Laurier BBA Supplementary Application: What to Write

What Laurier actually asks for

Laurier admits to the BBA on your top 6 4U/M marks first. The program page lists an admission range in the high 80s, with Advanced Functions and English at 70 percent and one of Calculus and Vectors or Data Management at 60. On top of that there is exactly one optional piece: the Applicant Background Summary, or ABS. Laurier’s own wording is that after you apply, you “can choose to strengthen your application” by submitting it, and that it collects “extracurricular information that may be used for admission consideration.”

• No video. There is no Kira interview, no timed written answer, no recorded component of any kind for BBA. If you were bracing for a “Laurier interview,” you are thinking of Ivey or Schulich.
• No references. Nobody is phoned. That cuts both ways: it’s easier to fill in, and the reader has only your words to judge the claim by.
• One form for every Laurier program. If you applied to BBA and to Economics, or to one of the BBA double degrees, you submit the ABS once.
• Five questions. Laurier’s public pages say only that the form collects extracurricular information; in practice it is five questions covering career goals, extracurricular and employment experience, awards, community involvement and anything else you want considered. The exact wording sits inside the applicant portal after you apply, under “Strengthen Your Application,” so read it there before you draft.

“Optional” is doing a lot of work in that sentence

If your average is already in range, you may be wondering whether the ABS matters at all. Laurier’s answer, on its own applying-to-Laurier page, is that it’s “always a good idea to submit the ABS form when you apply, even if you have an average at or above the minimum admission range.” Read that the way it’s meant. The form exists so that an admissions reader looking at an 86 with a real story can say yes, and so that an 89 and an 89 aren’t identical. Laurier does not publish how the ABS is scored or weighted, and nobody outside the admissions office knows. What is known is that it can’t hurt you, it takes an evening, and the people who skip it are betting their top 6 lands comfortably above a line Laurier doesn’t announce in advance.

The double degrees change one thing. The BBA/BSc in Computer Science is a Laurier program and the ABS covers it. The BBA/BMath and BBA/BCS double degrees with Waterloo can be entered from either side; if you apply through Waterloo Mathematics, Waterloo’s AIF applies as well, with its own February deadline.

What each question is really asking

Career goals

Not “where do you see yourself in ten years.” The reader wants to know whether you’ve looked at what business students actually do and whether BBA is a decision or a default. One specific interest beats five plausible ones. A student who says “I want to work in supply chain because I spent a summer watching my uncle’s restaurant lose money on produce that arrived late” has told the reader something a transcript can’t. Name Laurier’s co-op if it’s the reason you applied; it usually is, and saying so is fine.

Extracurricular and employment experience

This is where the form is won. The pattern that fails is a list of memberships. The pattern that works is one or two activities where you can say what you did, what changed, and put a number on it. Paid work counts fully. A shift lead at a grocery store who trained four new hires and cut the closing time by twenty minutes has a better answer than a “member” of six clubs, and the reader knows it. If your list is thin, the no-ECs guide shows how to find the answer in a part-time job or a responsibility at home.

Awards and achievements

List what you have, with the year and what it was for, and stop. Do not pad this with certificates of participation. If you have nothing formal, one line about a concrete achievement that wasn’t awarded, like a top-ten finish in a regional DECA event, is better than a blank and better than a stretch.

Community involvement

Hours matter less than what you were trusted with. “Forty hours at the food bank” is every applicant. “After three months they let me run the Saturday intake desk, and I reorganised the sign-in so the line moved twice as fast” is a person.

Anything else

Use it or leave it, but don’t repeat yourself. It’s the right place for context that explains a mark (a move, an illness, a job that had to happen) and for one thing that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Laurier has a separate personal statement for special circumstances, also due April 25, 2027, so serious situations belong there rather than crammed in here.

Two worked answers

Count what that answer does. Two activities, not six. A number on the problem and a number on the result. A named decision (asking for the shelf) and evidence it mattered beyond the applicant (the second location). One line of reflection, not a paragraph.

Same student. Nothing in the second version is false and none of it can be checked, pictured or remembered. The reader has read that paragraph a thousand times this cycle.

Mistakes that cost applicants

• Skipping it because your average is fine. Laurier tells you to submit it anyway. It costs an evening.
• Submitting it late. April 25, 2027 is the last date Laurier lists, but offers to Ontario students start going out well before then. Within two weeks of applying is the instruction; treat it as the deadline.
• Writing the club instead of the moment. The reader can’t score a membership. Pick the one afternoon where you decided something.
• No numbers anywhere. Dollars, people, hours, percent. If you can’t put a number on it, you probably haven’t said what happened.
• Letting an AI write it. The form is short, untimed and about your own life; polished generic prose is exactly what a tired reader skims. The AI and supp apps guide covers what universities say about this and why your own voice reads better.
• Treating it as your only business application. Most Laurier BBA applicants also apply to Ivey AEO, Schulich, Queen’s Commerce or Rotman, all of which put the same stories on a clock. Write the ABS properly and you have already drafted the material.

Where to go from here

If Ivey AEO is also on your OUAC list, the AEO essays guide takes the two activities you just described for Laurier and shows how to stretch each into a 500-word essay with a reference behind it. If you’re wondering how much any of these forms moves the needle against your top 6, the how-much-does-it-matter guide goes program by program. And for every other deadline on your list, the Ontario deadlines timeline puts them in one calendar so nothing lands on the same night. Then put the pharmacy story in AcceptMe’s Story Bank as your initiative story, run the essay coach over each ABS answer for the missing numbers, and you’ll have the same material ready when Schulich asks for it on camera.