Do you have to apply for Ontario university entrance scholarships?

It depends on the award. The largest group is automatic: universities such as Waterloo and Western award entrance scholarships purely on your admission average, with no application at all. A second group requires your high school to nominate you, such as the Schulich Leader Scholarships and Western's National Scholarship Program. A third group, including the Loran Award and Queen's major admission awards, needs a separate application from the student with its own November or December deadline.

What average do you need for an entrance scholarship in Ontario?

Thresholds vary by university. Waterloo awards its Merit Scholarship from an 85 to 89.9 admission average, the President's Scholarship from 90 to 94.9, and the President's Scholarship of Distinction at 95 or above. Western's automatic bands begin at 90.0 percent. The number used is the admission average, meaning the top six Grade 12 U/M courses with program prerequisites included, not the overall report card average.

When are Ontario university scholarship deadlines?

The application-based awards land earlier than most families expect. The Loran Award deadline falls in mid-October. Queen's major admission awards, including the Chancellor's Scholarship, are due through SOLUS on 8 December 2026 for 2027 entry, and students must have applied to Queen's through OUAC by 20 November to gain SOLUS access in time. Schulich Leader nominations are submitted by schools on 27 January 2027, with the nominated student's application due 17 February 2027. Automatic scholarships have no deadline and are awarded in May.

Is it worth raising an admission average by a few points for scholarship money?

Often yes, because the thresholds are hard lines. A student at 87 sits in Waterloo's Merit tier at $1,000 and outside Western's automatic bands entirely. At 90 the same student qualifies for Western's Admission Scholarship at $2,500 and Waterloo's President's Scholarship at $2,000. Those points usually come from one or two prerequisite courses rather than from every subject. Go2Grad matches students with graduate-level tutors in their exact course code, usually within two to three days, and backs each match with the Go2Grad Guarantee: a 50 percent refund if grades fall below the starting baseline.

Ontario University Scholarships You're Automatically Considered For (and the Ones You Must Apply To)

Go2Grad Tutors

Sep 30

6 min read

By the fall of Grade 12, somewhere between setting up the OUAC account and reading program pages, most families notice the word scholarships and quietly file it under later. Ontario university entrance scholarships are not one thing, though, and they do not all work the same way. They fall into three groups: the ones your child is considered for automatically, the ones the high school has to nominate them for, and the ones that need a separate application with its own deadline, usually in November or December. Families who only know about the first group leave the other two on the table without ever realising there was a decision to make.

This is not a guidance failure, and it is not something your teen forgot. The information genuinely lives in four or five different places: each university's registrar pages, the OUAC portal, a foundation's own website, and sometimes a single email sent to the guidance office in January. Here is the map.

Group One: Automatic, and Decided Entirely by the Average

The largest pool of entrance money in Ontario is handed out with no application at all. If your child is admitted, the university looks at the admission average, finds the band it falls into, and awards accordingly. There is no essay, no reference letter, and no form to miss.

The University of Waterloo publishes three tiers. An admission average of 95 or higher earns the President's Scholarship of Distinction, worth $2,000 plus access to a $1,500 international experience award and a $1,500 research award. A 90 to 94.9 earns the President's Scholarship at $2,000. An 85 to 89.9 earns the Merit Scholarship at $1,000. Students are notified in mid-May, once the admission average is final.

Western's bands sit higher and pay more. A 90.0 to 91.9 average earns the Western Admission Scholarship, worth $2,500 ($1,500 in first year plus $1,000 held for an approved study abroad experience). A 92.0 or above earns the Western Scholarship of Distinction at $3,500 on the same split, and the strongest averages in the applicant pool are considered for the Western Scholarship of Excellence at $8,000. Again, no application.

Two things follow from this. First, the number that matters is the admission average, which is the top six Grade 12 U/M courses with each program's prerequisites locked in, not the overall report card average your teen quotes at dinner. Second, these are hard lines. A 91.8 and a 92.1 are, academically, the same student. At Western they are $1,000 apart.

Group Two: The Ones Your School Has to Put You Forward For

A second group cannot be applied to directly at all. The high school nominates, and if the school does not nominate, there is no route in.

The Schulich Leader Scholarships are the clearest example. Each Canadian high school may nominate one graduating student for STEM programs, and the award is large enough to change a family's financial picture outright. For 2027 entry, schools submit their nominee by 27 January 2027, and the nominated student then completes their own application by 17 February 2027. The practical implication is that the decision that matters happens inside the school, weeks before your teen would ever see an application form.

