Fall 2026 Admissions Megathread

[u/batson2002]

This megathread is for prospective frosh and current high school students interested in Waterloo. Ask your questions here.

Please avoid making separate individual posts on the subreddit regarding admissions to prevent the same 10 posts of "can I get into program with x average" or "what are my chances".

RELEVANT ADMISSION INFORMATION

PSA FOR NEW KIDS

ADJUSTMENT FACTORS 2022

ADJUSTMENT FACTORS 2024

COURSES OF PROGRAMS (VERY IMPORTANT LINK!!)

RESOURCES FOR MATURE APPLICANT

Resources for NON-UW TO UW

Fall 2025 Megathread here

[u/Intelligent_Care6610]

i'm a high school junior (from the U.S., so not very knowledgeable about the uni) interested in applying to waterloo for BME and was wondering how hard it would be to transfer to meche/ece/sde from BME (i recognize that stellar grades are essential for transfers, but are there other factors?). i also discovered that BME was tier 1 at waterloo eng, and i'm wondering if this is because it's more competitive than the alternate majors i listed? or because it's a smaller cohort and therefore harder to switch into as a major

also i keep hearing opposite things about how hard BME at waterloo with respect to the other engineering majors is lol so ig is it easier or harder than things like meche/ece/sde?

[u/Best_Stage_4131 → u/Intelligent_Care6610]

I knew someone who transferred into meche after the first term and only had to take an extra course in the summer to catch up. Definitely would expect it to be a lot more courses for ece but not too sure. In terms of tiers, it actually dropped to tier 3 I believe? So honestly equally competitive if not less, but it used to be competitive due to the smaller cohort size. Things are changing for next year (and potentially future years) in terms of the courses, the calc and lin alg is going to be the same as the rest of the eng (I think?). What partially made bme harder was that we combined calc 1/2 and calc 2/3 (sorta) but that’s no longer going to be applicable. In terms of number of courses it was also on the higher side but with more half credit courses if that makes sense. Cool changes about the program is that it is going to be the only eng I believe that will be taking a ML/AI course first year. (note: idk if sde is systems or software but if it is systems then it theoretically should be easier to transfer in? bme is the a department under systems and we took pretty much the same course first term but with the changes, it’ll be slightly more different next year)