. Although there's so many different programs across Canada that it's very hard to determine what program is easy/hard. The only somewhat way of easy way of analyzing this that I can think of is by doing what Western is doing - seeing whether you're in an honours program or not.

[mickey]

Are there a limited number of spaces for applicants for a particular program, say, biochemistry, and only the top x number get invited?

 

Hi Cutz,

They do not impose a limit to the number of spots for applicants within any given academic program. Biochemistry is a solid, rigorous program, there are quite a large number of biochemistry grads in my class right now (and I am one of them!).

 

Best of luck,

Mickey

[studentz]

I believe it means that if you are in your fourth year of university you shouldn't be taking 100-level courses. As far as I know, class ranks and averages are not sent out by OMSAS so that only way your performance relative to others would be known is if it was commented on by a referee.

 

We (people doing admissions stuff) cannot comment on anything relating to the admissions process that isn't already public knowledge, btw.

[a41]

I believe it means that if you are in your fourth year of university you shouldn't be taking 100-level courses. As far as I know, class ranks and averages are not sent out by OMSAS so that only way your performance relative to others would be known is if it was commented on by a referee.

 

I'm assuming though that the school will look at transcripts, and in most engineering programs students are ranked. I'm not sure if this is fair or not, but our ranks every year appear right on our transcripts.