The 5P university admissions strategy – Program
In an info session for parents held at a local library earlier this month, a US educational counselor, Matthew Greene, describes what he calls his “5Ps” of university admission:
program, performance, preparation, passion and presentation
Here’s my take on these strategies for Ontario home schoolers, starting with the first one.
Program:
For traditionally-schooled students, this would mean take the most challenging courses, even if it means you may earn a lower grade. This advice is applicable to Ontario home schoolers to a certain extent.
If you are following the “Top Six” route, then you will already be taking six “honours level” courses. As long as the prerequisite courses are included among those six, then the other “U” courses really don’t matter. So in fact, a common Ontario strategy is in fact to take a balance of required, interesting, and “easy” courses. If they are not prerequisites, then the universities will not care too much whether you took a history, food nutrition, or a science course to fill out your Top Six. They are all honours level courses, and none are weighted more heavily than others or considered to be significantly “better” than others. You can be sure that traditionally-schooled kids are trying to sneak a few of the supposedly “easier” courses into their top six, so don’t worry about doing that yourself.
If your home schooling program includes graded non-credit courses, then don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. These courses may have “something to prove” in the eyes of the university since admission departments can’t be sure that they do in fact compare to the Ontario 12U courses (even though they in fact may be far more challenging). This is where the program strategy is most applicable. If you choose to take an Economics course, for example, through an institution other than an approved accredited Ontario school, then do take the one with the most impressive sounding syllabus, the greatest depth of content or the most academic textbook. Since grades in these courses are only used in the admission process in a “holistic” way, and not to calculate an admissions average, the grade will be less important than convincing the university that you are prepared for the challenge of university level work.
If instead you are simply following a textbook, using a tutor or choosing a similar self-study method that does not involve a final grade, do be sure to include advanced-level topics and stretch yourself with your level of study. Students considering business, science, mathematics, computer science, architecture or engineering, for example should include the study of Calculus in their programs either formally or informally. But, don’t feel bound to simply follow the Ontario curriculum, which removed much of its calculus content from its senior math course less than a decade ago. Study for the AP Calculus exam (even if you find yourself unable to write the exam itself), find the old “red calculus book” that was used for years in Ontario high schools or find a first year university calculus text book and learn calculus like we did in the good old days. (Great strategy: if you know which university you wish to attend, use its own first year calculus book to prepare!)
The bottom line is that program selection is much less important for Ontario university applicants than for US applicants, simply because Ontario has already designated a certain list of courses as the required selection pool of “university entrance” courses. If you take six 12U credits, then you generally be treated like a traditionally-schooled Ontario applicant, so there is little strategy involved other than to be well prepared for the courses you need and to do well in them. It is if you avoid these credit courses, however, that the strategy takes on greater significance. In this case, your application may be judged on an individual basis and the admissions officers will have to examine your high school program more carefully. Or, you may choose to rely on the strength of standardized test scores, such as SAT Subject Tests, in which case you will want the strength of a solid educational foundation behind you, not an easily-awarded high mark.
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