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When I received an email from the graduate secretary of the School of Public Admin with my offer of admission, my status still said "Under Review by Department" and didn't change until later in the day. In the letter it said to email the grad secretary re: accepting or declining the offer, and instructions on how to submit the deposit to secure a spot. Last night I received an email from Graduate Admissions and Records, notifying me that I had been recommended for admission by the School of Public Administration, and they would review my application and notify me by email when I was officially admitted. My status changed this afternoon to "provisionally admitted" but they haven't emailed yet.

Congrats! That's wonderful news. If you decide to accept the offer, I obviously won't see you around campus because I'm an online student, but I do live in Victoria and highly recommend that you join the IPAC Victoria group and come out to some of the events. There's lots of networking/pub night events.

Just a heads up that for anyone waiting on admission to the University of Victoria (UVic) MPA program (online stream), I got an offer of admission today and I believe this is the first round of offers going out.

Hi, today I received my acceptance to the UVic MPA Online program. I hope you hear something soon!

Online. You? Apparently online admissions usually happen after on campus.

I'm fairly well connected to the public admin community in Victoria by virtue of my job and I'm pretty sure they haven't released any decisions.They only started reviewing applications a week or two ago, based on the email I received when I inquired and some posts made by the official UVic Reddit account in response to someone asking a similar question. I don't understand why they would make the application deadline Jan 15 if they had no intention of reviewing applications until late March or early April.

I just emailed the UVic MPA grad advisor and she responded that the admissions committee is meeting and will have decisions very shortly. I'm going to take that to mean by the end of next week--so the April 5th timeline of a previous year looks to be about right.

I haven't heard of anyone being accepted yet. It looks like in some past years they waited until April to send out acceptances, which seems like a really long time to wait. I know the application deadline was originally Jan 15 but was extended to Jan 31, so I'm guessing they weren't inundated with stellar applicants. I have another masters degree and I don't recall decisions ever taking this long. I really hope I get in; I have a great job in govt and I'm not going to leave it, move or incur the costs of pursuing studies full-time. Dalhousie is the only other distance-ed option in Canada, but they require a residency each semester.

I emailed UVic last week to ask about an estimated timeline for decisions and didn't even receive an acknowledgement of or reply to my email.

It could also mean that your program you are waiting on at UofT is excellent and very few people who have been admitted are turning it down. If their waitlist isn't ranked, then the committee might be taking the weekend, or a few days next week, to decide who to admit based on who turned down the offer. If someone with similar research interests declined the offer, then you might be admitted based on that. However, if there is a ranked wait list, then who knows. Either way, happy thoughts and good luck!

My status changed over this morning, after being emailed last week. Still no package though, and I only live a few hours away from Toronto. I don't think I'm going to accept the offer, but still, rumour has it that UofT has the most "glossy" acceptance package (at least in my program) and it's a nice feeling of validation to have something like that arrive in the mail. I want it! It seems the pattern is continuing, as I discover more people I know either being accepted or rejected from UofT: if your status changes to "decision made" before you are contacted, then you have most likely been rejected or at least waitlisted.

From my experience with the University of Toronto, and several of my friends' experiences, if you are accepted, someone from your program will contact you long before the status of your online application changes or you receive something in the mail. The people who are rejected are generally only notified by mail. This has at least been the experience of me and five friends who applied this year and last year, but it may vary by department. From these limited samples, if your application says "decision made" but nobody has contacted you, then you have probably rejected or waitlisted. This was true of Info studies, economics and urban planning. I don't know about other departments though.

I think it would depend on the type of assistantship. I was offered an TA position when I received an offer of admission to an MA program (there is no PhD equivalent). The TA position included conducting a one-hour tutorial each week, and marking papers and exams. I would email the department to find out the details of your assistantship.

It depends! A few of Western's programs have summer intakes, so people might be looking for a place to stay, furnished, to give them time to get on their feet for Sept. Also, due to the teaching nature of many of the hospitals and health care centres in London, there are always medical students doing internships or whatever medical students do, looking for a place to stay for a month or two. Since London has such a high vacancy rate and high student population, some landlords will not require you to sign a year lease, just a month-to-month or a 8-month lease. It really is a renters' market there.

Anyone making the trek to beautiful Vancouver to study at UBC? I'm going for the Master of Library and Info Studies.

I'm not from London, but I have spent some time there and applied to Western for my Master's (have yet to hear back). London is... a lot of things. It has a significant but transient university/college population, but it also has a substantial part of the population working in the manufacturing sector, and brings with it some of the social ills that can occur with a floundering industry. However, there are numerous teaching hospitals and medical research facilities in London, so there is a lot of money in parts of that city. As for nightlife, there are tons of bars on the main drag catering to Western students, everything from hole-in-wall music venues and small pubs to huge clubs. Western is a very social party school. Living is *very* affordable in London. You can get a nice 2-bedroom apartment for $750, although ones within walking distance to UWO are a little more expensive, but certainly reasonably priced. Just make sure you live on a direct bus route to campus if you are not within walking distance, as the transit system can leave a little to be desired if you have to take more than one bus. North London is the richer, well-off section. The eastern and southern parts can be pretty scuzzy, and not really the types of places you'd want to walk around in at night. The downtown/business district is pretty small, but there are some good shops and restaurants. Traffic can be pretty terrible at rush hour because there is no highway or ring that goes around the city, but the city isn't a metropolis by any means, so "traffic" is probably relative depending on what you are used to. I hope that helps a bit.

I guess Canadian schools must be different on this front; in general, you require a master's degree to enter into a PhD program in Canada. That being said, pretty much every single master's student I know in Canada receives funding in the way of scholarships and/or TA or RA positions. I applied to mostly MLIS programs, and those don't offer RA/TA funding since there isn't research in the same context nor is there an undergraduate equivalent. There are however plenty of scholarships from the government and schools for those degrees. I did apply to one one-year MA program, and got in with a $3,000 scholarship and a $10,000 8-month TAship. No funding would be the exception and not the norm here.