Supplementary Applications in Ontario: Every Program Compared

What “supplementary application” means

OUAC collects your program choices and your grades. Programs that get many more qualified applicants than they have seats add a second layer to see the things a transcript can’t: how you think, how you talk, what you’ve actually done. Three formats show up again and again:

• A form or profile: your activities, short written answers with word or character limits, sometimes references who are contacted. Written at your own pace.
• Timed written responses: a question you haven’t seen, a clock (five to twenty minutes), a word cap, submitted when the clock stops.
• Recorded video responses: a question appears, a prep timer runs, recording starts by itself, an answer timer runs, one take. Most Ontario programs host this on the Kira Talent platform.

Several programs also charge a fee and several have an early consideration date well before the final deadline.

The programs, side by side

Dates are for Fall 2027 entry where the program had published them at the time of writing; where marked “last cycle,” the 2026 date is shown and the 2027 one should be confirmed. Always check the official page linked in each program’s guide.

Not on this list: McGill, most TMU business, engineering, computer science and nursing programs, and most Arts and Science programs, which admit on grades for most applicants. Western Engineering and Queen’s Engineering are in the table because students keep asking about them: Western now requires Casper, and Queen’s asks for nothing beyond marks unless you apply for a major award. The no-supp-app programs guide lists the grades-only routes school by school.

Beyond Ontario

Two British Columbia business programs and a few nursing programs elsewhere use the same kinds of components, and many Ontario applicants apply to them too.

What they have in common

Look down the table and the pattern is obvious. Nearly every program wants a story from your own life about leadership, teamwork, a setback, or initiative, told out loud against a clock, plus one or two short written answers on a timer. The wrappers differ. The skill doesn’t. That means you can prepare once:

1. Build a bank of stories, one per competency: leadership, teamwork, resilience, conflict, initiative, empathy, time management, communication. Each with a situation in one sentence, a decision in the middle, a result with a number, and an honest reflection. The STAR method guide shows the shape; the thirty-question list shows what each competency’s questions look like.
2. Learn your own timing. Record yourself at 45, 90 and 120 seconds. Most people have no idea which of those they naturally fill.
3. Practice the one-take format with unseen questions, at each program’s exact prep and answer windows. The video interview guide explains why practicing the interface isn’t the same thing.
4. Practice timed writing at 5, 10 and 20 minutes. Decide the point in the first minute, write straight through, fix the ending last.
5. Do the untimed parts first and early. Ivey’s essays, Schulich’s Leadership Profile, Waterloo’s AIF and Queen’s PSE are the stories your interviews will draw on. Writing them properly is interview prep.

A timeline that works

• September to October: build the story bank. Draft the untimed written pieces. Ask references now. If a nursing program on your list uses Casper, book a test date.
• Late October to November: practice the video format weekly. Submit anything with a November early-consideration date (Schulich) if the written part is ready. McMaster Health Sciences posts its questions around now; start those drafts.
• Early December: Rotman and U of T Engineering early consideration on December 1. UBC and Sauder scholarship deadline the same day. Aim to be done.
• January: Ivey, UBC and Sauder by January 15. McMaster Engineering by January 28. Keep practicing; don’t cram new stories.
• February: Schulich, Rotman, Waterloo Engineering and the McMaster written applications in the first days of February. Queen’s and Waterloo Math mid-February (Waterloo AFM is grades-only for Fall 2027 entry). Nothing is late.

That timeline covers every program at once. To see only yours, plan every deadline for your universities: pick the programs you are applying to and the planner lists their supplementary application dates with the steps that lead up to each.

Examples, feedback and the written half

For what a full-scoring written answer looks like at each program’s real limit, the annotated examples library has one per question type with a reader’s notes, and the stand-out guide rewrites three ordinary drafts line by line. When yours exists, the feedback guide covers who can read it, what each program allows, and how to ask.

One bank of stories for every program on this page

Read the questions across the programs above and a pattern shows: they are asking about the same dozen things, leadership, teamwork, resilience, initiative, a conflict, a failure, in different costumes and on different clocks. That is why the timeline starts with the story bank in September. AcceptMe’s Story Bank is built for exactly that step: the coach interviews you out loud about one competency at a time and drafts a story outline from what you said, so by November you have twelve stories you can bend to any prompt. Then the custom interview takes each program’s timings from the table, draws questions you have not seen, and returns a transcript with the coach’s notes; the essay coach marks up the written applications line by line. Three Story Bank topics, two interview runs and two essay reviews are free.