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In Ontario, Canada we don't have standardized tests to get into university. Grade inflation is the worst it's ever been. We don't even have GPAs because it's too coarse a distinction. Virtually all serious competitors to top schools graduate with a 97-99% average in their top 6 grade 12 courses. Many graduate with 100%. Even then most students with 98s get rejected from schools like Waterloo in Computer Science.

If taken at face-value, that means students can't make any mistakes in their last year of high school. That's across two semesters worth of tests in several subjects. Imagine if failing a test worth 10% of a course was enough to prevent you from going to a good university because it dropped your average across 6 courses from a 98% to a 97%. (10%/6 = 1.67%)

Some teachers will give easy tests that are difficult to not get 100% on. Other teachers will make up the numbers entirely.

Regardless you still have to spend time and money on extracurriculars since the 98% is a bare minimum. This means student activities and clubs aren't for socializing. They have been co-opted as a mechanism to create 10-person executive bodies so students can show they had leadership roles when applying to uni. A club that actually meets for its stated purpose imposes too much of a time commitment since competitive students need multiple leadership roles on their application.

The University of Waterloo has an entire series of math competitions as a sneaky way to administer standardized testing to potential CS or math students. This gives them a competitive advantage over other schools. Waterloo also has a comprehensive dataset of "adjustment factors" to weigh your average differently depending on your high school. This has been in place for a decade.

Schools like the University of Toronto force you to apply to computer science after your first year. They admit everyone but only a small amount of students get to continue into high-demand programs such as CS (this is called POSt). This incentivizes you to sabotage your classmates to look better, especially when many classes' grades are curved. Why would you attend a study group and help your competitors? This creates a high-pressure and negative environment. e.g. Three people killed themselves in the same computer science building at U of T in the two years before the pandemic.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/students-criticize-u-of-t-a...

Our top universities select for undergraduates that are skillful at creating fake leadership roles for themselves and sabotaging others to look better by comparison.

At least standardized tests require you to study.

1 comments

>>Regardless you still have to spend time and money on extracurriculars since the 98% is a bare minimum. This means student activities and clubs aren't for socializing. They have been co-opted as a mechanism to create 10-person executive bodies so students can show they had leadership roles when applying to uni. A club that actually meets for its stated purpose imposes too much of a time commitment since competitive students need multiple leadership roles on their application.

Granted it's been over 25 years since I graduated, but I remember that Canadian universities (across the country) had a relatively "bare" set of requirements to get in, namely your grades. Extracurriculars, from what I recall, had no bearing on a high school graduate's university application. This also made it somewhat impersonal, but at least it was straightforward.

Have things changed now that (perhaps only Ontario) universities will also look at extracurricular to decide between candidates on the bubble?

>>Waterloo also has a comprehensive dataset of "adjustment factors" to weigh your average differently depending on your high school. This has been in place for a decade.

Rumour was that this was also in full force over 25 years ago for all Canadian universities, not only Waterloo, and not just in the last decade.

>>Extracurriculars, from what I recall, had no bearing on a high school graduate's university application. This also made it somewhat impersonal, but at least it was straightforward.

Ontario universities love extracurriculars now as the grades have inflated. The competitive top-tier programs require supplementary applications for each school. The Waterloo AIF in particular gets graded and then added to your adjusted high school mark, and is required for CS and engineering. I think other schools have supplementary ones that are sometimes optional if a program is less competitive.

When you have thousands of students with a 98%+ it becomes impossible to differentiate. Over 40% of Waterloo students graduated high school with a 95 or above.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/an-explosion-in-a-students-...

It's hard to do a cutoff when you're working with the top 5 percentage points of the scale. Too much noise in the signal.

>>Rumour was that this was also in full force over 25 years ago for all Canadian universities, not only Waterloo, and not just in the last decade.

You're probably right but it's only been public for about a decade. People started making FOI requests for the list and posting it online for anxious high school students. For context the numbers are the expected percentage points your mark will drop by from HS to university.

https://github.com/aayushh-patell/Waterloo-Adjustment-Factor...