Media Releases

Number of students choosing UofT as their first choice rises dramatically

January 26, 2010

TORONTO, ON – The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is see­ing a dra­mat­ic rise in the num­ber of Ontario high-school stu­dents choos­ing UofT as their first choice for post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion, even while oth­er large uni­ver­si­ties are expe­ri­enc­ing declines. 

Almost 1,000 more appli­cants list­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to as their first choice for the 2010-11 aca­d­e­m­ic year, an increase of eight per cent over last year’s fig­ures and the largest increase since 2003. 

UofT Vice Pres­i­dent and Provost Cheryl Mis­ak cred­its the increase in part to improved out­reach to prospec­tive stu­dents in the months lead­ing up to their deci­sion to choose a uni­ver­si­ty. 

“We’ve made a real­ly seri­ous effort over the last cou­ple of years to get our sto­ry out,” Mis­ak said today. “We’ve com­plete­ly re-designed the view­book and the web­site (http://discover.utoronto.ca/home.htm), and we’ve put up some won­der­ful and quite mov­ing video clips of stu­dents and fac­ul­ty mem­bers talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences at Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. I encour­age every­one to take a look at them: http://www.thisisuoft.utoronto.ca/u‑of-t-video-gallery.htm. 

A num­ber of UofT fac­ul­ties expe­ri­enced impres­sive growth in first-choice appli­ca­tions, includ­ing Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion and Health (29%), Arts and Sci­ence (11%), Applied Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing (11%) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Mis­sis­sauga (9%). 

Last week, the Coun­cil of Ontario Uni­ver­si­ties report­ed that high-school stu­dents are apply­ing to Ontario uni­ver­si­ties in ever-increas­ing num­bers, con­tin­u­ing a 10-year trend. 

Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics com­piled by the Ontario Uni­ver­si­ties’ Appli­ca­tion Cen­tre (OUAC) fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 13 appli­ca­tion dead­line, the num­ber of high school appli­cants rose 2.7 per cent to 86,542 from 84,300 last year. 

How­ev­er, much of the increase this year can be attrib­uted to a greater num­ber of appli­cants to small­er uni­ver­si­ties in Ontario. UofT is a notable excep­tion to this new par­a­digm. 

“It’s great to see our out­reach efforts start to make a dif­fer­ence,” says Mis­ak. “We’re par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased to see the jump in num­bers of stu­dents nam­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to as their first choice.” 

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