Repeated courses
Most programs
If you applied to a program in the faculties of Arts, Environment, Health, and Science or to the Architecture program, you will not be penalized for repeating courses. If you repeat a course, we'll use your highest grade in that course when calculating your admission average.
Engineering programs (excluding Architecture)
If you're applying to an Engineering program and you repeat a required course, you may have five percentage marks (5%) deducted from your admission average.
If your grade was 70% or higher the first time you took a required course, we'll use that grade and not adjust your admission average.
Faculty of Mathematics, including Computer Science
If you’re applying to a program in the Faculty of Mathematics and you repeat any Grade 12 course or take any Grade 12 course outside of your regular day school, you may jeopardize your chances of being admitted.
You should take all your courses in regular day school and do well in your first attempt. If you take a course(s) outside your regular day school, you'll be asked to explain why on your Admission Information Form (AIF).
When you submit your online Admission Information Form (AIF), you'll be asked to explain why you repeated any courses. We'll send you instructions for the AIF once you've applied and we may verify this information before we make an admission decision.
Courses other than day school
We will consider grades from schools that are accredited by your provincial or territorial ministry of education. For some programs, we may ask you to identify courses taken or being taken outside of your regular day school and to explain why the course(s) was not completed in your regular school.
- If you are applying to a program in the Faculty of Mathematics and take a course outside of your regular day school, you may jeopardize your chances of being admitted.
- For all other programs, including Engineering, taking an online or night school course through your school or school board during the regular school year will not affect your application.
The following are examples of courses we'll accept if they're provincially accredited.
- Day school (high school)
- Summer school
- Night school
- Online
- Private school
Taking spares in high school
If you take one or two spares, that will not impact your chances of being admitted to any of our programs at Waterloo.