McMaster Commerce and IBH Supplementary Applications Explained
McMaster’s DeGroote School of Business has two direct-entry programs with two very different supplementary applications. Commerce has an optional written one that the school says is highly recommended. Integrated Business and Humanities (IBH) has a mandatory six-question video interview on Kira Talent, one attempt per question. Here is what each asks and how to prepare.
Commerce: the optional written application
- Optional but highly recommended, in DeGroote’s own words. Read that as: applicants with strong files complete it, and a file without one is judged on marks alone.
- Seven short questions about your extracurriculars and activities outside school, plus three long-answer questions.
- Completed on McMaster’s admissions platform with your MacID. No video.
- No generative AI. DeGroote says its use may result in removal from the applicant pool.
- Timing. In the last cycle it opened December 1 and closed April 17, 11:59 PM ET, much later than most Ontario supplementary applications. Don’t let the late date make it an afterthought.
DeGroote says it is looking for achievement, leadership and a passion for the world of business, and its preparation advice mentions leadership, resilience and motivation. That is three long answers with three obvious homes: one story of something you led with a result, one of something that went wrong and what you did, and one honest account of why business and why now, with something concrete you’ve done about it.
IBH: the mandatory video interview
- Six questions on Kira Talent, asynchronous. For each: 60 seconds to prepare, 90 seconds to respond. About 10 to 20 minutes in total.
- One attempt per question. Trying to gain extra time is treated as academic dishonesty and flagged by the platform.
- A résumé is submitted before the interview.
- Practice questions are unlimited and at least two are required. DeGroote says they exist to test your technology and teach the interface, not to preview the real questions.
- Reviewed by a committee; decisions are posted to the student portal three to four weeks after the deadline, which in the last cycle was February 2.
IBH is a business degree taught alongside humanities: ethics, history, philosophy, and a lot of reading and discussion. Expect the interview to test whether you can hold a view and reason about it, not just whether you have led a club. Six questions in a row is also the longest video interview in Ontario admissions, and stamina matters: the fifth answer is usually the weakest.
Sixty seconds to think, ninety to answer
Sixty seconds is enough to pick a story or a position and to decide your last sentence. Ninety seconds is enough for a full story if the setup is one sentence, and long enough for a padded answer to show. For opinion questions, the first sentence is your position. For story questions, the first sentence names the situation. Have a second beat ready for the last twenty seconds: a reflection, a cost, or what you would do differently.
Fifteen practice questions in the IBH format
AcceptMe practice questions written to IBH’s blend of business and humanities: judgement, ethics, argument and leadership. Not DeGroote’s questions. Run six at a time on a 60/90 timer.
- Should a company ever be allowed to keep a product on sale that it knows is slightly less safe than it could be? Take a position and defend it.
- Tell me about a time you changed a group’s decision without being in charge of it.
- Name a book, film or idea from outside business that has changed how you think about business.
- Describe a time you had to choose between being honest and being kind. What did you do?
- What is one thing most people your age believe about money that you think is wrong?
- Tell me about a time you led something that failed. What was your part in the failure?
- Should universities teach students to be employees or to be founders? Pick one.
- Describe a time you worked with someone whose values were different from yours. What happened?
- If you ran a company with a hundred employees and had to cut ten percent of costs, what would you protect first, and why?
- Tell me about a time you were persuaded by someone you initially disagreed with.
- What is a business you admire for a reason that has nothing to do with its profits?
- Describe a moment when you realised you had more responsibility than you thought.
- Is it possible for a company to be too transparent? Give an example.
- Tell me about a time you kept a commitment that cost you something.
- Why business and humanities together, rather than one or the other?
A worked answer
Employees, and I say that as someone who wants to start something. The skills that make a good founder are mostly the skills that make a good employee first: showing up, finishing things, being clear in writing, taking feedback without collapsing. I learned that running a small tutoring business last year. The hard part was never the idea. It was replying to parents within a day and keeping a schedule that didn’t fall apart, which is exactly what my part-time job had taught me. A university that tries to produce founders tends to produce people who are good at pitching and bad at Tuesday. The one thing I’d add is that being a good employee should include the habit of asking whether the job should exist at all, and that is where the founder instinct starts. So: teach employees, but teach them to be uncomfortable.
The Commerce long answers
DeGroote doesn’t publish the exact prompts in advance, so prepare the three stories above and write each as a STAR-shaped paragraph or two: situation in a sentence, a decision in the middle, a result with a number, one honest line of reflection. The seven short activity questions want depth over breadth; three activities with results beat ten memberships.
Mistakes specific to DeGroote
- Skipping the optional Commerce application. “Highly recommended” from an admissions office means do it.
- Treating IBH like a business-only interview. Half the program is humanities; the questions will show it.
- Fading on question five. Practice six in a row, not one at a time.
- Using the practice questions as prediction. DeGroote says outright they don’t reflect the real ones.
Where to go from here
Six videos in a row on the Kira platform is the IBH format, so read the Kira Talent interview guide for what the platform does and does not allow, and the Ontario supplementary applications guide to see how the DeGroote deadlines sit against your other applications. Then practice the endurance: an AcceptMe custom interview set to 60 seconds of prep and 90 of answer, six fresh questions back to back, is the only way to find out what your fifth answer sounds like.
Keep reading
- McMaster Arts & Science Supplementary Application: 5 Questions All five McMaster Arts & Science questions, what each is really asking, a worked 1,500-character answer and the mistakes that sink applications.
- Rotman Commerce Supplemental Application: Questions and Tips Rotman Commerce supplemental application format, a sample pre- shared video answer and fifteen practice questions for the random video and written parts.
- Supplementary Applications in Ontario: Every Program Compared Every Ontario business and engineering program with a supplementary application: what each asks, the video and written timings, and all the deadlines.