Peter Nincompoop

Congrats. I did my undergrad at UVIC and even took a couple of social work courses back then as electives. It is a great school is a great city.

The Charity Village website is a great place to look. You could also check the pages of local organizations who you would like to work for (i.e. the Salvation Army or whoever).

I occasionally worked with mental health OT's, and I certainly worked with OT's whose clients had mental health problems, but the majority of them working our of local health units doing home visits.

It's funny you mention OT school... As I have mentioned previously on here, I was admitted to a couple MSW programs last year and deferred to 2013 for personal reasons. During that time, I worked for a not-for-profit program which works closely with OT's and I have been wondering if I should have applied to OT schools as well (I almost did this year, but decided against it at the last minute).

You know it's bad when York gets the jump on you.

So no one has heard from Calgary yet? Last year they were the first school I heard from. I'm not sure what is going on there right now, but even without this I was getting the feeling that they are a bit disorganized at the moment.

I'm surprised they are taking so long. There were by far the first school I heard from last year.

Try Padmapper. It pulls listings from a bunch of different sites and puts them on a map.

Not at all. U of C and WLU. U of C gave me deferral and WLU did not. Made my decision about where to go pretty easy .

Well, in my mind, the work I was doing was more service-oriented than it was social-service oriented (if that makes any sense) and I think that you could argue that the two are quite different. It wasn't like I was waiting tables or anything, but I also wasn't working in a not-for-profit or government agency either.

It was definitely helpful and it certainly helped me define my career goals (I'd like to work with the elderly and the terminally ill), but prior to applying I worried that it wasn't closely related to social work because of the type of work I was doing. However, a couple of schools clearly disagreed with my assessment . Still, I think my experience pales in comparison to most people posting in this thread.

I think it varies by schools. Last year, I asked for deferrals from two schools and only one agreed.

Hi Erin, I'm not sure why I was successful to be honest, but I'll speak briefly about my experience here. The entrance requirements for social work in particular seem hard to gauge because they put so much weight on the more subjective parts of your application (personal statement/preparation/apparent motivation and work/volunteer experience). I'll apologize in advance for what is going to be a long post. Last year, I applied to 3 schools (Calgary, Laurier, and York). I was accepted into Calgary and Laurier, and waitlisted and ultimately rejected by York (who took an absurdly long time to give any notifications). I actually think my work experience was the weakest part of my application: I had about 8 years of working with vulnerable people (ill elderly persons) and a bit of not-for-profit experience, but nothing directly related to social work (though I now do). I also volunteered as a case worker with a local politician for a few months, but that was really about it. I did have pretty decent undergraduate grades. My overall average was between an A- and an A, and I had a solid A average in my last three semesters. I also did a double-major, which meant that pretty much all my 3rd and 4th year courses were upper level ones (which I have been told by profs looks pretty good on a grad school application). I think the strongest points of my application were my references and my personal statement. My referees gave me glowing letters and I feel that in my personal statement I was able to very clearly describe both my motivation for pursuing social work and how my personal, academic, and professional experiences had informed my decision to apply to an MSW program. I also had a friend of mine who is currently in grad school look over my personal statement and give me feedback. Finally, I also contacted a couple of school prior to applying to see if I would be a good fit in their program. I also studied the faculty at each school with an eye towards who I would like to work with and even emailed a professor whose speciality is very similar to my own interests. One other point, because of the current economic situation and because of the glut of persons, like myself, with generic BA's, ALL graduate schools are becoming harder to get into. Being rejected isn't necessarily a negative reflection on yourself, your experience, or your application; it's just really hard to get into professional graduate programs at the moment. Sorry for the long-winded reply, I hope this makes sense and that it helps you in some way. Good luck next year if you decide to reapply, LOTS of people get admitted into graduate school after initially being rejected, so don't lose hope.

I thought it might be a loaded question .

Off topic, but how old is everyone here? I'm going to be 32 when I start my MSW and I have a feeling that I will be much older than most of my classmates.