My chances? I messed up a few courses early on

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Hey everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to the time to view my thread. I wanted to know my chances for applying to Canadian schools for the second entry programs in Ontario. My goal is to go to uoft in 2015 but I have one concern: I have some really bad grades in two early terms of my undergrad career, including 3 fails. Mainly had to do with a bad breakup that was hard for me at a younger age.

However, I have really excellent grades in all the prerequisites (an average in prereqs of about 88%) and my last two years of study I have an excellent average (about 91%), I also have 2 years of hospital volunteer experience, and conducted a quantitative study in a health area for a senior honours essay that turned out really well (will be using my supervisor for the academic reference). I also have some other good things to put on the supplementary application, like being a member of a varsity team.

I am wondering what I can expect for applying to uoft, york, western, for their accelerated programs. I know that these programs calculate grade averages from the last year or two of study and prereqs, and I have excellent grades in all of these. Will my earlier faults be excused?

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I would love to hear some feedback on this as well, as I may potentially be in a similar situation!

OP, have you gotten any feedback on this elsewhere?

Best of luck!

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York weights your cumulative GPA and your last year GPA equally. What is your cumulative GPA?

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@ambrr, thanks so much for your response!

I personally have a 3.0 cumulative GPA (:() and a 3.6 GPA in my last 30 credits....

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If you can get your cumulative GPA up to around a B or B+ and your GPA in your last year's worth of credits is high you should be able to get into a decent number of programs I think. Most programs aren't going to bar you acceptance over a few bad grades if since then you've improved enough to bring your GPA up to a competitive one. Just note schools don't round up your GPA so for example a 2.95 GPA is not the same as a 3.0, which is often the minimum.

I've seen people get into York with B averages. Many of them are students whose GPAs in their last 30 credits are notably higher than their cumulative GPAs, so like you they are students who didn't do so well in the beginning, but improved and brought their GPAs up. You should just scroll through the threads for the schools your interested in and look at the GPAs of students who are accepted and see how you compare, especially in the next few weeks which is when most acceptances are awarded.

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@carlyhylton No problem! Your GPA in the last 30 credits is good. Ideally, you pull up your cumulative by taking some more courses now (I think you mentioned you still have to get some prereq's done).

Another thing to note is when choosing between similar applicants, they will sometimes refer to the GPA in the prerequisite courses. If you can make sure those are high, it should improve your chances. My cumulative GPA was in the B to B+ range, and I got accepted into York this year. My GPA in the prerequisites was around an A.

I think you should definitely apply, because you will never know unless you try and I think you've definitely got a shot.

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