Western's National Scholarship Program works on the same principle. It requires a school nomination, asks for a minimum 90 percent average across Grade 12 U/M courses, and the application for 2027 entry becomes available in mid-November 2026.

So the useful question for the guidance office, in October or early November, is not “are there scholarships?” It is: which nominated awards does our school submit for, who decides, and when is that decision made? Schools answer that question readily. Very few volunteer it.

Mapping all of this properly means reading five or six registrar pages, checking each deadline against your teen's OUAC timeline, and working out honestly which thresholds are still within reach this semester. That is a couple of evenings of work, and it is the kind of thing we do every week for Ontario families. You can book a free consultation to go through your teen's program list together, or get matched with a tutor if the real lever turns out to be one prerequisite mark that needs to move before February.

Group Three: The Ones That Vanish If Nobody Fills In a Form

These are the awards that get missed, because they sit outside both the university's automatic process and the school's nomination process. Nobody is assigned to notice them on your behalf.

The Loran Award is applied to directly by the student, through the Loran Scholars Foundation, and its deadline falls in mid-October, well before most Grade 12s feel that application season has properly started. It is one of the country's largest undergraduate awards, and it weighs character, service and leadership alongside marks, so it is worth a look even for a student whose average is strong rather than spectacular.

Queen's runs its major admission awards, including the Chancellor's Scholarship, through a separate application inside the SOLUS portal. For 2027 entry that application is due 8 December 2026. There is a catch worth circling on the calendar: to have SOLUS access in time, the student needs to have applied to Queen's through OUAC by 20 November. Miss the November date and the December one becomes unreachable, even for a student who would have been perfectly competitive. Results are released in late February to applicants who have met admission requirements by 1 February.

Most Ontario universities run some version of this. The pattern is consistent: a November or December deadline, a portal that only opens once the OUAC application is in, and no reminder from anyone.

What Three Percentage Points Are Actually Worth

Parents are often told, reasonably enough, that academic support is an investment in a better offer. The entrance scholarship thresholds make that argument much more concrete, because they are published numbers rather than estimates.

Take a student sitting at an 87 admission average in the fall of Grade 12. That student falls outside Western's automatic bands entirely and sits in Waterloo's Merit tier at $1,000. Move the same student to a 90 by the final upload and they enter Western's Admission Scholarship band at $2,500 and Waterloo's President's Scholarship at $2,000. Nothing about the student has changed except three points, and those three points almost always come from one or two specific courses rather than from a general push to work harder across all six.

In practice the courses doing the damage are predictable: MHF4U, SCH4U, and whichever prerequisite is locked into the admission average and cannot be swapped out for an easier elective. Moving an admission average is a narrow, targeted job, not a lifestyle overhaul, and it is worth weighing against what tutoring actually costs before deciding it is out of reach.

A Short Checklist for This Term

• Write down your teen's OUAC program choices and open each university's entrance scholarship page. Note the automatic bands, and where the current average sits against them.

• Email the guidance office and ask which nominated awards the school submits for, and when the internal decision gets made.

• Check the Loran deadline straight away if your teen is a strong all-rounder, because mid-October arrives quickly.

• If Queen's is on the list, put 20 November (OUAC) and 8 December (SOLUS) in the calendar now, as a pair rather than as two separate dates.

• Identify the one or two courses holding the admission average down, and decide before the end of first semester whether they can realistically move.

Deadlines and dollar values are reset each year by each university and foundation, so confirm the current figures on the official page before acting on any of them. The structure, though, stays the same from year to year.

The Part Most Families Get Wrong

The mistake is almost never carelessness. It is the assumption that scholarship money is reserved for a handful of exceptional students, and that someone else is tracking the process. In reality most Ontario entrance money is average-based and automatic, which means the lever is the same one that decides the offer itself, and the deadlines that do exist are early, quiet and easy to walk past.

If you would like help working out which thresholds are genuinely within reach this semester, you can book a free consultation and we will go through your teen's program list, their current admission average, and the specific courses that would move it. Our graduate-level tutors are matched to a student's exact course code, usually within two to three days, and every match is backed by the Go2Grad Guarantee: if grades drop below the starting baseline, you get 50 percent back.

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