McMaster Health Sciences Supplementary Application Guide

McMaster’s Honours Health Sciences program (BHSc) is one of the hardest undergraduate admits in Canada, and the supplementary application counts for more than your marks. It is written, short, and graded blind by several readers. This guide covers the format, how it is scored, what the questions are actually testing, and how to write 1,500 characters that a tired grader remembers.

By the AcceptMe team 9 min read Updated

The format

  • A small number of short written answers. Recent cycles have asked for two or three responses, in some years chosen from pairs of options, each with a hard limit of 1,500 characters including spaces and punctuation. That is about 220 to 260 words.
  • The questions are published by the program on its website each cycle, usually in the autumn, and completed through the platform McMaster names in its invitation email after you apply through OUAC.
  • Graded blind. The program has said each answer is scored on a one-to-seven scale by more than one evaluator drawn from faculty, staff and upper-year BHSc students, with identifying details removed.
  • It outweighs your average. McMaster states that grades and the supplementary application scores are the only things it considers, and that the application carries more weight than the high school average.
  • No generative AI. Treated as an academic integrity violation.
Dates. The program posts each cycle’s questions and deadline together; recent deadlines have fallen in late January to mid-February. Check the Honours Health Sciences supplementary application page for the Fall 2027 questions and date before planning. Add Health Sciences to the university deadline planner and it shows as a date to confirm until McMaster posts it; sign up there for date-change emails and you get one when it moves.

What the questions are testing

BHSc questions are famously unlike anything else in Ontario admissions. Past prompts have asked applicants to design a replacement for the grade point average, to choose which area of university research should face cuts first and defend it, to weigh the risks of a fictional wearable device in an adolescent trial, and to pick apart a government’s claim using a small table of data. Others have asked which of Aristotle’s virtues you find hardest to balance.

The program describes what it is looking for as critical thinking, creativity, self-awareness and authentic communication. Read the past prompts against that list and the pattern is clear. Each question is a small problem with no right answer, and the grader is scoring how you think, not what you conclude. That changes how you write:

  • Commit to a position in the first sentence. Hedging costs characters and reads as not thinking.
  • Show the reasoning, including the step where you considered the other side. “The obvious answer is X, but X fails when… so I’d…” is the shape graders reward.
  • Be concrete. A specific example, a number, a named trade-off. Abstraction is what everyone else writes.
  • Sound like a person. Six readers of a thousand applications notice voice. A slightly odd, honest sentence beats a polished generic one.

Writing to 1,500 characters

Fifteen hundred characters is roughly one long paragraph or two short ones. There is no room for an introduction, a restatement of the question, or a conclusion that repeats the opening. A structure that fits:

  1. Your answer, one sentence.
  2. The strongest reason, with one concrete illustration.
  3. The best objection, and why you still hold the position (or how it changes it).
  4. One closing line that adds something, not one that summarises.

Draft long, then cut to the limit in a plain text editor with a character count. Cutting is where the writing gets good. The application form cannot handle bold, italics or special characters, so write in plain sentences from the start.

A worked example

A practice prompt in the BHSc style: “You are designing a new criterion to replace the grade point average. What would you propose, and why?”

Sample answer, about 1,480 characters

I would replace the GPA with a record of what each student did when they got something wrong. Grades measure the first attempt; almost nothing in a real career is decided on the first attempt. The record would be simple: for each course, one piece of work the student did badly, the feedback they received, and the revised version. A reader would see the gap between the two and how the student closed it. This is harder to game than a grade, because you cannot fake the before without also producing the after, and it rewards the students who improve most rather than those who arrived already knowing the material. The obvious objection is scale: universities cannot read a portfolio for every applicant. I think that objection is weaker than it sounds. Readers would not need every course, only two or three samples, and the reading time is comparable to what admissions already spends on supplementary applications like this one. The stronger objection is that students at well-resourced schools get better feedback, so their “after” looks better. I don’t have a full answer to that, except that the GPA has the same flaw and hides it. At least this version shows the reader what the student was given to work with.

Position in sentence one. A concrete mechanism. Two objections, one answered and one honestly not. No conclusion. That last move, admitting a limit, is what “self-awareness” looks like on the page.

The same prompt, answered the way most applicants answer it

A typical draft, about 1,400 characters

The GPA is a widely used measure of academic performance, but it has many limitations. It does not capture creativity, leadership, resilience or the many other qualities that make a successful student. I would propose a more holistic criterion that takes into account a student’s extracurricular involvement, volunteer work, personal growth and passion for learning. For example, students could submit a portfolio showcasing their achievements inside and outside the classroom. This would give admissions committees a fuller picture of who the student is as a person. Of course, there are challenges with this approach, such as the time required to review portfolios and the potential for subjectivity. However, I believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, as it would reward well-rounded students and encourage a healthier approach to education. In conclusion, while the GPA has its place, a holistic criterion would be a fairer and more meaningful way to evaluate students.

  • Fix: the first sentence restates the prompt and the last one summarises. Together they are 300 characters that score nothing.
  • Fix: “holistic” and “well-rounded” are the words every applicant reaches for; there is no mechanism, only a category. The strong answer above proposes something specific (the before-and-after record) that could actually be built.
  • Fix: the objection is raised and waved away (“the benefits outweigh the drawbacks”). The strong answer concedes one and adjusts.
  • Tighten: four abstract qualities listed (creativity, leadership, resilience, passion); none shown.
  • Works: the portfolio idea is a real proposal. Build the whole answer around how it would work and what it would miss, and this draft becomes the strong one.

Practice prompts in the BHSc style

These are AcceptMe practice prompts, not McMaster’s questions. Use them to rehearse the shape: position, reason, objection, close, all inside 1,500 characters.

  1. A hospital can fund one thing: a new imaging machine that helps 200 patients a year, or a community nurse program that helps 2,000 people avoid needing the hospital. Choose, and defend it against the strongest objection.
  2. Pick a rule at your school that everyone follows and nobody has questioned. Argue that it should be abolished, then say what would go wrong if it were.
  3. A wearable device claims to detect early signs of anxiety in teenagers and alert their parents. List the two questions you would insist on answering before allowing it in a school, and why those two.
  4. You are shown a chart claiming that a new study technique raised test scores by 30 percent. What is missing from the chart, and what would convince you?
  5. Which is more dangerous in a health professional: too much confidence or too little? Answer with an example from your own life.
  6. Describe something you believed strongly two years ago and no longer believe. What changed, and what does that tell you about how you form beliefs now?
  7. If you could make one piece of information mandatory on every food label, what would it be, and what would you accept losing to make room for it?
  8. A friend tells you they have decided to stop taking a medication their doctor prescribed. What do you say, and what do you deliberately not say?

Mistakes specific to the BHSc application

  • Writing about wanting to be a doctor. The questions are not about your goals, and readers see that pivot constantly.
  • Answering the question you wish had been asked. The prompts are precise. Answer the actual one, including its second half.
  • Balance instead of a position. “There are many perspectives” is a way of not thinking.
  • Polishing out your voice. Edited by three adults, every application sounds the same. Cut, don’t smooth.
  • Any use of generative AI. The program says so explicitly, and the essays are read by people who have seen the output.

McMaster’s other written supplementary applications, for Arts & Science and Commerce, use the same 1,500-character limit and reward the same habits. If iBioMed is your other McMaster choice, the iBioMed supplementary application guide covers its Kira videos, which are a different exercise from these essays.

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