Queen's Commerce Supplementary Application: PSE and Video

Queen’s Commerce (Smith) asks for three things beyond your marks: the Personal Statement of Experience, one timed written answer and one timed video answer, both on questions you don’t see in advance. Here is the format, what the PSE essay is actually asking, and fifteen practice questions for the video.

By the AcceptMe team 9 min read Updated

The three parts

  • Personal Statement of Experience (PSE). A list of your top five distinctions, extracurriculars and jobs, then one essay: choose one activity or job from your list and, in 2,000 characters or fewer, describe its impact and the greatest learning outcome for you. That question has been stable for years.
  • One timed written response. A randomly selected question with 10 minutes to write and submit.
  • One timed video response. A randomly selected question with 2 minutes to prepare and 2 minutes to record, one take, on the Kira Talent platform.

You also download, sign and upload a statement that your submission is your own work and was not generated by AI. Take that seriously: the written parts are timed precisely so that they can’t be.

Deadline. February 15, 11:59 PM EST, and Queen’s states it will not accept late submissions. The 2027-entry date had not been re-confirmed at the time of writing; check Queen’s supplementary application page. To keep it next to your other business programs’ dates, plan your supplementary application deadlines in one timeline and get an email if the date changes. The current date sits with every other Queen’s date on the Queen’s application deadlines page.

What the PSE essay is asking

“Describe the impact of this experience and the greatest learning outcome for you.” Two things, and applicants routinely write only the first. Impact is what changed for other people because of what you did. Learning outcome is what changed in you. Two thousand characters is about 300 words, so roughly two-thirds on the impact with a concrete result, one-third on the learning, and no introduction.

Pick the activity where you can name a result. Not the most impressive one, the one with the clearest before-and-after. “I was on the student council” has no before-and-after. “I ran the spirit-week fundraiser and it raised $2,100 against $800 the year before” does. The STAR method guide is about spoken answers but the shape is the same on paper.

The video question

Two minutes of prep is generous compared with other programs, and it changes the strategy. You have time to pick a story and to decide your opening line and your closing line. Do both. Then two minutes to answer is long enough that a thin story will run out at seventy seconds and you’ll be improvising to the buzzer. Aim for ninety to a hundred seconds of real content and stop.

Queen’s has said the video is evaluating leadership, communication, self-awareness and the ability to think on your feet. Questions in the public record have included situational ones about working in a group of people from different backgrounds and handling having unintentionally offended someone. So expect either a story from your life or a “what would you do” scenario, and have both kinds ready.

Fifteen practice questions in the Queen’s format

AcceptMe’s practice questions, written to the themes Smith Commerce cares about: initiative, school spirit, leading peers, resourcefulness and integrity. Not Queen’s questions. Run them with two minutes of prep and a two-minute clock.

  1. Tell us about a club, team or initiative you helped start or grow at your school. What gap did you see, and what did you personally do to build momentum?
  2. Describe a time you rallied classmates around something bigger than themselves. How did you get people who didn’t care to show up?
  3. Describe a time you received criticism that stung. What did you do with it?
  4. Walk us through the busiest week you’ve had in the last year. How did you decide what got your time, and what did you let slip?
  5. Tell us about a time a teammate or classmate was struggling and you stepped in. What did you notice, and what did you actually do?
  6. Describe something you led that failed. What was your role in the failure, and what did you change afterward?
  7. Tell us about a time you had to convince a group to back an idea they were initially against.
  8. Have you witnessed something at school or work you felt was unfair or dishonest? What did you do, and would you do the same again?
  9. Tell us about a time you pulled off something with almost no budget. What workarounds did you find?
  10. Describe working closely with someone whose personality or background was very different from yours. What friction came up, and what did you learn?
  11. Smith students run conferences, competitions and dozens of committees. Where do you see yourself contributing in first year, and what do you bring?
  12. Tell us about a moment when the person in charge was suddenly unavailable and you stepped up without being asked.
  13. Leading friends is harder than leading strangers. Tell us about a time you had to hold a friend accountable on a team.
  14. Tell us about the commitment you’ve stuck with the longest. Why did you stay when it got boring or hard?
  15. Describe a time you had to deliver news someone didn’t want to hear. How did you say it?

A worked answer

Sample answer to question 13, about 95 seconds

Last year I was co-chair of our school’s charity gala, and my closest friend was in charge of sponsorships. Three weeks out, she had confirmed one sponsor when we needed five, and she’d stopped replying in the planning chat. The easy move was to quietly take it over myself, and I almost did. Instead I asked her to get coffee, not to talk about the gala, just to check in. It turned out her parents were separating and she was barely holding school together. So I did two things. I told her I was taking sponsorships off her plate for the next two weeks, not as a punishment but because she needed it, and I asked her to keep the one job she could do from home, which was the program design. Then I told the rest of the committee the workload had shifted, without saying why. We got to four sponsors, which was enough. What I took from it is that holding a friend accountable sometimes means changing the job, not demanding they do it. She came back for the last week and ran the registration table, and we’re still close.

The ten-minute written answer

Ten minutes is enough for about 200 to 250 words if you don’t plan on the page. Spend the first sixty seconds deciding your one point and your example, then write straight through, then use the last minute to fix the ending. Practice it at least five times with unseen prompts; the first two will be a mess and that’s the point.

  • Describe a team accomplishment you’re proud of where your name never appeared on the result. What was your contribution, and why was it essential?
  • Write about a community that shaped who you are, and one thing you did to give back to it.
  • Write about a goal you set for yourself and missed. What did the months after look like?
  • Competition can pressure people to cut corners. Describe a moment when winning and doing the right thing pulled in different directions, and what you chose.

Mistakes specific to Queen’s

  • Writing the PSE essay about the most impressive activity instead of the one with a result. Reviewers read hundreds. A number stands out.
  • Only the impact, no learning outcome. It’s half the question.
  • Using the full two minutes of prep to write a script. You’ll read it off your screen and it will show. Use it to pick and to decide your first and last lines.
  • Treating the video as a speech about leadership. Tell a story with a decision in it. Queen’s says it wants self-awareness, which means an honest reflection at the end.

Where to go from here

The video runs on Kira; the Kira interview practice guide explains the two-minute prep window and why writing a script in it shows. If you are also applying to Queen’s Engineering, that application is separate and its own guide covers it, and the guide to every Ontario supplementary application lines up the February dates. If you are being nominated for the Queen’s Chancellor’s Scholarship, its leadership question is due December 8 and should not recycle the PSE story. Paste the PSE essay into AcceptMe’s essay coach for line-by-line notes, then run the video question on a two-minute prep and two-minute answer clock until the reflection at the end arrives on its own.

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