[jyunwai]

The admissions process to universities in the province of Ontario in Canada has a direct solution for this, which applies to well-known universities in the global technology industry, such as the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.

Most of these universities look at an applicant's grades for just six courses. After looking at the courses required for certain programs (such as calculus and physics for certain programs), the remainder of the six courses comprise the student's top grades for any courses at the Grade 12 (final year) level.

So, a high school student aiming for a top engineering or mathematics program will not be hamstrung by a poor grade in Grade 12 English, nor will a student aiming for a top international relations program be hamstrung by a poor grade in Calculus. At the same time, the student going into a STEM program will have an exposure to Shakespeare, which can provide inspiration and a rich set of works to explore later in life. The student going into international relations may later be inspired some years later to study mathematics for its beauty as a hobby, some years later.

I remember the feeling that I was wasting time with many of my courses in those years, despite having good teachers for many of them—I thought my time spent on mandatory humanities courses like music took time away from more practical subjects, and I wish I took a programming course (though I did love my English classes). Perhaps this remains true for many students, but I personally took an interest in music performance as a hobby years later in life, and the years-old lessons in music theory came back to me. My English classes also introduced me to literature, which has remained a very important part of my life that has guided me through highly consequential life decisions for the better. It is unlikely that I would have taken an interest in literary works without my exposure to English in school.

[jjmarr]

In 2024 you are not getting into Waterloo CS with anything less than a 99% in your top6. And that's the entry level. If you really want to get in, you have to grind math competitions, clubs, etc.

I go to a mid-tier university (Toronto Metropolitan University) and the admissions average for CS was 97% last year.

The admissions process for universities in Ontario is a joke at this point. Imagine if students going to Harvard instead of SUNY Plattsburgh differed by 2 percentage points in their high school averages.

This means you must be absolutely perfect to have a shot of getting into a good school. In reality, teachers overlook mistakes and just give you the marks needed to get into top school if they think you deserve it. But because everyone does that, you also need to farm extracurriculars.

Maybe I'll write a blog post about this since it sounds like people are interested.

[alephnerd]

This is the same reason why STEM admission became so competitive in UCs in California.

UCs historically admitted using a mix of class rank, GPA, and test scores, but the number of seats at UCs didn't really increase in the past decade+ despite a small baby boom in the 2000s, and the growing prominence of STEM in the 2010s, so the average GPAs and SAT scores for UC admissions skyrocketed.

Plenty of Californians have anecdotes of getting rejected from mid-tier UCs but getting into MIT or Stanford. It's had a downstream impact out-of-state as well, as plenty of Californians now attend out-of-state STEM programs for that reason (played a major role in upleveling UT Austin/UW/UIUC/GT/UW Madison's reputations among STEM-targeting HSers ime) and make STEM admissions harder in out-of-state colleges as well.

That said, education quality for STEM majors is consistent across all UCs so the UC you go to doesn't matter as much academic quality wise.

[theLiminator]

Imo school grades should be disregarded entirely. We should bring back standardized testing, but make the ceiling much higher. Most people should score fairly low on it. This way, you can really see how good people are. At this point, people just get weeded out in university.

This would also help the case of people like Ramanujan, he might score perfectly on the math portion of the standardized tests, and despite poor scores on everything else, he'd be distinguished.

[__turbobrew__]

Are there not standardized exams in Ontario high school? When I grew up in Alberta standardized exams took up half your grade and those could not be fudged by your teacher.

The exams were made by a small panel of teachers and nobody else knew the exam contents until the day of the exam. Everyone across the province takes the exam on the same day and time. Exams were proctored by people external to the school. Exams are again marked by a panel of teachers outside of your school.

Cheating is nearly impossible outside of someone leaking the exam early.

[computerdl]

Although I agree with the sentiment, the Ontario university system doesn't actually work that way. For example for Software Engineering at Waterloo, the admission average is calculated using the five required courses plus whatever your highest course is excluding the former[0].

