T.O.hopeful

I actually recieved an acceptance last week for UofT's MSW program with the Mental Health/Health specialization! Like many of you, I'm waiting on OISE's counselling/psychotherapy program and I'm waitlisted to OISE's school and clinical child psychology program. I don't expect to get off that waitlist and at this moment in time, I'm strongly leaning towards the MSW even if I get into OISE's counselling/psychotherapy program after doing some research/talking to others. Laurier and I believe Windsor have an online 2 year program for non-BSW grads but was told the practicum placements for Windsor must be done in province (in case that's an issue for people).

Gonna give a plug for MSW programs as ones you should also look into if you're interested in counselling/therapy. UofT's program for example has a Mental Health specialization where you learn the different interventions, and working with individuals, families, groups, etc. And I know other MSW programs, including in provinces outside Ontario have clinical social work programs, which is for people interested in providing therapy. MSWs are a lot cheaper tuition than Adler & Yorkville. Definitely not discouraging you from applying to those programs (was going to apply to Yorkville this year) but I was in your position last year and looked into MSW programs once I realized you can have essentially the same career path as somone who does a masters in counselling!

Someone mentioned in the separate MEd OISE counselling forum that they received an email today being told that we should expect decisions about admissions by end of April. I know UofT typically sends out admission offers first before notifying waitlist people a few days to even over a week later. So, let's hope we hear about offers mid-April with waitlist notifications closer to end of April.

Like others, I received an email saying my application status updated for UofT. When I checked, I saw my official offer package (24 pages). Deadline to accept is April 23 for me, deadline to pay deposit is June 1st.

Okay, thanks! Assumed it was unpaid but just wanted to see if I could be pleasantly surprised by the opposite lol

Hi all, I think I know the answer but just want confirmation since I can't find it anywhere, but are practicum placements unpaid?

That's great, glad to hear things have worked out!

Congrats, great news!! Which school did you receive an offer from?

Totally off topic but this MSW Canada forum has over 1500 replies and 200K views and the next highest MSW topic page only has 475 replies ?. Canadians really care about their social work lol

Starts with A!

Same I see it as well in red font. Still no official email though. Last name starts with A.

When I first login, I'm on the "Dashboard" page. When you scroll down there's an "Academics" side, which says "invited" next to the name of the program and a "Finances" side which shows the $500. If you see the $500, then you can almost be certain it's real lol. But agree, I'm not going to feel any certainty until I receive an email or my SGS is updated and neither has happened so far.

You can reach out to the department and maybe find out if you were waitlisted? For OISE's SCCP program, I didn't receive the waitlist email until 10 days after I knew they sent offers (so needless to say, for 10 days I also assumed it was a straight rejection for me lol). So you're not officially "rejected" until you receive the actual rejection notification!

Hey there! I also applied to UofTs MEd in Counselling and Psychotherapy but haven't heard back yet. And I'm currently waitlisted for UofTs School and Clinical Child Psych program. I'm undecided on whether I would do the MSW or Counselling program if I got accepted (i don't expect to come off waitlist for SCCP program). I did not apply to any other MSW programs though so if I don't get the counselling offer, I'll definitely be accepting the MSW.

Doesn't UofT accept much more people than other programs (like 140 people)? So it would likely take longer to update everyone's portal than it would for a program only accepting 20 people. Just something to consider for people who's portal may not have changed. Also I've gotten no email, so if you don't have access to Acorn but have been accepted, you will need to wait until tomorrow or whenever they plan to send the emails to even know! Still lots of time for people to find out.

I just checked Acorn and it shows invited with the $500 deposit and April 13th deadline to pay. No email yet! I checked Acorn earlier today and it showed $0, so it was definitely only added within the past few hours!

I got in to UofT's 2-year MSW program!! So happy as I was starting to doubt my experience reading all of everyone's stats on this site (y'all are so impressive!!). Praying everyone else who applied in this forum hears some good news!!

I'm assuming this must be city-specific though right? I'm from Ontario (and Toronto to be specific) so I know for sure we are way more liberal than Alberta (despite our current premier being Conservative!). But I feel like Calgary has to be much more liberal than some smaller town cities in Alberta, no?

Also wondering this. I received the email saying an update had been made to my file and when I checked the portal, I could see it was from University of Ottawa because the date had been updated next to that school. However the other 2 schools were still showing a December date, so i know they have not updated my file yet. Guess I'll just wait for April 1st to see if the other schools update the file as well.

Agree with the last poster. I'm similarly interested in therapy and possibly working in private practice. Based on exploring jobs that I find interesting on Indeed, I basically got the impression that you can do clinical counselling/private practice work with both degrees (i.e., MSW or Masters Counselling); however, there's also a lot of other interesting jobs that ask for an MSW and don't necessarily ask for a degree in counselling. So, just feels like the MSW will diversify my job options.

I sympathize with your situation and hope you're able to achieve what you're looking for! If you go the BSW route, you do not have to stop there. You can then apply for advanced standing MSW programs and depending on how well you do in your BSW program (e.g., strong grades), it may make you a stronger candidate for MSW programs. So, I don't think doing a BSW is a bad idea. And of course, you can stop at the BSW level and work right away, but just wanted to let you know that you can apply for advanced standing MSWs after if your goal is still to receive the masters.

Congrats! Were you given a deadline date to accept your offer?

Do you go on the discord page? There's a "Help me decide" sub topic, where people can ask for advice/their thoughts on programs/schools to choose from. I remember someone asking a similar question about whether to accept a clinical psych or school psych program. So maybe you can also ask your quesiton there. This is the link https://discord.gg/hm327SrA

Like the previous poster said, fit tends to be more important than "prestige", particularly when you're comparing reputable schools like York, Ryerson and UofT all are. So, I don't think "school name" should weigh too heavily in this decision. I think your approach of looking at the courses is a great one, and is an approach I also take when deciding what program is the best for me. Similarly related is faculty expertise, which is also a big one because it's those faculty who will be your mentors. So, if you find the research expertise of one school's faculty is more in line with your career goals than faculty of the other schools, then that should also factor heavily in your decision. All that said, I think scholarship money always helps, especially since you're coming from out of province. If you feel there's little likelihood that your career goals/aspirations will be negatively impacted by going to let's say York or Ryerson, then accepting one of those offers could be the best situation for you, so you can have some financial cushion. Lots of factors for you to consider but either way congrats on all your offers, you're in a great position to be in!

It's actually something a lot of other programs do! I think its for programs where there's a committee that oversees decisions on acceptances as opposed to other programs where pretty much the POI has control over who gets accepted. I know for OISE SCCP, people received the "recommended for admission" email in February but official offers won't be sent until this month. So it's kind of a good thing to receive the recommendation email or else you'd be completely in the dark about your status until the official offer comes in a month later! Good luck on your Western interview!