Canada MSW 2019

[SageAU]

51 minutes ago, Jessica_11 said:

Oh no, hopefully it's not May or June.  When I emailed admissions back in January they said that they were expecting to have decisions out at the end of March/beginning of April and based on previous threads it looks like most people heard the first week of April for the 2 year program.  Did you apply for the September 2019 start date Nicole?

There's also an online program with a Sept 2019 start-date which might be the one that Nicole applied to (separate from the regular, in-class 2-year); and that one has a later admission date. 

[Jessica_11]

2 hours ago, SageAU said:

There's also an online program with a Sept 2019 start-date which might be the one that Nicole applied to (separate from the regular, in-class 2-year); and that one has a later admission date.  

Ohh I see, that might be the case then.  Thank you!

[Nicole22]

55 minutes ago, Jessica_11 said:

Ohh I see, that might be the case then.  Thank you!

Yeah sorry! It’s the online one I’m taking about

[deklr]

I want to hear so badly from UofT! I keep feeling like we are so close to being notified. I feel so impatient and so excited!

Best of luck to all of you! 

[DovesLanding]

On 3/13/2019 at 2:04 PM, SK19 said:

Does anyone know when we will hear back for the wait list at Kings, or knows of anyone who has moved from the waitlist and gotten accepted? (since they do it on a rolling basis) 
 

I too am wondering and hoping...for the 1 yr advanced...I only applied to King's since it is the 1 I want...all my eggs lol

[DovesLanding]

Just received an emailed offer from 1 yr Advanced MSW from King's! I was waitlisted so the waitlist moves! They said it would be a couple of day's before the student portal changes however. Happy! 

Edited March 20, 2019 by DovesLanding
Spelling

[mswash]

32 minutes ago, DovesLanding said:

I too am wondering and hoping...for the 1 yr advanced...I only applied to King's since it is the 1 I want...all my eggs lol

Hi! Just curious about what made King's your first (and only, lolz) choice? Was it something specific about the program you liked?

[DovesLanding]

16 minutes ago, mswash said:

Hi! Just curious about what made King's your first (and only, lolz) choice? Was it something specific about the program you liked?

I chose King's for a couple of reasons. First it's clinical nature. Also electives offered, professors interests, small class size, and stated opportunities for engagement. I also feel London offers some new placement opportunities. I dont live in London so will have to move, but I feel with 4 placements Ive had (SSW Diploma and now HBSW) I have already had what I consider the best placements for me in my current location. The rest is "gut". I read everything I could find on all relevant schools, and found King's an excellent fit. I want a msw but more.I want "my" msw - the education I need to prepare me for my goals. Only finding and then applying to 1 program that suited me was scary though lol

[mswash]

11 minutes ago, DovesLanding said:

I chose King's for a couple of reasons. First it's clinical nature. Also electives offered, professors interests, small class size, and stated opportunities for engagement. I also feel London offers some new placement opportunities. I dont live in London so will have to move, but I feel with 4 placements Ive had (SSW Diploma and now HBSW) I have already had what I consider the best placements for me in my current location. The rest is "gut". I read everything I could find on all relevant schools, and found King's an excellent fit. I want a msw but more.I want "my" msw - the education I need to prepare me for my goals. Only finding and then applying to 1 program that suited me was scary though lol

Oh that is so helpful -- thank you! I wasn't able to find out anything about the placements they offer. Are you aware of what some of them are, or have been in the past? Or do you mean that you just know they'll be different because they're in a different city?

[Jessica_11]

7 hours ago, Nicole22 said:

Yeah sorry! It’s the online one I’m taking about

Good luck !

[DovesLanding]

3 hours ago, mswash said:

Oh that is so helpful -- thank you! I wasn't able to find out anything about the placements they offer. Are you aware of what some of them are, or have been in the past? Or do you mean that you just know they'll be different because they're in a different city?

I tried to post relevant placement opportunities screenshot but its too big to load. For me I meant there are opps that meet my personal goals. However King's does say they offer over 300 placements and cover all areas I can think of anyway. Google their placement oppotunities and a few choices down is a chart with categories of msw placements.ie govt, hospital, etc Also connect with their fb page and you will see selection of agencies that attend their placement open house. Their "viewbook" also holds placement info to glean although I found that onerous to sift through. In addition you can propose your own although there are parameters to meet.

[aspiringmsw2019]

6 hours ago, DovesLanding said:

Just received an emailed offer from 1 yr Advanced MSW from King's! I was waitlisted so the waitlist moves! They said it would be a couple of day's before the student portal changes however. Happy! 

