Ontario University Application Essays: What Admissions Is Reading For

By Connor Engels, OCT · 27 July 2026

Where the writing fits in

Ontario students apply through OUAC, and for many programs the grades do most of the work. But a growing number of competitive programs also ask for a supplementary application: short written responses, sometimes a video, sometimes a list of activities with explanations.

Schools that have asked for supplementary material in recent admissions cycles include Waterloo's Admission Information Form, Queen's Personal Statement of Experience, Western's scholarship and admission supplements, Ivey's AEO application, and program-specific applications at McMaster and the University of Toronto.

Verify before you write. Requirements, deadlines and formats change from year to year, and each program publishes its own. Check the current requirements on each university's admissions page rather than relying on what a friend did last year — or on this article.

What the reader is actually looking for

It helps to picture the person reading it. They have a large stack, limited time, and a set of criteria. They are not looking for the most impressive life. They are looking for evidence that you did something, learned something, and can explain it clearly.

That last part is doing more work than students realise. A well-explained ordinary experience beats a poorly explained extraordinary one, consistently, because the writing is the only evidence they have of how you think.

Specific beats impressive

The most common weakness is abstraction. Students write about qualities instead of events.

"I have always been passionate about leadership and I learned a great deal about teamwork and perseverance."

Nothing in that sentence is checkable, and every applicant writes some version of it. Compare:

"I ran the schedule for a robotics team of eleven people, and for the first two months I did it badly — I assigned tasks by who was available rather than who was suited, and we missed our first build deadline by a week. Rebuilding the schedule around people's actual strengths was the first time I understood what delegation meant."

The second one names a real thing that happened, admits a failure, and draws a specific conclusion. It is more memorable, more credible, and it demonstrates the reflection the first one merely claims.

The activities list trap

When an application asks you to list activities with a short description, students use the space to prove they were busy. The space is better used to explain significance.

Rather than listing every club you joined, choose the ones you can say something real about. Two entries with genuine substance beat eight lines of membership. Depth signals commitment; breadth signals a résumé built for the application.

A structure for short answers

Most supplementary questions give you a tight word limit, which is a mercy — it forces you to choose. A structure that works:

1. Situation — one or two sentences of context. Keep this short; students spend half their word count here.
2. Action — what you specifically did. Not what the group did. Use "I".
3. Result — what happened, including if it did not work.
4. Reflection — what you took from it, and where you have applied it since. This is the part that answers "so what", and it is usually the shortest and most valuable section.

Answer the question they asked

Students prepare one strong story and then use it for every prompt, bending it to fit. Readers can tell. If a question asks about a time you resolved a conflict, an essay about a challenge you overcame is not an answer, however good the story is.

Reread the prompt after your final draft and check that a stranger could match your answer to the question without being told.

Sound like yourself

Applications written to sound mature read as though a parent or consultant wrote them, and admissions readers see thousands. Vocabulary you would not use out loud is the tell.

The same applies, more sharply, to AI-generated applications. The output is fluent, generic and immediately recognisable in a stack — it produces exactly the abstract, quality-listing prose described above. Universities are increasingly explicit about it in their academic integrity policies, and it wastes the one section of the application where you actually get to be a specific person.

Timeline

• Summer before Grade 12. Write down what you have actually done, with details, while you still remember them. Not polished — just a record.
• September and October. Check the real requirements for every program on your list. Note word limits and deadlines.
• November and December. First drafts. Expect them to be too long and too general; both are normal.
• January. Revise, cut, and have one person who knows you read it. Ask them whether it sounds like you.
• Before submitting. Reread each prompt one final time against your answer.

What actually helps

Start earlier than feels necessary, write about specific events rather than qualities, and let someone who knows you check that it still sounds like you. The students who struggle with these are almost never short of things to say. They are short of the time to work out which thing to say, and the specificity to say it well.