University of Toronto (U of T)

Colleges, faculties and campuses: who owns what

This is the single most misread part of a U of T application, and it costs people offers. Three things are being chosen at once, and only one of them decides your degree.

The campus decides where you live and which programs you can take. St. George holds the professional faculties — Applied Science & Engineering, Law, Medicine, Rotman Commerce, Music, the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design — alongside the largest Arts & Science division. U of T Mississauga and U of T Scarborough each run their own Arts & Science-style degrees, their own co-op streams and their own entrance scholarships. The degree parchment carries the University of Toronto name in every case.

The faculty or division decides your admission requirements, your tuition, your deadlines and your academic rules. Engineering and Arts & Science are separate admission queues with separate portals and separate document deadlines; switching between them after you arrive is an internal transfer application, not a form.

The college decides almost none of that. All undergraduates in the Faculty of Arts & Science at St. George are affiliated with one of seven colleges, which serve as a home base for residence, advising, student services and community — whether you live in residence or commute^[16]. A college is not a faculty and does not own a subject: an economics student at Trinity and an economics student at Woodsworth sit in the same lectures and graduate with the same degree. You rank up to three colleges on the application, or select no preference; the ranking guides placement but nothing is guaranteed, and your college is confirmed with the offer of admission^[16]. Outside Arts & Science at St. George the system does not exist at all — Engineering, Daniels, Music, Kinesiology, UTM and UTSC students get equivalent support from their own faculty or campus^[16].

Reading U of T degree names, from HBA to PharmD

The program list is easier to read once you know that the University admits school-leavers into broad admission categories, each with its own OUAC code and degree designation — Humanities leads to an Honours Bachelor of Arts (HBA), Life Sciences to an Honours Bachelor of Science (HBSc), Computer Science to the Bachelor of Computer Science (BCS)^[10]. The BCS is new: it is awarded from 1 September 2027 at St. George, Mississauga and Scarborough, and its degree requirements first appear in the 2027-28 Calendar^[17].

In Arts & Science the category is only the door. The degree is defined by the programs you complete — a Specialist of 10.0-14.0 credits, a Major of 6.0-8.0 or a Minor of 4.0 — and you enter them after your first 4.0 credits. The most sought-after limited programs set their minimum grade afresh each year according to demand, so no guaranteed cut-off is published in advance, and an offer in a category is not an offer of a particular Specialist or Major^[18].

Second-entry programs are the ones a school-leaver cannot apply to at all. The Doctor of Pharmacy is a second-entry undergraduate professional degree that normally needs two years of university study (8.0 full-credit equivalents) first, and since 2025 it runs over three years instead of four^[19]. The MD needs at least three years (15 full-course equivalents) towards a bachelor's degree^[20]. The three-year JD is, in the law faculty's own words, an undergraduate common-law degree similar to an LLB; the graduate law degrees are the LLM and the SJD^[21]. So "Doctor" in PharmD, MD, JD or the Doctor of Dental Surgery in the fee table below marks an entry-to-practice degree, not a research doctorate of the PhD kind.

Certificates mislead in a different way. Category 1 Certificates are standalone post-degree credentials that normally require a completed bachelor's for admission; Category 2 Certificates are 2.0-3.0 credits taken inside a U of T degree, noted on the transcript but carrying no separate parchment and no professional certification^[18]. Neither is a cheaper way into the University. Two labels do mean more than they appear to: a Combined Degree Program confers both a bachelor's and a master's, and several Mississauga and Scarborough programs add a Sheridan College or Centennial College diploma or certificate to the U of T degree^[10].

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Program-level admission through OUAC

Two offices, two calendars: undergraduates apply through the Ontario Universities' Application Centre, graduates through the School of Graduate Studies. Neither reviews the other's file.

