How to get into a university in ....?

To supplement Tsubaki’s accurate description, the majority of Japanese universities look at one thing and one thing only: your score on their entrance exam. They don’t care about your grades in high school, your extracurriculars, your volunteer work at the nursing home for stray kangaroos with Gulf War Syndrome, nothing. Only whether you got a passing score on a single test.

A number of schools have started pooling their tests so that kids can apply to several schools at once, but many still adhere to ‘one school - one test’. If the two schools you want to try for have their tests on the same day, then tough luck, kid. Also, if you fail (or just get sick) on your one chance, then you have to wait until next year to try again.

My main problem with this system is the mentality it breeds. Companies only care about what university you went to, and universities only care about your test score. As a result, a large percentage of students don’t care about anything that isn’t directly connected to the entrance exams. Getting students to volunteer, take classes in non-exam subjects, or just try to learn for the fun of learning rather than rote memorization of facts, is a major uphill battle.

**Say it isn’t so! :eek: Again, I admit my understanding of the American system is poor - so it’s entirely possibly I’m missing something - but to my sensibilities that’s disgusting. (There was a furor down here when a lecturer was accused of giving soft-marks so certain fee-paying (cf HECS) international students could pass. But a “donation” to ensure a pass grade would be outrageous.) **

Sorry, my mistake. The donation was to enable the person to be accepted into required courses. The required courses were necessary in order to graduate in his chosen degree program. He had not been accepted into the required courses because his previous grades were low with only a ‘C’ average. He did not give money to get a higher grade, only to get into a program for witch he would not have otherwise qualified.

This is the standard method of money influence in the American system. donations of money can get you into law school, medical school, or even regular university classes.

That UM points chart is quite revealing. I was interested to see just how little the essay they make you write is worth. It seems that it’s evaluated as either “outstanding” (1 point) or “not outstanding” (0 points).

Hell, you get 4 points if a parent attended the school…

So they’ll be just like all other students in the US and Canada, then?

OAC, for those who don’t know, is (to put an American spin on it) an extra year that Ontario students spent at high school. You graduated an Ontario high school after five years of study, not four. OAC is no longer necessary for Ontario students, hence mnemosyne’s statement. But my view is that if Americans and Albertans and Manitobans and so on can go to university after four years of high school, why can’t Ontarians be expected to?

By the way, mnemosyne, this is just an opinion, and I’m not looking for a debate–I’ll defer to your knowledge of the current situation in Ontario schools and universities. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a university student (twenty years, in fact), but since nobody else has posted anything for Ontario, I’ll give it a try.

I don’t know why the term “OAC” is used; when I was in high school in Toronto, we called it what it was: Grade 13. You could graduate with a Grade 12 diploma, which would get you into community colleges and the like. Students who opted to continue to Grade 13 were generally expected to go on to university.

To get into an Ontario university in those days, you only needed high marks in your Grade 13 subjects. Once again, you needed high marks. And did I mention that you needed high marks? :slight_smile:

Seriously, that was all you needed. There were no SAT requirements, extracurriculars counted for nothing, no interviews with university admissions staff were required, essays weren’t needed. High marks, and high marks alone, got you in. And you did not need to declare a major before entering; that could wait.

One requirement that came in at the University of Toronto a year or two after I started there was this: once accepted to the U of T, all first-year students had to write the English Proficiency Exam. There were some whose English skills were not adequate for university study; this test was designed to identify those students and to get them the help they needed. I believe that failing the test did not jeopardize one’s chances of continuing to study at the university, nor of graduating.

My experience with applying came as a surprise to my wife, who is originally from the United States, and is a product of their school and university system. She did sit the SAT and went through the interviews and wrote the essays and had her high school experience gone over with a fine-tooth comb (and yes, she did do enough extracurriculars to get in). The fact that all I had to do was fill out a form, and authorize my high school to send my marks to the universities I applied to, was totally foreign to her.

And like many of her peers, she started university at age 17, after four years of high school–which, I suppose, gets back to my original question about OAC. She did well starting at that age; why couldn’t an Ontarian?

If I can add a little more opinion, I’d like to see Ontario universities follow the American model a little more, if they don’t already. I knew a few people in my day who either didn’t make it, ot barely squeaked in, because in addition to studying, they were also busy playing sports, or in the drama club, or in the orchestra or working on the newspaper or yearbook or just plain doing something else. That kind of experience produces, I believe, a more rounded person who is perhaps better prepared for university life and life in general than one who does nothing but study. And I knew enough of those.

Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

So it’s a month later, and I finally realise that I had this bookmarked with full intention to come back, so I am bumping this up in order to respond to Spoons:

I was 17 when I finished grade 11, andI had no idea what to do with my life. I was at the normal age coming out of high school in Quebec, and, as I said, I was glad to have Cegep available to “bounce ideas around” regarding what I wanted to do. I don’t believe most of the grade 12 graduating classes of Ontario will only be 17 -the majority will be 18 years old. My comment was mostly about the “double cohort” issue, and all the kids who are “fast-tracking” through high school in order to get ahead of the huge influx we expect for Sept. 2003. I KNOW that some incoming students are barely old enought to drive (and I know this because I work for a program with the Office of First Year Studies, and we have been told about some of the registrants ages). So these are the kids that I don’t believe are ready for University life, and I suppose a lot of it is a projection of how I feel, or felt, at that age. But still, I know a lot of people at my school who just couldn’t COPE with university, even though they “did so well in the more difficult OAC courses”.

