transfer applicants
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Students from within UW or external students who are at university and wish to transfer to our program must meet the same requirements as those coming from high school. If you are deficient required courses, you may still apply, however, you must show that you are enrolled in the courses when you apply. If you are missing any required courses, you must take and complete the course(s) with a minimum grade of 70%, 75% for English for an offer of admission to be valid. Non-completion of the courses will cause the offer of admission to be revoked. The required high school credits may be taken at high school, at night school, at summer school or taken as year one university high school equivalency courses.
Transfer applicants whose current study is outside of architecture do NOT get bumped ahead of the Grade 12 applicants. Almost every course in our degree is core (only 4 electives over 4 years...), and the courses are very directed towards learning architecture. There are few courses at other universities that could be considered equivalent. So, even if a student has 3 years of engineering, art or science, they will be applying to Year One architecture. Year One only starts in September. Transfer credits are only assessed if the applicant is successful. We do not "pre-review" transcripts for transfer credits.
If you are currently studying at the University of Waterloo, you should complete a Plan Modification/Application for Internal Transfer form, available from the Registrar's Office website at www.registrar.uwaterloo.ca. The form is listed under the forms menu at the top. Completed forms should be returned to the Registrar's Office, Needles Hall, by February 13th. This will initiate the application process to the School. Students enrolled in other degree programs at the University of Waterloo need to go through the same admission selection processes as external applicants to the program.
We look through transfer students or mature students' files "by hand". We still need to see the same high school data, but we also look through your letters of explanation and grades from other university courses. If you have truly done badly in your current program, we need to see a good letter of explanation to explain your poor performance.
If you are currently enrolled in another program, we would recommend continuing. If you wish to take some courses to prepare you better for the transfer, we would recommend taking courses in Fine Art (to help with your portfolio) and History and advanced English courses (to assist with writing and cultural studies). Life drawing is always recommended. We look for independent critical thinkers, not students who need all "art" based projects prescribed. The use of "portfolio schools" is strongly discouraged.