Queen's Engineering Supplementary Application Guide
If you are looking for the Queen’s Engineering supp app, there isn’t one. Queen’s admits engineering applicants on marks, with no supplementary application, video or essay. There is one optional form that engineering applicants can fill in, and it is tied to money, not admission. Here is exactly what Queen’s asks for, what it doesn’t, the dates for Fall 2027 entry, and how to write the optional form if you decide it’s worth your December.
What Queen’s Engineering asks for
Queen’s keeps a single page listing every program that requires supplementary information. For Fall 2027 entry it names Commerce, Health Sciences and Nursing, which share a mandatory application due February 15, 2027, plus auditions for Music and a form for graduates entering Consecutive Education. Engineering is not on it. The Ontario admission requirements page lists the Smith Engineering prerequisites and says nothing about supplementary material, while the Commerce row beside it says “mandatory supplementary application.” That contrast is the whole answer.
- Required courses: English 4U, Advanced Functions 4U, Calculus and Vectors 4U, Chemistry 4U and Physics 4U, plus one more 4U/M course to make a top 6.
- No supplementary application, no PSE, no video, no interview, no portfolio, no references.
- No fee beyond OUAC’s.
- Admission range: Queen’s doesn’t publish a cut-off on the requirements page. Offers tend to cluster in the high 80s and above; treat any specific number you read as last year’s, and confirm what Queen’s currently says on its Ontario requirements page.
Why students think there’s a supp app
Three reasons, and it’s worth knowing them so you don’t lose a weekend to one.
- Queen’s Commerce has a famous one. The PSE, a timed written answer and a Kira video are a big part of getting into Smith Commerce, and “Smith” is also the name on the engineering faculty. Same donor, different faculty, different rules.
- Every other engineering school on the list has one. Waterloo’s AIF and video, McMaster’s three videos and a write, U of T’s Online Student Profile. Queen’s is the odd one out, and people assume the omission is their own mistake.
- The Major Admission Award application looks like one. It has essay questions and a December deadline, so it gets mistaken for “the Queen’s supp app.” It isn’t. It’s a scholarship form.
The one optional form: the Major Admission Award application
Queen’s runs a single online application, the MAA, on SOLUS, that covers its largest entrance awards in one submission. For the 2027–28 awards the deadline is December 8, 2026, and you need to have applied on OUAC by about November 20 so your SOLUS login exists in time. It is open to Canadian citizens, permanent residents and protected persons entering first year, and Queen’s says a cumulative high school average of 90 percent or higher is expected to be competitive.
Two things make it relevant to engineering applicants specifically. The list of awards it covers includes named engineering money, such as the Gregory Scholarship in Engineering and the Science 1968 Admission Award in Applied Science, and the Chancellor’s Scholarship, which requires your school to nominate you, so ask your guidance office in October rather than discovering that in December. Queen’s posts a practice application in early October that contains the exact questions, so you can draft offline and paste.
Be clear about what the MAA does and doesn’t do. It does not feed your admission decision; Queen’s reads it for awards. Skipping it cannot cost you a place. Filling it in cannot get you one. It can be worth a lot of money, and the questions are the same leadership-and-impact questions every other program asks, so writing it well is not wasted even if you win nothing.
Full details and the award list are on Queen’s Major Admission Awards page.
How to write the MAA if you do it
Queen’s doesn’t publish how the awards committee scores responses, so this is how strong scholarship answers work in general rather than a claim about the rubric. The reader is choosing a small number of students from a large pile of 90-plus averages, so the marks aren’t what separates you. What does is a concrete thing you did that changed something outside yourself, told in enough detail that it could only be you.
Our robotics team had a problem that wasn’t technical. We had fourteen members and four of them did nearly all the build work, so in Grade 11 the same four burned out by February and we didn’t finish the drive base in time for the first qualifier. When I became build lead this year I split the robot into five sub-assemblies with a two-person owner pair each, including three people who’d never held a drill, and I moved our Tuesday meeting from “whoever shows up builds” to a thirty-minute standup where each pair says what’s blocking them. We finished the drive base six weeks earlier than last year, twelve of fourteen members logged build hours instead of four, and two of the first-timers are the sub-assembly leads I’m handing the team to. The engineering was the same. The change was deciding that the schedule was my job, not the robot.
