General Engineering Acceptance

[hi-everyone]

Hi,
I want to apply to one general engineering program. But I just can't choose which school to apply to. Here is my situation: concidering McMaster, Queen's, UofT first year general, and maybe Waterloo Civil eng. Which one of these schools are better. Which one is the hardest to get in? I had good marks in grade 11 (high 80's, low 90's) and right now in the first sem of grade 12 my marks are in high 80's.

So which school is better? Where do I have the highest chance of getting accepted? And do they care about where I rank them because I finished my application and my first 4 choice where all science and my 5th choice was UofT general first year engineering so do they care about ranking???:confused:

any advice is greatly appreciated :)

[VorteC]

With high 80s, you will have no problem of getting accepted into any of those universities regardless of how you rank them, the only exception may be UofT's TrackOne program.

No one can tell you which school is better unless they've been to all 4 schools and completed all their undergrad programs, which I doubt anyone has tried or completed.

All of these schools will offer a good education however I think UofT and Waterloo will offer the better education. The reason I rank them like this is because I've seen the McMaster and Queen's midterms/finals and they are definitely easier than Waterloo's.

If you care about the social life and spirit, Queen's should be up there. But really, your undergrad social experience will be what you make of it. I had plenty of fun at Waterloo even though everyone on campus seems to be playing games or on DC++.

All of these schools offer intern/co-op programs but IMO Waterloo's co-op program is more prestigous. However, starting this year because of the economic slump, there has been a drop of employment rates. I am one of the 2/3 of Waterloo engineering students who are unemployed right now.

If you don't know which discipline of Engineering you want yet, it might be wise to choose the universities that offer general first years. Keep in mind that you will be able to switch programs after 1A if you choose Waterloo... you just need decent marks. An average of 80%+ should allow you to switch into any discipline/stream you desire but you will need to retake the discipline-specific course that students took in 1A.

Hi,
I want to apply to one general engineering program. But I just can't choose which school to apply to. Here is my situation: concidering McMaster, Queen's, UofT first year general, and maybe Waterloo Civil eng. Which one of these schools are better. Which one is the hardest to get in? I had good marks in grade 11 (high 80's, low 90's) and right now in the first sem of grade 12 my marks are in high 80's.

So which school is better? Where do I have the highest chance of getting accepted? And do they care about where I rank them because I finished my application and my first 4 choice where all science and my 5th choice was UofT general first year engineering so do they care about ranking???:confused:

any advice is greatly appreciated :)

[Sazafraz]

Hi,
I want to apply to one general engineering program. But I just can't choose which school to apply to. Here is my situation: concidering McMaster, Queen's, UofT first year general, and maybe Waterloo Civil eng. Which one of these schools are better. Which one is the hardest to get in? I had good marks in grade 11 (high 80's, low 90's) and right now in the first sem of grade 12 my marks are in high 80's.

So which school is better? Where do I have the highest chance of getting accepted? And do they care about where I rank them because I finished my application and my first 4 choice where all science and my 5th choice was UofT general first year engineering so do they care about ranking???:confused:

any advice is greatly appreciated :)

If you have high 80's in grade 12 you should be fine with any of these schools as far as I know. I am in TrackOne and at first when they were doing the first round of admissions, they gave me an alternate offer for ECE and my average was 86 but they said they will reconsider me in May and my top 6 was 86 again but they accepted me. A friend of mine had an 87 average and they accepted him on the first round of admissions.

The benefit of TrackOne and Queen's general engineering is that you are guaranteed a spot in whatever discipline you choose as long as you are in good academic standing (60% average both terms for UofT) whereas with McMaster you need to have certain marks to transfer into what you want so you may feel a bit more pressure on you to get the grades required to transfer and hope you get in.

The problem with TrackOne is that it is just the ECE curriculum and so if at the end of the year you want to go into Civil, well you wasted a lot of time with courses you don't need (Dynamics and Electric Fundamentals for example). I'm not sure but with McMaster and Queen's, there general engineering is for all first years so I would assume it is more evenly balanced for all the disciplines.

The most reputable would probably be UofT and Queen's and Mac are basically the same in terms of reputation but keep what I said in mind about the downside of TrackOne.

And if you are talking about the ranking on the OUAC site, than I don't think it matters but when you do the application for engineering, make sure you put TrackOne as your first choice.

Good Luck