U of T Engineering Online Student Profile: Video Questions
U of T Engineering’s Online Student Profile (OSP) is mandatory, and the faculty is blunt about it: no profile, no consideration. For Fall 2027 entry the timed part, which U of T calls the Personal Profile, is three timed video responses; the written question of earlier cycles is gone from the official description. Here is the current format, what U of T says it is reading for, and practice questions in its style.
The format
The OSP lives in the Engineering Applicant Portal, which you get access to after your OUAC application is processed. It has two halves:
- Untimed: your activities and background, and written material you can draft at your own pace.
- Timed, the Personal Profile: U of T’s supplemental application page says it “is comprised of three timed video responses that will help us get to know you as a person,” recorded through a third-party platform, which has been Kira in recent cycles. The page does not currently publish the prep and answer times; the Assessment Details slide inside the platform will, before you press start. Earlier cycles used two minutes of prep and two to three minutes of answer, and one cycle included a 300-word typed question. Plan for that range and confirm on the day.
U of T says the profile is assessing “reasoning and communication skills,” that “there is no ‘right’ answer,” and it points applicants to a tutorial video with sample questions. Publicly shared sample topics have included engineering concepts or ideas that interest you, so expect at least one question that asks you to explain something and at least one that asks about you.
Prep time is the trap
U of T’s timings have been the most generous of any Ontario engineering application, and generosity is a trap. Two minutes of prep tempts you to write a script and read it. A long answer clock tempts you to keep talking after you have finished. Both read badly on camera.
- Use the prep for structure, not sentences. Three or four words per beat: situation, the decision, the result, the reflection. Then talk.
- Three minutes is about 400 words. That is a full story with a second example or a proper reflection. It is not enough for two stories; pick one and go deep.
- Stopping early is allowed. A complete answer at two minutes twenty beats a padded one at three. Know your last sentence and say it.
- Three in a row. Practice three questions back to back, not one at a time; the third answer is where fatigue shows.
Fifteen practice questions in the U of T format
AcceptMe’s practice questions, written to what U of T says it reads for: reasoning, explanation, building things, judgement under constraint, and Skule community. Not U of T’s questions. Run them three at a time, with two minutes of prep and a two- or three-minute clock until the Assessment Details slide tells you otherwise.
- Walk us through a personal project you built from start to finish. What problem were you solving, and what was the hardest decision along the way?
- Tell us about a time you had to explain a technical idea to someone with no background in it. How did you know whether they understood?
- Describe a design or planning decision you made under real constraints: limited time, money or materials. What did you trade away, and why?
- Which Skule club or design team would you join first, and what specifically would you do there in your first term?
- What is a question or idea you can’t stop thinking about right now? What have you done to chase it down?
- Pick a technology you use every day and describe a way it affects people its designers probably didn’t intend. If you were on the team, what would you change?
- Tell us about the busiest stretch of your life so far and the system you used to keep everything on track.
- Tell us about critical feedback on something you worked hard on. What did you do with it?
- Describe a time you taught or mentored someone who was struggling. How did you adapt when your first approach didn’t work?
- U of T offers eight core engineering programs plus Engineering Science. Which discipline are you drawn to, and what specific experience shaped that choice?
- Tell us about a team where members had very different skill levels. How did you make sure everyone contributed meaningfully?
- PEY Co-op, undergraduate research, international exchange: which matters most to you, and what would you want out of it?
- Tell us about a time you had to decide that something you made was “good enough” to hand over. How did you draw that line?
- Describe a time evidence forced you to change your mind. What did it teach you about how you form opinions?
- Tell us about a group you helped make better just by how you showed up, outside any formal role.
A worked answer
The technology I’d pick is the read receipt in messaging apps. It was designed to do one small thing: tell the sender their message arrived and was opened. What it actually does is create an obligation. Once you know someone has seen your message, silence becomes a statement, and I watch this play out in every group chat I’m in. People leave messages unopened on purpose so they don’t have to answer yet, which means the feature designed to reduce uncertainty now causes people to avoid reading things. Nobody intended that. If I were on the engineering team, I wouldn’t remove read receipts, because for some conversations, like coordinating a pickup, they’re genuinely useful. I’d change the default. Off by default, on per conversation, with the person who turns it on being the one whose reads are shown. That moves the choice to the person it affects. The trade-off is that the app loses a little of the engagement that read receipts drive, because the pressure to reply is, from a metrics point of view, a feature. I think that’s the real reason it hasn’t changed, and I’d want to be the kind of engineer who says that out loud in the meeting rather than pretending it’s a technical question.
The answer explains the mechanism, names the unintended effect with a specific observation, proposes a change, and states the trade-off honestly. That last move is what “reasoning” looks like to a reviewer.
If a written question comes back
One recent cycle included a ten-minute, 300-word typed question alongside the videos, and the official description now lists videos only. If the Assessment Details slide shows a written question, the rule is the same as everywhere: 240 tight words with a clear point beat 300 with an introduction. Prompts like these are worth ten minutes each in AcceptMe’s timed written mode, in case:
- Choose an emerging technology you find exciting. Explain what it does in plain language, one societal risk it carries, and one concrete step engineers could take to reduce that risk.
- Pick an everyday object you think is badly designed. Who is most affected, what would you change, and what trade-off does your redesign introduce?
- Engineers in Canada wear the Iron Ring as a reminder of their obligation to the public. What does it mean for an engineer to be responsible to society, and where might that conflict with what an employer wants?
Mistakes specific to U of T
- Missing early consideration. December 1 is early, and it’s the same profile either way.
- Reading a script. Two minutes of prep makes it possible. Reviewers can tell.
- Talking to the end of the clock because it is there. Finish when the answer finishes.
- Preparing for last year’s format. The written question has come and gone; read the Assessment Details slide, not a guide, for what is on the day.
- Only stories, no reasoning. U of T names reasoning explicitly. At least one answer should show you thinking through a problem, not just recounting one.
- Skipping the workshops. They’re free and run by the people who read the profiles.
Where to go from here
The videos run on a Kira-style platform; the Kira Talent interview guide covers what that means for notes, retakes and the practice questions. Most U of T Engineering applicants are also doing the Waterloo AIF and video, and the Ontario supplementary applications guide shows both December dates. If you are applying to Engineering Science, the EngSci guide covers what differs. If you are also applying to Arts & Science, the Trinity College applicant profile is a separate four-question written form with its own deadlines. Two minutes of prep tempts a script; run an AcceptMe custom interview at the timings on your Assessment Details slide, three questions in a row, and the transcript will show whether the reasoning U of T asks for is there or whether you read.
Keep reading
- 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.
- Waterloo Engineering AIF and Video: Sample Answers and Prep How Waterloo reads the AIF's 150-word answers, what the mandatory video interview asks, fifteen practice questions and a worked answer about a build.
- 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.