Yayyyy congrats ?

[mswash]

3 hours ago, DovesLanding said:

I tried to post relevant placement opportunities screenshot but its too big to load. For me I meant there are opps that meet my personal goals. However King's does say they offer over 300 placements and cover all areas I can think of anyway. Google their placement oppotunities and a few choices down is a chart with categories of msw placements.ie govt, hospital, etc Also connect with their fb page and you will see selection of agencies that attend their placement open house. Their "viewbook" also holds placement info to glean although I found that onerous to sift through. In addition you can propose your own although there are parameters to meet.

Oh wow, awesome. Thank you for sharing your legwork with me! I was concerned that because the program was smaller there would only be limited placement opportunities, but that doesn't at all seem to be the case. I'll go poke around now. Thank you again and congrats on getting accepted! Your gamble paid off

[moonsun.jang]

I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANXIETY ANYMOREEEEEEE AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(i'm sorry if this is not an appropriate post. i'm just so stressed)

[BenMa]

Ryerson.....where are you?

[BenMa]

For a profession which emphasizes transparency, WHERE IS THE TRANSPARENCY

[Walking Ball of Anxiety]

Has anyone been accepted off of the waitlist for waterloo’s part-time program? 

[KJE88]

Hello to all the 2 year Laurier hopefuls! Recently decided to look back at this forum and reminisce about the journey I've been on since I was in your position last year (and a couple years before that as well, as I was not accepted the first time I applied)  I've seen a couple posts speculating about when the Laurier 2 year (on campus) offers will go out and I remember how anxiety provoking it was that Laurier seems to be one of the last programs to send out acceptance letters! Last year acceptances went out April 3rd and the years prior to that I got my rejection around that date as well (rejections were sent by snail mail). So you've probably got about 2 weeks of that constant refresh of your email and Loris to go. You will get an email to whatever email address you used when you applied to the program, so no need to keep checking Loris (this is how they did it last year anyway). 

Wishing you all the best of luck and reminding you to take care of your mental health as you wait over the next couple of weeks, I know how agonizing the wait is! For those of you who are successful and do choose Laurier, it is a wonderful program, and so far it has been a great experience. 

 

[mswash]

1 hour ago, KJE88 said:

Hello to all the 2 year Laurier hopefuls! Recently decided to look back at this forum and reminisce about the journey I've been on since I was in your position last year (and a couple years before that as well, as I was not accepted the first time I applied)  I've seen a couple posts speculating about when the Laurier 2 year (on campus) offers will go out and I remember how anxiety provoking it was that Laurier seems to be one of the last programs to send out acceptance letters! Last year acceptances went out April 3rd and the years prior to that I got my rejection around that date as well (rejections were sent by snail mail). So you've probably got about 2 weeks of that constant refresh of your email and Loris to go. You will get an email to whatever email address you used when you applied to the program, so no need to keep checking Loris (this is how they did it last year anyway). 

Wishing you all the best of luck and reminding you to take care of your mental health as you wait over the next couple of weeks, I know how agonizing the wait is! For those of you who are successful and do choose Laurier, it is a wonderful program, and so far it has been a great experience. 

 

Thank you so much for this!! Any chance you can tell us a bit about the program? What makes it unique/what the placements opportunities are like/whether your experience has been positive?

I'm also wondering how long Laurier, U of T, and York give people to make a decision on their offer, if anyone knows the answer to that!

[deklr]

13 hours ago, KJE88 said:

Hello to all the 2 year Laurier hopefuls! Recently decided to look back at this forum and reminisce about the journey I've been on since I was in your position last year (and a couple years before that as well, as I was not accepted the first time I applied)  I've seen a couple posts speculating about when the Laurier 2 year (on campus) offers will go out and I remember how anxiety provoking it was that Laurier seems to be one of the last programs to send out acceptance letters! Last year acceptances went out April 3rd and the years prior to that I got my rejection around that date as well (rejections were sent by snail mail). So you've probably got about 2 weeks of that constant refresh of your email and Loris to go. You will get an email to whatever email address you used when you applied to the program, so no need to keep checking Loris (this is how they did it last year anyway). 

Wishing you all the best of luck and reminding you to take care of your mental health as you wait over the next couple of weeks, I know how agonizing the wait is! For those of you who are successful and do choose Laurier, it is a wonderful program, and so far it has been a great experience. 

