McMaster iBioMed Supplementary Application: What Applies

McMaster’s Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences program (iBioMed, program code IBEHS) is admitted through the Faculty of Engineering, and it uses the faculty’s Kira supplementary application: three recorded video answers with ten seconds to prepare and one short written answer, about twenty minutes in all. There is no separate iBioMed form. Here is exactly what applies, the Fall 2027 dates, and practice prompts in the format.

By the AcceptMe team 8 min read Updated

What applies to iBioMed, exactly

iBioMed is jointly offered by the Faculties of Engineering and Health Sciences, but for admissions it sits inside Engineering. McMaster Engineering’s supplementary application page lists the programs it is mandatory for: “Engineering, Integrated Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences (iBioMed), Computer Science, or the Bachelor of Technology.” The faculty FAQ adds that “only one application is required if you are applying to more than one of these programs.” So if you have applied to both Engineering 1 and iBioMed, you complete one Kira application and it is read for both. If you have applied only to iBioMed, you complete the same one.

The program itself is small and the bar is higher than for Engineering 1. The IBEHS 1 admissions page sets a minimum admission average of 90 per cent and adds that “more competitive applicant students will need to be at least a few percentages higher.” Target first-year enrolment is 155. Prerequisites are ENG4U, MCV4U, SCH4U, SPH4U and SBI4U, with Advanced Functions expected as well; the Biology requirement is the one that separates iBioMed from the rest of the faculty. For Fall 2027 McMaster also lets you rank up to two specific programs in one application to Engineering and/or iBioMed, and you can apply either to the Discovery Track (pick your program at the end of a common first year) or directly to one of the iBioMed programs.

The format

  • Three video questions. Ten seconds to read each one, then two minutes to record. There is no redo: once you submit an answer you cannot change it.
  • One written question. Seven to ten minutes in total to read the prompt and type your response.
  • Platform. Kira Talent. You get an emailed invitation to the portal within about ten business days of your OUAC application, and you can run the practice questions as many times as you like before you start the real thing. Once you start, McMaster says you have 30 minutes to finish the whole process.
  • Fee. $50 CAD, paid through OUAC when you apply.
Dates for Fall 2027 entry. The OUAC application deadline is January 15, 2027 (codes MEH, or MEI for co-op). McMaster recommends submitting the supplementary application by November 26, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. ET; the final deadline for high school applicants is January 28, 2027 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Scholarship applications close February 19, 2027; first-round offers to Ontario students go out in mid-March. Confirm every date on McMaster Engineering’s supplementary application page and the IBEHS 1 admissions page before you plan around them.

What McMaster says it is assessing

The faculty names four competencies: engagement, collaboration, innovation and creativity, and resilience. It describes the process as holistic, meaning academic performance and the supplementary application are considered together, and it does not publish a weighting or release individual results. The IBEHS 1 page puts it plainly: “this holistic assessment will help us decide who we will welcome to our McMaster community.” With four named competencies and three video questions, the sensible bet is one strong story for each competency, ready to reach for in ten seconds.

What is different when you are applying to iBioMed

The questions are not different. The pool is. Everyone in the iBioMed pool is above 90 per cent and most are a few points above it, so grades separate applicants less than they do in Engineering 1, and the supplementary application does more of the work. Three things follow.

  • Do not turn every answer into a medicine pitch. iBioMed graduates leave with either a Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering or an Honours Bachelor of Health Sciences in the HESE stream. The program is about designing health solutions, and first year is built around a Health Solutions Design Projects course. A reviewer scoring collaboration wants to hear how you worked with people, not why you want to be a doctor.
  • Show the engineering half. Many iBioMed applicants come with strong biology and volunteering and thin evidence of building or debugging anything. If you have made something, fixed something or iterated on a design, that is the story to use for innovation and creativity.
  • Resilience is a named competency, so have a real one. A hard course you got through by working harder is not a resilience story. Something that went wrong, what you changed, and what you would do differently is.