First-year entry, from program code to permit

1. Check how your school system is read. From India, the listed qualifications are the CBSE's All India Senior School Certificate and the CISCE's Indian School Certificate, with Year 12 state-board results considered individually when they are excellent; a CBSE student aiming at a program with a calculus prerequisite — business, engineering, most sciences — must present Class XII Standard Mathematics, because Applied Mathematics does not meet it. Nigerian and Ghanaian applicants present the WAEC Senior School Certificate, Filipino applicants the Senior High School (K-12) diploma and UAE-system applicants the General Secondary Education Certificate^[24]. Engineering adds its own filter: a final or predicted WAEC result below B2 in any prerequisite subject is not considered^[25]. British-patterned applicants present five IGCSE, GCSE or O-Level subjects plus three A-Levels, and the complete IB Diploma is required^[10]; IB courses without the full Diploma count only alongside another recognised secondary diploma^[26]. Every applicant, whatever the system, must present a senior-level English course equivalent to Ontario ENG4U, and its result counts inside the admission average^[2].
2. Pick your route. Use the OUAC Undergraduate Application if you are also applying to other Ontario universities; use the U of T International Application, at 138 USD, only if you live outside Canada, have never studied in Canada and are applying to no other Ontario university^[7].
3. Prove your English, unless exempt. Accepted scores include IELTS Academic 6.5 with no band under 6.0, TOEFL iBT 4.5 overall with 4.5 in Writing and 4.0 in Speaking on the scale introduced on 21 January 2026, PTE Academic 65 with no part under 60, Duolingo 120 with 120 in Production, and CAEL 70 with no part under 60^[2]. The IELTS Indicator and One Skill Retake are not accepted, and scores must come electronically from the test centre.
4. Add any supplementary component and note its own deadline: the Online Student Profile for Engineering, the Supplementary Application for Rotman Commerce and for Computer Science, "One Idea" for the Daniels architecture programs, a Music Questionnaire and audition, a Statement of Interest for Kinesiology, a Supplementary Application Form for several U of T Scarborough areas^[8].
5. Send documents by your division's document deadline, accept the offer with the non-refundable 3,585 USD admission deposit^[22], collect the Provincial Attestation Letter that follows acceptance and payment^[10], then apply for the study permit.

Graduate entry through the School of Graduate Studies

1. Identify the program and, for a research degree, a supervisor whose work you can describe in a paragraph without paraphrasing their abstract back at them.
2. Read the department's own deadline rather than the graduate school's general page — many close in December for September entry, and the earlier ones are usually the funded ones.
3. Apply through the School of Graduate Studies system and pay the application fee plus any program supplement.
4. Arrange transcripts and letters of recommendation early; referees submit them directly, and a slow referee is the commonest cause of a missed graduate deadline.
5. Confirm what your funding package actually contains before you accept, then apply for the permit. Master's and doctoral applicants at public institutions such as U of T sit outside the attestation-letter requirement, an exemption in force since 1 January 2026.

The Fall 2027 calendar, as published

U of T has published its 2027 admission dates, so these are confirmed rather than inferred from past cycles. Admission decisions are released from January through late May, and sometimes into the summer depending on program^[8]. The Pearson scholarship dates run months ahead of the ordinary deadline and cannot be caught up later^[27].

Applying by 7 November and completing your portal tasks puts you in the first admission round as well as the later ones, which matters most for programs with limited space^[8].

What studying here is actually like

The admissions pages stop at the offer. What follows is a credit-based system that will feel unfamiliar if your school system ran on fixed year groups.

The year and the load. The Fall-Winter session runs September to April in two terms, with a summer session from May. Courses are worth 0.5 credit for one term (an H course) or 1.0 credit across both (a Y course), and an Honours Bachelor of Arts or Science requires standing in at least 20.0 credits — normally five a year over four years — of which at least 13.0 must be at 200-level or above, including 6.0 at 300-level or above^[28]. You must also complete a Specialist, or two Majors, or one Major plus two Minors, and satisfy the Breadth Requirement, which forces coursework across five categories from creative representations to the physical sciences^[28]. Nobody assigns you a timetable: you build it in ACORN each summer, and enrolment in popular courses is competitive.

