When 94% is not 94: What University of Waterloo’s engineering admission tool reveals about high school grades

Out of a pool of 14,505 applicants, Wang had earned one of approximately 810 spots in the faculty. Another round of offers will go out in May to fill the remaining 915.

The 18-year-old Don Mills Collegiate student had to contain his excitement “because my teacher was trying to teach, and I didn’t want to disturb the peace.” But once lunchtime arrived, “I went all out and celebrated, and told all my friends.”

Wang had submitted a strong application, demonstrative of his hard work: a 97 average in three courses from last semester (and on track with marks in the 90s for three additional required courses this term), plus a list of extracurriculars, including helping to manage his school’s robotics team, volunteering at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and working part-time. He also opted to do a video interview to increase his total admission score.

But in a sea of high-achieving applicants for a highly competitive program, it is possible Wang also benefitted from something beyond his control: the adjustment factor.

Unique to Waterloo engineering, the adjustment factor helps admissions sort through its annual flood of applications. A calculation of historical student performance, it is used to figure out if the grades at one high school may be more reflective of success in Waterloo engineering than grades at another. In most simple terms, it is the difference between the average students come in with from high school and the average they end up with at the end of first year.

The adjustment factor recognizes that there is inherent grade drop at university, but also that a 94-per-cent average from different high schools doesn’t guarantee the same academic outcome.

It is also controversial.

In part, because of the secrecy: The university does not publish the list, although its content in recent years has been shared on social media. In fact, the tool’s very existence was mostly public rumour until a 2018 decision by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner upheld a journalist’s request for the data.

The university considers it an internal tool, one they say carries less weight in the admission process than other elements. And they caution against drawing any other conclusions from it.

But some suggest that in the absence of robust data, it’s a tacit acknowledgment of widespread grade inflation. “It’s kind of a vote of non-confidence in the marks being generated by high schools,” said Paul W. Bennett, author of “The State of the System; A Reality Check on Canada’s Schools” and an adjunct professor of education at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

“It lifts the veil on what universities are doing to confront the reality that graduation marks are inflated.”

Meanwhile, some people have misinterpreted the list as a wholesale ranking of schools, from worst to best, because in addition to setting a provincial average, Waterloo also singles out a handful of schools each year.

List identified 62 schools

The 2022 adjustment factor list, released last month in response to a private citizen’s request for access, identified 62 Ontario schools for being either favourably below or unfavourably above the provincial average of 14.4.

For the 27 schools above that average, their students generally experienced a bigger grade drop in first-year engineering than most of their Ontario peers.

Hamilton’s Ancaster High Secondary School topped the 2022 list with 21.4, followed by King’s Christian Collegiate in Oakville (21) and Niagara Christian Collegiate in Fort Erie (20.6). Upper Canada College had the highest adjustment factor of Toronto-area schools at 19.4.

Meanwhile, Don Mills Collegiate — Wang’s school — sat at a more advantageous 9.9.

So for three students with the same 94-per-cent average, but hailing from Don Mills, Ancaster and Upper Canada College, their Fall 2022 admission scores would have been adjusted to 84.1, 72.6 and 74.6, respectively, before other factors were taken into consideration.

Waterloo would not share this year’s adjustment factor so Wang can’t be certain he benefited from it, but he is confident that Don Mill’s track record over the years put him in good stead.

“I like this list,” said Wang. “Of course, I’m a bit biased because it works in my favour.”

The University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program attracts some of the top minds. Last year, almost the entire incoming class had a high school average of more than 90 per cent and nearly two-thirds boasted at least 95 per cent.

The faculty offers 15 undergraduate programs from biomedical to software engineering, with direct entry into a specialty and a required co-op.

Applicants are assigned an admission score based on:

• Their average in six required courses, five of which are the same for everyone: advanced functions, calculus and vectors, physics, chemistry, English, plus one other 4U/4M course;

• A mandatory personal profile worth up to 5.1 points;

• And an optional video interview, which can also boost a score by up to five points.

Minus the adjustment factor.

It’s a tool Waterloo developed more than four decades ago to help identify strong candidates they might have been missing out on, said Bill Bishop, director of admissions for Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering. And more importantly, to ensure students were a good fit for the program.

“We don’t want to take in a student from a school and then have to tell the parents a year later, ‘by the way, your son or daughter couldn’t make it’ … That’s not in anyone’s best interest,” he said.

Factor applied to admission score

Each year, Waterloo calculates an adjustment average for Ontario — this is also done for other provinces and countries where there is enough sound data. For most Ontario students, this is the factor applied to their admission score.

But a separate calculation is made for every Ontario high school that has sent more than 10 students to Waterloo engineering in the past six-years. Outliers, like dropouts, are removed from the equation. The number is statistically analyzed to see if it is representative of the students in the group, and if the gap between it and the provincial average is large enough, the school is assigned its own adjustment factor.

“When we assign an adjustment factor, we believe that it’s a strong indication that those students will either be better than average or below average in terms of how they’ll perform in that transition from high school to university,” said Bishop.