Notice it never says “leadership.” It names a problem, a structural decision, three numbers and a handover. That last part matters for a scholarship reader more than for an admissions one: they are funding a person who will do this again at Queen’s.
As build lead of my school’s robotics team, I demonstrated strong leadership by motivating my team and delegating tasks effectively. I learned the importance of communication and teamwork, and I helped our team achieve success at competitions. These skills will help me excel in engineering at Queen’s and contribute to the community.
What to do with the evening you just saved
- Get the top 6 right. Five of the six are fixed by the prerequisites. The sixth is your choice; pick the mark, not the story, because nobody at Queen’s is reading a story.
- Apply early anyway. The March 1 deadline is generous, but Queen’s makes offers in rounds through the winter on mid-year marks, and being in the system early costs nothing.
- Do the MAA only if the 90-plus is real and you can write one answer like the sample above. If you can, do it; the questions double as drafts for every other application.
- Spend the time on the schools that record you. Most Queen’s Eng applicants also hold Waterloo, McMaster and U of T. Those are decided partly on what you say into a camera, and they are the ones where practice moves the outcome.
One vocabulary note. When Queen’s applicants say “deferred,” they usually mean re-routed to a program you didn’t apply to, not a delayed decision. Queen’s can make alternate offers into other faculties; if you see one, that is what happened, and it’s an offer, not a rejection.
Common questions about Queen’s Eng
Does Queen’s look at my ECs at all?
For admission, no; there is no field to put them in. The only place an engineering applicant’s activities are read at Queen’s is the MAA form, and that reading is for money. If a strong record and an average on the edge is your situation, Queen’s is not the school where the record rescues you. McMaster, Waterloo and U of T are, and they are where the December evenings should go.
Is there an interview for the Chancellor’s Scholarship?
Queen’s awards page describes a nomination by your high school plus the MAA application, and doesn’t list an interview stage for first-year entrance awards. The practice application Queen’s posts in October shows you the exact questions, so there is no reason to be surprised by them.
Do I apply to a discipline or to “engineering”?
On OUAC you apply to Smith Engineering’s common first year (code QE), not to Mechanical or Civil. Queen’s also lists a few direct-entry options on OUAC with their own codes. Which discipline you end up in is decided during first year under Queen’s own rules, and those rules are worth reading on the Smith Engineering site before you rank programs, because “can I get my first choice” is a first-year question at Queen’s rather than an application one.
When do offers come?
Queen’s doesn’t publish an offer calendar on its dates page; it points applicants to a separate after-you-apply page. Ontario students generally see engineering offers in waves through the winter and spring on mid-year marks, with the full-time program deadline of March 1, 2027 and documents by March 31, 2027 as the fixed points. Apply early, keep semester one strong, and don’t read anything into a friend’s offer arriving before yours.
The next thing to do
If McMaster Engineering is also on your list, the Mac Eng supp app guide explains why ten seconds of prep changes everything about how you answer, and its companion on the interview questions has the question themes and fifteen practice questions. If Queen’s Commerce is your backup or your sibling’s, the Commerce PSE and video guide is the supp app you have probably heard described as “the Queen’s one.” And if you want the full picture of which Ontario programs decide on marks alone, the no-supp-app list is built for putting a realistic safety on your list. Then take the robotics story above, bank it in AcceptMe’s Story Bank as your leadership story, and run it against an unseen Waterloo-style question with a one-minute prep window and a 90-second answer clock, because that one is real and has a February 1 deadline.
Keep reading
- Queen's Commerce Supplementary Application: PSE and Video What the Queen's Commerce PSE essay is really asking, the timed written and video format, fifteen practice questions and a worked two-minute answer.
- McMaster Engineering Supplementary Application: Questions Three videos with ten seconds of prep plus one written answer: the McMaster Engineering format, its four competencies, and fifteen scenario questions.
- 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.