This Week In University Counselling: Grade 12
april 18-28
Appointments to see YOUR university counsellor
To see your assigned University Counsellor, you must make an appointment using our on-line booking system.
To book an appointment, you need to be logged into the Brentwood system through your school email account. Also, you must ensure that you have opened your Google Calendar at least once to ensure that the times between the two systems are in sync.
Click the button to proceed to our Appointment Booking page:
TAKE NOTE: the entire University Counselling team will be away April 27-30, attending a conference. If you have tasks for May 1 that need to get done, please plan on booking an appointment BEFORE these dates... before Regatta!
CLC & Your Capstone Projects
You will be booking a time to Present your Capstone Project to your Advisor BEFORE THE END OF THE MONTH!
Please check your CLC Google Classroom for all the information you need to ensure everything is complete and submitted.
Please see the Career Education website for details about your Capstone Project.
graduation requirement: 30 hours of work experience
One graduation requirement that often gets overlooked by students is that they need to accumulate 30 hours of work experience--volunteer, paid, or interning hours--during the period from Grade 10 to 12. THESE HOURS THEN NEED TO BE LOGGED INTO x2VOL TO BE VERIFIED.
The job of chasing Grade 12s on this issue is exhausting, so we are pulling out the stops to make folks aware. The following Grade 12s have still NOT logged their required 30 hours (as of Thursday, April 17):
Leo C., Abigail G., Kade G., Alexander L., Jasper M., Mila W.
HOUSING: Canadian universities
While most universities will guarantee housing to you if you receive an offer, there are some schools which require further action to confirm your interest in campus housing and others where a separate application for residence is required. These schools include: Alberta, UBC, Calgary, Lethbridge, Simon Fraser, Toronto, Victoria. In some cases, the applications for housing are open now (Alberta, UBC) and in others the application will open later in the term.
Here are the notables:
UBC, UVic, Simon Fraser
You must submit a separate housing application ($50 application fee) by May 1 to be guaranteed a place in residence.
Alberta
You may have paid an additional $25 when you applied for admission to indicate that you would be applying for residence. You must submit your application for housing by April 30 to be guaranteed a place in residence
Calgary, Dalhousie
You must submit a separate housing application ($50 application fee) by May 1 to be guaranteed a place in residence.
Lethbridge
Housing is NOT guaranteed for any student... you should apply for housing ASAP to increase your chances of getting a place in housing. April 1 is the deadline to qualify for 1st Round of Offers.
Toronto
You needed to complete their housing profile (StarRez) via your JoinUofT account by March 31 to secure a place in residence. If you did not do this and plan on attending University of Toronto, you will now need to look into alternative housing as accessing residence now will be virtually impossible!
Concordia
You must submit a separate housing application ($100 application fee) by May 1.
Most other universities guarantee residence to admitted first year students, but application forms need to be completed and (sometimes very sizable) deposits need to be paid by a deadline (later in May and into early June). Be sure to investigate what your school of choice requires of you.
If you have questions regarding university residence, please book an appointment with your university counsellor.
Admission offers: action required
All Offers of Admission will have a deadline or expiry date associated with then. You must confirm what your deadline is to accept an offer. Once it is expired or past the deadline, the Offer of Admission is gone forever. We cannot work miracles to get them back!
Virtually all universities require a deposit of some kind to be paid to accept your Offer of Admission (except in Ontario). This often needs up to a week to process, so do not delay in accepting your Offer of Admission... give yourself plenty of time before the deadline to accept.
May 1 tends to be a very common deadline to accept an Offer of Admission...
Admission Decisions
Whether it's good or bad news, PLEASE let us know when you receive admission information from your university choices. WE REALLY WANT TO KNOW THE OUTCOME OF YOUR APPLICATIONS!!!
We require this information from you:
to have a complete picture of what is happening with applications,
to promote your achievements!
it helps us understand how universities are making their decisions.
admission offers to ontario universities
If you have received an offer from a university in Ontario, there will be an expiration date associated with that offer.
You must respond through OUAC to the offer by that date or else it the offer of admission will be lost… forever… and there is nothing we can do to fix that! Please check to see when your offers expire. If you are uncertain as to the expiration date, please make an appointment with one of the University Counsellors to have a look on OUAC, and to discuss how to proceed with the offers. OUAC allows you to accept only one offer at a time but accepting an offer does not impact any other offers that have been given or applications still awaiting a decision.
university choice
As you consider which university admission offer you want to accept, it is imperative that you consider the conditions of your offers to ensure that you will be able to meet them come the end of the year. In some cases, you have very little room for your academic average to change, and so meeting those conditions might be challenging. It would be wrong of you to choose a university if the chances of meeting the conditions is low!
Please meet with your University Counsellor to discuss your options.
COURSE REGISTRATION
At some universities, their system for Course Registration for next year is already open! If you are planning on attending, you need to ensure your offer is accepted and map out your courses sooner rather than later. Your University Counsellor is happy to assist you in navigating the system… you usually just need a little guidance before you can do it on your own!
Course registration at some other popular universities will happen later. Here are some key timelines:
Now... Alberta; Calgary; Lethbridge
In June... but after the end of the school year: Dalhousie, McGill, UBC, Victoria, Western
In the summer: Queen’s, Waterloo, Toronto, and most US colleges
UK Admission Decisions
News about your applications to UK universities is trickling in. There is no predicting when any one university will make their decisions, although they need to ensure that they push out all decisions by the first week of May. Students have until the first week of June to decide, so there is plenty of time. Plus, you cannot take any action until all of your choices have a decision posted on UCAS.
In other words... please be patient.
international student visas
International students who will need to apply for visas to attend university in either the US or Canada need to make sure they are getting on with the process. The University Counsellors can assist you in applying, but as the process takes time, we need to get started.
For a Study Permit to attend a Canadian university, you need to decide whether to apply to extend your current permit while you are here at Brentwood or to apply for a new study permit in your home country.
For an F-1 Study Visa to attend an American university, you will need to attend an interview at the US embassy in your home country, but everything can and needs to get done well before you can book that interview.
In both cases, documentation proving that you have the financial resources available to cover the costs of your education for next year, at least, is required, so parents will have to move on that.
For a Tier-4 Student Visa to attend university in the UK, the process can only begin once you have an unconditional offer, so in the summer. The application process, though, is efficient, and can easily be completed in the summer months.
Please see your University Counsellor if you want to discuss these matters further.
scholarships
We will keep our Scholarships page updated with all the information we have on national, provincial, and local awards. Click to the button to proceed to our Scholarships page: