zyphere

The timing in my case was that I received notice from them in around mid-March. I did have a very competitive application though so they might have sent out my acceptance as part of an early batch. I think you should be hearing from them soon.

Quite honestly I don't think the experience counts for much. My hunch is that they look at your academics first. And then when there are two individuals with similar academic achievements, they might use the work experience as the differentiator (i.e. giving preference to the one with HR/IR work experience). The vast majority of the students that are admitted to the full-time program (both the 1 and 2-year programs) do not have any significant HR experience. Typically, the only ones that do are the ones that studied HR in undergrad and were fortunate enough to land a summer job/co-op job in HR. Having said that, it's possible some preference may be given to students who have some level of professional work experience (be it HR-related or not). It's just that there aren't too many of these applicants. Maybe they look for transferable skills into HR. Or they might just be making a simple assessment of the applicant's employability later on after graduation. In turn, if they admit more employable students, graduates of the program will have higher success rates finding jobs. This will contribute to the reputation/success of the program. As an example, I did have some peers who were admitted to the program with very little work experience and consequently were not very employable. They had a rather difficult time finding jobs (some taking up to a year after graduation, and many of them jumping around in contract/temp jobs, with others simply being employed in very junior-level administrative roles). You might argue that it's the program's job to make the students employable, but maybe they look at work experience just to get a preliminary idea of that. The work experience may count for more when it comes to decisions for admitting part-time students. Many such applicants have been in the workforce/out of school for some time, so gleaning valuable information from their transcripts, letters of reference, etc. may be difficult. In such cases the admissions committee may refer to work experience to identify more high potential applicants and select from those. In this sense, I suppose the MIRHR program is aspiring to achieve what business schools do -- boost the number of students/alumni with significant standing in the industry and professional community in order to increase the reputation of the program by virtue of association. This is all just speculation. But if it were me and I was trying to increase the program's respectability, this is what I'd do.

Hello. I am a recent graduate of the program (within the last 3 years). The program has been under a fair amount of expansion since the time I applied. Even as a student there, I noticed that the class sizes have gradually increased over the last several years, and they continue to do so. So in that sense, it's possible it may be easier to get into the program now (but the fact that there are more spots might also be offset by a larger applicant pool). When you ask about how competitive it is, are you asking about the admission process? Based on my experience, I would say that it is NOT as competitive as most other graduate/professional programs, especially the ones at UofT. A 3.3 GPA will get you a decent chance of being admitted. I do know of people with a 3.3 GPA (or in percentage terms, high 70s) who were admitted to the program.