Grades. Marks are numerical from 0 to 100 and convert to a letter and a grade point. The scale is published, applies across the Faculty of Arts & Science, and is not curved by quota — the calendar states explicitly that marks "will not be determined by any system of quotas"^[29].

Grade points are averaged into sessional, annual and cumulative GPAs. To graduate with an Honours degree you need a Cumulative GPA of at least 1.85; between 1.5 and 1.84 you may take the plain Bachelor of Arts or Science instead^[28]. The Dean's List needs 3.50^[29]. Note what those numbers imply for anyone arriving on a 95% school average: the distribution here is not the distribution you came from, and a first-term B is ordinary rather than catastrophic.

Assessment. Large first-year science and engineering courses run on problem sets, midterms and a heavily weighted final; humanities and social sciences run on essays, term tests and participation. There are no supplemental examinations in Arts & Science — a failed course is repeated, not resat^[29]. Late withdrawal without academic penalty exists as a transcript notation, and knowing that deadline is a practical survival skill.

Support. Your college registrar is the first door for academic advising, petitions and emergency grants; the Centre for Learning Strategy Support runs study-skills work; Accessibility Services arranges accommodations; the Centre for International Experience handles immigration documents and the adjustment questions that come with them. Using these early is normal here, not an admission of failure.

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24 hours a week, then the PGWP

The limits here are federal, not institutional, and U of T cannot widen them. On campus a valid study permit is enough. Off campus you may work up to 24 hours a week while classes are in session, and without a cap during a scheduled break of at least seven days — a reading week, the winter break, the summer between academic years — where statutory holidays alone do not count. Unlimited-hours work during those breaks is capped at 180 days in a calendar year. The rule has been in force since November 2024, and the official page was last updated on 15 April 2026 without changing the headline figures. A separate change from 1 April 2026 removed the need for a distinct co-op work permit for a mandatory placement, which simplifies the paperwork for every co-op and Professional Experience Year student. Older U of T handouts still mention a six-month wait before off-campus work; that wording predates the current federal rule.

Afterwards, graduates of a bachelor's, master's or doctoral program may apply for a Post-Graduation Work Permit of up to three years. Degree graduates are exempt from the field-of-study list — the Classification of Instructional Programs restriction applies to non-degree credentials whose study permit application was made on or after 1 November 2024, not to university degrees. What does apply to everyone is a language condition: CLB 7 in English or NCLC 7 in French, a newer requirement that catches graduates who never retook a test after admission.

On the university's side, the Career Exploration & Education Centre runs advising, mock interviews, employer events and a destinations tool broken down by field^[38]. The co-op and internship streams remain the most direct route from degree to Canadian employer, and they are program-specific: check whether yours has one before you assume it does.

Getting around Toronto, and what the city charges you

"Three campuses" understates the distances. St. George sits inside the downtown grid, bounded by Bloor, Spadina and College streets, with the subway running underneath it; Mississauga is west of the city and Scarborough well to the east, each a long commute from downtown. You will take courses on one campus, so this matters mostly for two groups: anyone comparing offers across campuses, and anyone imagining they can live cheaply in Mississauga and study downtown.

A U of T Mississauga shuttle links UTM to a stop at 21 Classic Avenue on St. George, free with a TCard for students whose home campus is UTM and 5 USD a ticket for everyone else, with term passes available^[39]. Day to day, the city's own transit is what you will use: a single TTC fare on a PRESTO card is 2 USD, and the post-secondary monthly pass — one of the few monthly passes to survive the move to fare capping on 31 August 2026 — costs 92 USD^[40]. Get the post-secondary photo ID card early; it pays for itself within weeks.

Two practical notes on the city. Toronto winters are long and genuinely cold; students arriving from India, the Gulf, West Africa or the Philippines should budget for proper winter clothing in the first term rather than the second. And the housing market is the single hardest part of the move — see the numbers above, and treat the first-year residence guarantee as the cheapest year you will get. Beyond that, the argument for Toronto is the same as the argument against it: a large, expensive, genuinely multicultural city with a deep labour market, in a country whose higher education system is well understood by employers worldwide.

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