Is applying to university confusing?

I did look at Ontario, but then I was looking for purely distance degrees I could take entirely online. I did not want to do Athabasca. My sister is studing through them, and they are charging her $700 ish a course. I ended up enrolling for University of Manitoba's Bacherlor of Integrated Studies degree. It's all by distance, and courses are around $150. I am hoping to move to Ottawa, but I havn't yet figured out if one of hte Universities there offeres a similar program and would let me tranfers my credits. I like being so close to my campus that I can visit on site and use their facilites and libraries. So.. that's a major "missing" poitn in searching and enrolling, aka full degrees availiable through online education.

Undergraduate or Graduate level?

Undergraduate. Specifically looking at the high school (101) cohort. Sorry for not clarifying.

If you are applying to university and you are absolutely sure that you wana do engineering or computer science, then apply for those programs when you register. Otherwise, imho, go for undeclared when you apply or general studies and take your first freshmen year to figure it out by taking a variety of courses in both natural sciences (like bio) and social sciences (like psych and economics), and statistics and applied math b/c both of these are pretty useful regardless which field you major in.

Even if you wana do med school or law school or any other profession school, you don't have to declare it when you apply to university. It might help you in your application to tell the reviewer/committee that that's the direction of your university, but it's certainly not set in stone.

I went/applied to university with the thought of doing medical school, so I took 3 science courses in my 1st semester (bio, chem, physics) and found that while I loved the studying/text part, I hated the labs, and at that time I knew I would not be a good fit to do medicine. If I had diversified my 1st year a little bit and took a psych or economics course, it would've made my transition into business a lot easier and less time consuming.

I would also suggest that if you live near a major university (say UT or UWO in Ontario), go and visit the campus and meet an administration officer/counselor. S/he might give you some insights that will be pretty useful.

To OP, I am seriously considering between colleges and universities, in Ontario and outside. In one sentence, it is a brain wrecking process.

Syne wrote: ↑ This is aimed at people who have applied to university in the past, specifically in Ontario (but feel to weigh in on other provinces too).

Did you find it confusing to navigate the process of figuring out which programs you want based on interest? Did you already know which schools and programs you were interested in prior to applying, or did you have to search for info? Was that info easy to gather?

I'm working on a platform that may make it easier to apply for university in Canada, and want some feedback. What are some of the pain points involved in applying? What would you suggest to make it easier and/or more intuitive?

OUAC is not that hard to use but there are minor stuff that they need to work on in terms of interface. I did notice OUAC lacks a category based on subject or interest. They should employ the search filters and expand/collapse technique that OntatioColleges uses. It's so neat and organized. Another thing, I find it annoying that in some universities they post all the pre-requisite requirements and pertinent details related to the program. In some universities, they just provide links. They should make it uniform.