TMU Non-Academic Requirements: Essays and Interviews by Program

Grades-Only or Grades-Plus

TMU’s phrase for a supplementary application is “non-academic requirements.” A Grades-Only program admits on marks alone. A Grades-Plus program adds a portfolio, statement, audition or interview, and the rules for all of them are the same:

• Apply first, then submit. TMU tells applicants not to send anything until they have a TMU Student Number, which arrives with the acknowledgement email a few days after the OUAC application. The number goes on everything you upload.
• Where. The ChooseTMU Applicant Portal, usually as a single PDF. Fashion uses SlideRoom instead.
• When. February 1, 2027, or ten business days after you apply, whichever is later. That second clause matters if you apply in late January.
• Fee. $50 per Grades-Plus program in The Creative School and for Architectural Science. Unpaid means unreviewed.
• Decisions. First-round offers for Grades-Plus programs land between February (Interior Design, Professional Music) and late April (Midwifery).

Which TMU programs need nothing beyond grades

The 2026-27 calendar names the Grades-Plus programs, and everything not on that list is Grades-Only. That includes all of the Ted Rogers School of Management (Business Management and its majors, Accounting & Finance, Business Technology Management, Hospitality & Tourism, Retail Management), every engineering program, Computer Science, the collaborative Nursing degree (its page states Casper is not required), Journalism, Media Production, Sport Media, and the arts and science degrees. Creative Industries belongs on this list too: for Fall 2027 it is Grades-Only, with no optional statement and no seats set aside for one. If you are applying to one of those, your OUAC application is complete on its own.

The Grades-Plus programs, side by side

Three more Grades-Plus entries are for applicants who already hold a diploma or university credits, not for high-school applicants: Disability Studies (a personal letter of up to two pages), Social Work advanced standing, and the part-time Health Administration degree.

What the statements are really asking

Read all the prompts together and they sort into three kinds. Knowing which kind you are answering tells you what a good paragraph looks like.

• Why this field, why here. Photography, Music, Interior Design, Film’s “the film that most influenced you” and Fashion’s “something that has influenced the way you think about fashion” all ask this. The weak version names a feeling. The strong version names a thing you made, noticed or read, and what it changed in how you look at the field.
• An issue in the field. Professional Music’s business option asks you to weigh two methods of music discovery from a business perspective, and Fashion asks what the thing that influenced you reveals about fashion today. These reward a position, one example and a cost you are willing to admit, not a survey.
• Your own work, explained. Architectural Science asks why you chose the object for its home exercise and what the section reveals, Interior Design asks how your portfolio reflects your interests, and Photography asks for a statement introducing six themed images. These reward the decisions you made while making the work, which the reader cannot see in the images, rather than a description of what they can see.

The limits are short: 150 to 500 words. At that length you get one example, told properly, plus a sentence or two of reflection. Two examples means neither lands.

The Midwifery interview

Midwifery is the one direct-entry program at TMU with an interview, and it is a recorded one. Selected applicants are invited through the ChooseTMU portal after the February 1 deadline. TMU’s own description: the interview is conducted online, applicants are asked a series of questions, and the recorded answers are reviewed by an assessor. Its equity-admissions page refers to the format as multiple mini interviews, which fits: several short, separately scored questions rather than one conversation. Offers go to roughly 45 applicants in early May.

The program publishes what the interview looks for, and it is worth reading as a list of question types:

• Motivation to become a midwife. Expect a why question, and expect it to test whether you know what midwives in Ontario actually do: continuity of care, on-call hours, home and hospital births, a placement that may be outside the GTA.
• Empathy, responsibility, flexibility and self-reflexivity. Reflective questions about a time you cared for someone, held a commitment, changed a plan, or were wrong.
• Awareness of the demands of being a midwifery student and a midwife in Ontario. Show that you have talked to one, read the program’s own pages, and thought about what you would give up.
• Communication, critical thinking and problem solving. Situational questions: a scenario with a person in distress or a conflict of loyalties, and what you would do first.

A recorded interview has no interviewer to read. Nobody nods, nobody asks a follow-up, and a rambling answer is not rescued. So the structure has to be in the answer itself: the situation in a sentence, what you did, what it cost or taught you, and what you do differently now, the shape the STAR method examples guide walks through. Practice against a clock until ninety seconds of real content is your natural length; the video interview guide covers the one-take format in detail.

Twelve practice questions in the Midwifery format

AcceptMe practice questions written to the four themes the program publishes. Not TMU’s questions. Run them recorded, with a short prep window and a two-minute clock.

1. Why midwifery rather than nursing or medicine? What did you learn about the profession that settled it?
2. Describe a time you cared for someone who did not want your help. What did you do?
3. A midwife is on call for days at a time and may be woken at 3 a.m. for a birth an hour away. What in your life so far tells you that you can do that?
4. Tell us about a commitment you kept after it stopped being convenient. Why did you stay?
5. You are supporting someone whose choice about their own care you disagree with. What do you say, and what do you keep to yourself?
6. Describe a time you were wrong about a person. What led you there, and what changed your mind?
7. Tell us about a plan that had to change at the last minute. How did you decide what to keep?
8. A client’s family member is speaking over her in an appointment. What do you do first?
9. Tell us about a time you had to stay calm while someone else was frightened.
10. What would you find hardest about a clinical placement far from home, and what would you do about it?
11. Describe a time you delivered news someone did not want to hear. How did you choose your first sentence?
12. What is something you believed about health or birth that you have since changed your mind about? What changed it?

The Acting personal video

Alongside its two monologues, Performance: Acting asks for a video of up to one minute about something other than acting that you are especially passionate about. For Fall 2027 it is the only part of the submission where you talk about yourself rather than perform a character: Acting no longer asks for written statements. It is the closest thing at TMU to a video interview question, and it is designed to see you rather than your training. Pick something with a detail in it (the exact thing you do on a Saturday morning, not “I love the outdoors”), say it to the camera as you would to one person, and stop before the clock does. Record it on a sixty-second timer several times; the first take is never the one. Applicants invited to a callback, between late February and April, may also be asked to a short interview that evening.

Not direct entry, but the same skills

TMU’s School of Medicine admits university graduates, not high school applicants, but its process is worth knowing if that is where you are headed: no Casper, an online Kira Talent assessment of six timed questions mixing written and video answers, then a virtual six-station multiple mini interview. The timed-written and one-take video formats in the Ontario supplementary applications guide are the same skills, four years earlier.

Mistakes specific to TMU

• Uploading before you have a Student Number. TMU says not to. Wait for the acknowledgement email.
• Assuming February 1 is the only date. It is February 1 or ten business days after applying, whichever is later; and Fashion’s winter intake has an August 1 date.
• Not paying the $50 fee. The submission is not reviewed until it is paid.
• Your name inside the Architectural Science portfolio. The instructions bar it; the file is read blind.
• Videos or links in the Interior Design portfolio. For Fall 2027 they are not reviewed; the portfolio is one PDF that opens with a hand drawing of a chair and a figure.
• Preparing from an old checklist. Acting’s written statements and Creative Industries’ optional statement are gone for Fall 2027. Confirm each requirement on the program page before you start.
• Listing. Four hundred words of everything you have done is a résumé, and most of these programs already ask for one separately. Pick one thing and go deep.