I believe that the students in the new Ontarian curriculum will be more or less on the same level as students from the rest of Canada, with the exception of Quebec, which can’t really be compared for (I hope) obvious reasons. But the “in-between” students - those that fast-track, or are on the edges of the new and old curriculum: those students, I think, will have a tougher time, particulary the younger ones. Also, this changes the school demographic quite a bit too, and it might be hard to try and “fit in” at a university when all your peers are 2 or 3 years older and are allowed to drink, and you’re not. Its a big generalisation I know, but still something that has to be considered by the universities, and people like me, who are directly involved with Orientation (frosh) week.

As for what OAC means - it stands for Ontario Academic Credits, and these are the courses that need to be taken in order to be eligible for university, I think. I did not go through this system, so I really am not the one to be criticizing it, since most of what I know is through observations of my friends and other students, as compared to my own experience at Cegep.

As for entrance into Ontarian Universities - English Proficiency is (at Guelph and McMaster, at least) only required if there is reason to believe that your English might not be sufficient (i.e. you did all your schooling in French, or you’re Chinese or something like that). Marks are mainly what is looked at, but a lot of universities also consider extra-curriculars and whatnot to some extent, at least to get a sense of who you are. I know that Guelph doesn’t go only for top mark students, but they also do require a certain entrance average, and a certain average to continue in a program (I think the average is 60 for co-op, 70 for Engineering, etc), You apply to a central agency, the OUAC (Ontario Universities something or other - I totally forget), and they send on your request to the universities you apply to. IIRC, its 85$ to apply to 3 univeristies, and 25$ for more. You do not have to choose a major at any of these universities right away. In fact, I know someone who is in his 6th year with an “undeclared major”, although he is following a particular major, but just simply has yet to let the school know what it is :slight_smile:

It’s funny because I didn’t really do any extra-curricular activities…I mean, I did Mock Trial, Academic Decathalon, and speech, but compared to my peers, I was just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. It seemed all the people I knew were into sports, community service, leadership, homecoming king/queen/royalty, etc etc.
I applied to ten schools, and the only one woh didn’t accept me was Cal Berkeley (although, they did say I was elgible to transfer as a Jr.) IOW, it’s not required that you be absolutely perfect in every way to get accepted into college. My GPA was not a 4.0, my SAT scores were not 1600, and i was not a “leader in my community” or any thing like that. I did take all the Honors and AP classes that my HS offered, however.

pepperlandgirl writes:

> I applied to ten schools, and the only one woh didn’t accept me
> was Cal Berkeley (although, they did say I was elgible to
> transfer as a Jr.) IOW, it’s not required that you be absolutely
> perfect in every way to get accepted into college.

What were the other nine schools, if you don’t mind saying? If Berkeley was the most selective of the colleges that you applied to, it sounds like the places you applied to were mostly only moderately selective schools. Nobody was saying that to be accepted into a moderately selective American university you have to be a “complete student.” In general, to be accepted into a moderately selective American university, it’s enough to have very good (but not perfect) grades, pretty good SAT’s, and perhaps some AP courses, even if you have almost no extracurricular courses. Some of those universities will let in some students with somewhat lesser grades and SAT’s because they excelled in extracurricular activities.

On the other hand, if you want to be accepted at one of the 30 or so most selective colleges in the U.S., without any extracurricular activities (or other sorts of compensating factors as mentioned previously), you better have top-notch grades and SAT’s. It’s at these universities that it’s easiest to see that they let in a small number of students with less than perfect grades and SAT’s because they have great extracurricular attainments.

I didn’t have great extracurricular things, I didn’t have perfect GPA (my GPA was not loaded, they didn’t compute honors more than regular classes), I didn’t have a perfect SAT score, nor perfect SAT II scores. I was accepted to UW-Madison and UF…and as a transfer student to Cornell (update: I’m accepted at Cornell, but probably won’t go).

I did write some good essays, I did have an interview, and I did have a good letter of recommendation, all of which I’m sure helped me get the transfer status. To be accepted for transfer I had to get at least a 3.0 GPA for my first year in college. Did that, applied, and that’s all.

PD. Wasn’t there an article in Time magazine about the complete-student myth?

Agreed. All further education establishments should change so that they are consistant with the Ancient Scottish Universities, who were there first. Problem solved.

The Scottish system of one year highers is often compared favourably to A-levels, in that they allow the student to cover more bases and don’t require specialisation at such a young age.

Part of the issue here is that the weighting of A-Levels to Highers is being questioned. Many claim that following modifications in both systems’ curriculums A-Levels are now over-valued. Consequentaly Scottish students find it harder to gain admission to English Universities, while at the same time English students are being given places over home-based students in Scotland.

Otherwise, what you describe in England & Wales is the much same for Scotland.

Another advantage of the Scottish system. I had sat Highers already and went on to do additional Sixth Year Studies and A-Levels (yes, they are available) the following year. Consequentaly I could get unconditional offers from Universities based on my Highers alone, regardless of how my final year went. This isn’t that uncommon. It makes for a pressure-free year. :slight_smile:

I’d almost forgotten this thread!

Futile Gesture, I’d agree that consistency doesn’t really need to assume either the ancient Scottish or the non-ancient Scottish classification is better, but I would lean towards calling any first degree a Bachelor degree to avoid confusion with post-Bachelor ‘Masters’ degrees. I don’t know how many employers are confused by the ancient Scottish difference – maybe none – but as students I and some of my friends certainly were.

I don’t know enough about the Scottish highers setup to comment, but anything that delays specialisation sounds good to me. I enjoyed my A-levels, but they did push me into certain paths sooner than I was ready. And if that secondary system increases the number of unconditional offers, so much the better – I went to the fifth-rated independent sixth form in England that year (according to their marketing blurb, anyway) and certainly nobody I knew got an unconditional offer.