But for some, this obviously rankles. Students stress over being painted with a broad brush. Schools bristle at any hint of academic shortcomings.

“To make any conclusions about Upper Canada College students’ admission-readiness, the quality of their education, the validity of their assessments and their preparedness for university based on this data is unfounded,” UCC told the Star in a statement.

The private, boys-only school, near St. Clair Avenue West and Avenue Road, raised concerns over the small sample size of students, and noted that “the singular appearance of UCC refers to a limited period of time that was highly unique due to the circumstances of the global pandemic.”

Niagara Christian Collegiate also expressed surprise at being on the list for the first time. “We are confident in our program and in our track record of preparing students for university over the past decades.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board disagreed with any suggestion that Ancaster High School inflated marks. “Ancaster High students are admitted based on a combination of their marks and profiles of excellence in activities, leadership, volunteerism, and community involvement,” the board and school told the Star in a statement.

“Students still rise to the top even if they are coming from a high-adjustment school,” Bishop, at Waterloo, assured, adding that all applications get read by admission staff. “We have other tools in our tool kit to select those students.”

In fact, King’s Christian Collegiate, which has had a consistently high adjustment factor — some seven to nine points above average in each of the past seven years — told the Star that 14 students have been accepted into Waterloo engineering since 2015.

“All applicants are assessed individually on their merits, and none are excluded by the adjustment factor,” King’s said in a statement. “We are confident in the work we do to equip our students.”

The ‘big disconnect’

Paul Bennett talks a lot about the “big disconnect” — the gap between student achievement levels and their attainment levels.

His observations come from a lifetime in education, both as a teacher and administrator, including serving as vice-principal academic of Upper Canada College in the 1990s.

“On graduation transcripts, for example, the escalation of graduation marks is so dramatic that it requires careful scrutiny to see the legitimacy of the marks. Those marks are incredibly soft and many are inflated,” he said. “And that is why universities have had to resort to finding other ways of assessing the meaning and validity of marks that are presented by high schools in Ontario and right across Canada.”

Universities often look to things like essays, portfolios or interviews as part of the admission process. But Waterloo may stand on its own in the way it assesses marks.

Some of Ontario’s most competitive university programs — the University of Toronto (engineering science), McMaster University (health sciences) and Western (Ivey business administration) — all told the Star they do not use a tool to differentiate high schools.

Queen’s University, however, when asked about admissions to its popular health sciences and business programs, would not address the existence of such a tool and only provided links to the application process.

After deadline, Queen’s spokesperson Mark Erdman contacted the Star to expand on their earlier statement to say the university “does not make use of any tool to compare grades by schools in our admission process.”

“It’s absolutely essential for schools today to have their own ways of adjudicating graduation marks,” said Bennett. “What Waterloo has done is simply to ensure that the marks that are presented are legitimate.”

Bennett believes that any high school identified by Waterloo, “where the graduating marks are not consistent with how students perform, should be concerned and they should be looking at what the implications are.”

Waterloo shares the adjustment list with educators who request it. Bishop said schools sometimes ask him how they can improve, looking to pinpoint a course or instructor, but there’s not enough precise data to do that.

Preston High School and the Waterloo Region District School Board said they will be reaching out to the university after being made aware that Preston had a high adjustment factor (20). The school expressed confidence in the work of its students and teachers, but told the Star it wants to learn more about how the data is collected and analyzed.

“With a continued focus on student achievement and well-being, we are looking to explore new ways to further enhance the preparation and learning opportunities we provide our students.”

Toronto’s A.Y. Jackson Secondary School seems to have the right formula. The school, at Leslie Street and Steeles Avenue East, has been on Waterloo’s adjustment list for at least the past seven years, and its consistently low-adjustment factor suggests its students have fared better academically than most.

Overinflating marks does nothing to help students prepare for university, said Laila Hassam, an assistant curriculum lead and chemistry teacher at A.Y. Jackson. “If I send a student out of here with an 85 in Grade 12 chemistry or physics and they fail first year, we’re doing a disservice to our students.”

Hassam posits that the school’s success on this front has been the result of a mix of factors: a wide range of science-related courses and clubs; lots of hands-on opportunities to apply knowledge; strong feeder schools and supportive parents.

“We want to send away students that are thoroughly prepared for the academics,” she said. With first-year university students already facing so many other struggles, from living on their own to facing new social situations, “academics should be in the bag.”

Waterloo has not examined the cause for different adjustment factors, and Bishop acknowledges that a student’s academic performance can be impacted by things beyond the classroom, things that are much harder to measure, like maturity, workload, financial pressures. “Transition to university is tough,” he said.

But he points to Waterloo’s high retention rates as proof the adjustment factor has “served us well.”

The adjustment factor is “not perfect,” he said, but “it’s as close as we can get.”

Editor’s note — April, 10, 2023: This story has been updated to include information provided by Queen’s University after deadline.