Graduates of the Class of 2016 are busy sifting through university offers, faced with the daunting task of choosing their best fit.
“It’s a huge decision,” says Stuart Swan, Head of University Counselling, noting 395 first- and second-round offers have been received, with additional ones arriving daily. With 109 graduates, that averages 3.6 offers per student thus far.
“We help them talk it through, we never decide for them,” says Mr. Swan of boys who come to Guidance struggling to make a choice. The quality of the program, the size of the school, its distance from home, career opportunities, even the school’s perceived prestige are factors boys are asked to consider when speaking with Mr. Swan and Teri Groves, Associate Head of University Counselling.
As in previous years, early offers of acceptance arrived from some top U.S. colleges. This year these included the universities of Chicago, Northwestern, and Michigan–Ann Arbor. Conditional acceptances came in from Babson College, Boston University, and the University of California Berkeley and San Diego, among several others.
Gary Zhou ’16, one of the school’s best students with a high-90s average, received multiple offers from universities including Rice, Vanderbilt, and Berkeley. He was also accepted into the computer science program at Waterloo University, a highly competitive program with a less than 5% admit rate. In the end, he decided on Brown University, where he joins 2015 graduate,Kunal Khemani.
Ji Sang Jeon ’16 toured and applied to several U.S. universities and after weighing his options will be attending the University of Notre Dame in Indiana come September.
Typically, two-thirds of SAC graduates attend Ontario schools, a trend Mr. Swan sees continuing this year with offers fromWestern University (51), Queen’s University (36), University of Toronto (31),Wilfrid Laurier University (27), McMaster University (20), and University of Waterloo (19).
A number of students have conditional offers from the best business programs such as Queen’s Commerce and Western’s Richard Ivy School of Business. Other programs such as the prestigious health sciences program at McMaster, are not expected to send out offers until later this month. Nikhil Nath ’16 is still weighing his options after being shortlisted on the Queen’s University Accelerated Route to Medical School (QuARMS). This is where Dhruv Krishnan ’15 is finishing his first year, who interestingly, was only the second male accepted in the 18-member program.
Another trend from the Class of 2016 is fewer out-of-province application submissions. In an average year, this represents about 10% of placements but this number is expected to be somewhat lower this year. Still, students have received good news from the University of British Columbia in the west to McGill and Dalhousie University in the east.
About 10% of SAC grads applied to U.K. schools, with acceptances that include King’s College London, University of St. Andrews, University of Bristol, the University of Warwick, University of Nottingham, Newcastle University, and University College, London.
Several athletic scholarships have been offered, including the 2017 hockey placements to Reid Yochim ’16 from Princeton and Mitch Martan ‘16 from Boston College. Football awards were accepted by Josh Carter, Queen’s; Nicholas Grossi, Simon Fraser University; and Andrew Biddell, McGill. As well, returning students Corey Andonovski ’17 and Morgan Baron ’17 have given verbal consent to letters of intent for hockey received from Princeton and Cornell respectively.
Story by Cindy Veitch