In practice, I believe every single Ontario university program lists English one of the required courses so it will always be included in your top six average.

[0]: https://uwaterloo.ca/undergraduate-admissions/admissions/adm...

[boringg]

And it should always be included as one of the important courses in Canada. If you can't communicate your thoughts clearly then your thoughts never really translate into the real world.

[ecshafer]

6 courses in your senior year doesn't seem like a great solution. If you figure you take Math, Science, History, English in your senior year, Then take 2 electives, that is basically a full schedule already. Short of replacing one of the poor grades with a freebie like Gym, I am not seeing where that solves the issue. This might be a difference in US and Canadian education, so maybe 6 courses means something different.

[jyunwai]

A mathematics-focused student in Ontario could take Calculus & Vectors, Advanced Functions [1], Computer Science, and Physics—the first two courses should be straightforward for this student.

Though Computer Science and Physics are distinctly different from the mathematics courses, these are still directly useful for a mathematics student to learn—the problem-solving skills should also carry over. Key mathematical discoveries have been inspired by problems in computer science and physics, and many rigorous university-level mathematics books still draw from problems in these fields to motivate certain problems. At the least, they are less laboratory-heavy than Biology and Chemistry (the student could still attempt these subjects, though, and choose to omit the grades for university admissions).

That leaves a couple of other classes—or just one if English is required, as noted by another commenter. My school offered subjects like Grade 12 Drama, Visual Arts, and Music, where much of the grading was effort-based. In my school, most students in my classes saw these courses as a break from other intensive courses, with grades not being as much of a concern. This would allow the student to avoid using a grade for History, Economics, French (or another foreign language), or another subject.

The English requirement would then be a difficult challenge for the mathematics-focused student. I wish I could speak more about what it was like for most of my classmates who went on to study engineering, as many of them took the standard English course (I took a more demanding version of the course, due to personal interest). My classmates at the time did not seem to have an issue with university admissions to competitive programs despite not enjoying the subject at the time, but the other commenter makes a good point that minimum grades for admission standards have increased greatly since then.

--

[1] As an aside: a past classmate—who was brilliant at mathematics and also great with people—later poked fun some years later about the Ontario government's naming for math courses. He said, "there's Grade 11 Functions... and then in Grade 12, there's Advanced (!) Functions." The last I heard, he went on to work as an investment banker at a top hedge fund by profitability in the United States.

[Supermancho]

You can get tested into qualification, by most colleges. Colleges (which includes Universities, State schools, etc) aren't robotic. This is part of the responsibility of the administration. You may get delayed a semester or a year, with a little community college gatekeeping. Dedicated students can always get into a University.

[melagonster]

I like the first reply immediately try to scoff you :) Maybe oop is right, but the real problem is people always try to do this.

[3vidence]

Note here, in the current years, grades / competition has exploded so for the more competitive programs it is nearly impossible to get in without high 90s in all the required courses (English is required for all programs).

So responding to OP, you indeed must be an expert in all subjects to have a chance to study in your field of expertise.

[chongli]

To add to this I feel the need to point out that the writing skill demonstrated by the average mid-length Hacker News comment is above the level you’d need to pass grade 12 English in Ontario. It’s an extremely low bar!

Of course, if English is not your first language then you’re not required to take this course. You have an alternate path which may be a lot more work for an English-language-learner but it doesn’t demand the critical reading and writing skills you would need for grade 12 English.

[ykonstant]

I don't know how things work across the ocean, but here in Greece essay grading is a veritable mystery. The highest grade I ever got in a school essay was 16/20 and I had thought that was my masterpiece. Feedback always seemed cryptic (your essay contains platitudes, you are not developing your point enough etc.) and when I tried asking for specifics I got shrugs and you-still-don't-get-it groans. There are people who get 20/20 on essays consistently, so there must be some method to the grading madness; but I could not crack that method in my school years :(