Ten seconds changes how you prepare

Ten seconds is long enough to read the question and pick a story, and nothing else. Your first sentence has to be reflexive: name the situation, or for a scenario, name the first thing you would want to know. Two minutes is roughly 260 words, which is one story told properly with a reflection at the end, not two stories. The written answer is the one place you can think in the open: read the prompt twice, decide your point, then write it in three short paragraphs.

Eight practice prompts in the McMaster format

These are AcceptMe’s practice prompts, written to the four competencies McMaster publishes and to the health-solutions framing of iBioMed. They are not McMaster’s questions. Run each with ten seconds of prep and a two-minute clock; use the last one as a seven-minute written answer.

  1. Tell us about a time you worked on something with people who knew more than you in one area and less in another. How did the group decide who did what?
  2. Describe a problem you noticed in how a hospital, clinic, pharmacy or care setting works, from any visit or job. If you had six months and a small team, what would you try first?
  3. Tell us about something you built, coded or repaired that did not work the first time. What did you change, and how did you know the change was the right one?
  4. Describe a commitment you kept up for more than a year. What kept you going after the novelty wore off?
  5. Tell us about a time a plan fell apart close to a deadline. What did you do in the first hour?
  6. You are on a team designing a device for people who cannot easily use their hands. What would you want to learn from them before you sketch anything, and how would you learn it?
  7. Tell us about feedback that changed how you do something. Who gave it, and what specifically is different now?
  8. Written: A school wants to reduce the number of students who skip breakfast. Propose one intervention, explain who it would help and who it might miss, and describe how you would find out whether it worked.

A worked answer

Sample answer to prompt 3, about 1 minute 50

In Grade 11 I built a timer for my grandfather’s pills, because he has three medications at different times and kept missing the middle one. Version one was an Arduino, a buzzer and a tiny screen that showed which compartment to open. It worked on my desk. In his kitchen it failed in two days, because the buzzer was too quiet over the television and the screen was too small for him to read without his glasses, which he never had on. I had built it for me, not for him. So I sat with him for an afternoon and watched what he actually did around the times he took pills, and the answer was that he always turned on the kettle. Version two was a light strip on the counter beside the kettle that glowed a different colour for each medication and stayed on until he pressed a large button. No screen. I knew it was better because I kept a sheet on the fridge for three weeks and he missed one dose instead of nine. The thing I took from it is that the first prototype tells you what you got wrong about the person, and that is its real job.

That answer has a build, a failure, a specific reason for the failure, a change, and a measurement. It shows innovation and creativity without ever using either word, and the closing reflection is one sentence, which is all two minutes allows.

Mistakes specific to iBioMed

  • Assuming there is an iBioMed form. There is not. It is the Engineering Kira application, once, for every Faculty of Engineering program on your OUAC.
  • Missing the recommended November 26 date and then discovering in January that the portal invitation takes up to ten business days to arrive.
  • Writing a script during the ten seconds. You cannot. Pick the story and start talking.
  • Three answers about wanting to help people. Wanting to help is a motive, not a competency. Each answer needs something you did.
  • Treating the written question as an afterthought. It is a quarter of the application and the only untimed-feeling part. Structure it.
  • Forgetting SBI4U. Biology is a prerequisite for iBioMed and not for Engineering 1. Check your timetable in Grade 11.

Where to go from here

The McMaster Engineering supplementary application guide goes deeper on the ten-second format and has fifteen more scenario questions that apply to iBioMed unchanged. If you are also holding a Health Sciences application, the McMaster Health Sciences guide covers a completely different written format and the two should not be prepared the same way. The guide to Kira Talent interviews explains what the platform does and does not let you do with notes and retakes, and the Ontario supplementary applications hub lines up McMaster’s January 28 date against every other program you are applying to. When you are ready to hear yourself answer a question you have not seen with ten seconds to think, run an AcceptMe custom interview at those timings and read the transcript back.

Keep reading