 

I also have some curiosity as to how you changed or developed your CV/application in between not being accepted and later being accepted. If you have the time or energy to let us know I'm sure it would be a point of curiosity for several folks waiting to hear/or having heard back already! Congrats on being in the program and thanks for your updates. 

[ayxl]

another week with no news, it's gotta be next week right??? ?

hang in there everyone, enjoy your weekend!!!

[lisafara]

Has anyone applied to McGill's MSW program? i have heard 0 about it here

 

[DovesLanding]

Sigh. Reality is raining on my parade. I cant figure out a way to pay for a more expensive place to move to go to Western.(my rent now is sweet deal) nvm school and life. Of course I will apply to osap but doing the "what you may get" trial there isnt enough money. How is everyone else paying for their Masters? I may have to wait a year and work and save. 

[Purple-Elephant]

12 hours ago, DovesLanding said:

Sigh. Reality is raining on my parade. I cant figure out a way to pay for a more expensive place to move to go to Western.(my rent now is sweet deal) nvm school and life. Of course I will apply to osap but doing the "what you may get" trial there isnt enough money. How is everyone else paying for their Masters? I may have to wait a year and work and save. 

I’m sorry to hear that  Western is so expensive and not much funding available. I already live in London with cheap rent and had to turn them down. I was offered almost enough funding from Laurier to cover my tuition, and have been saving up for 2 1/2 years because I’ve planned to get my MSW. I also am going to work part time doing respite, and commute to class so I can keep living where I do. Before my full time offer though I had planned to do the Laurier online part-time MSW so I could work full time longer and then work more hours when I had my placement portion of the program. 

[KJE88]

On 3/21/2019 at 10:21 PM, mswash said:

Thank you so much for this!! Any chance you can tell us a bit about the program? What makes it unique/what the placements opportunities are like/whether your experience has been positive?

I'm also wondering how long Laurier, U of T, and York give people to make a decision on their offer, if anyone knows the answer to that!

 

My cohort is full of amazing supportive people. I really cannot say enough good things about the people sitting beside me in class. I can't speak to other years, but our cohort seems to get along really well, and I have learned just as much from my classmates as my profs (and classes are set up in a way that makes this possible).   

I LOVE that we have our own campus. Only social work, and only Master/PhD level students in our building. I do occasionally go to the main campus to use the library in the evenings/ on weekends though. There are around 75 people in my cohort and we are typically split into 3 sections for each class (25 per class), sometimes there are 4 sections. We occasionally have some of the part time students in our classes and we also have music therapy students who join us for the Individuals class. There will always be some profs who are better than others but I can honestly say for the most part I have loved my profs, we have some pretty incredible people teaching our classes.  We are referred to as colleagues by our profs and my experience has been that they are open to learning from us. Our profs know who we are by name and we are on a first name basis with them. They are very open to the needs of their students, and seem to truly care about our wellbeing. I will say that it is not as clinically focused as I would like, but I do feel that I am getting the clinical component at placement, and although my end goal is clinical social work I feel like the social justice class and community development class were essential. They were actually my two favourite classes so far (mostly because the profs were brilliant). Having the indigenous stream of study in the building enriches our experience as well (guest lectures, faculty members who are indigenous elders, indigenous faculty teach the indigenous knowledge in social work course, and invitations to events put on by the indigenous stream students). Another opportunity is a program called Walls to Bridges, started by one of our profs, and which is now being run through other universities as well, but it provides students the opportunity to take one of their classes alongside inmates in a prison setting. Super cool opportunity! I haven’t been able to work it into my schedule this year, but fingers crossed for next year! You can check out this link, part of it was filmed in my class when Tina came to do a guest lecture (side note, if you choose Laurier- take a class with Shoshona, she is amazing!):

https://twitter.com/TheAgenda/status/1068549936487239691

The placement process is a bit of a shit show but from what I've heard from friends at other schools this seems to be the case with a lot of the programs. I would say this is my largest complaint about the program. 

Also, just an FYI- next year they are extending our lunch period to make more time for lunch time workshops, which means you will be stuck in class until 5:30pm on class days. This will definitely make it more difficult to find part time work, just something to keep in mind when planning how you are going to survive financially! Especially now that our lovely premier has taken away free tuition #notbitterattall. First semester you have Monday and Friday off so that makes it easier to have a part time job, second semester is more difficult, especially if your placement is not in the city you live in. I had to stop working this semester because I couldn’t make it work with the placement/ class schedule. There are people in the program who have been able to make it work though, especially those who got placements close to where they live, or have jobs that are cool with only weekend availability. 

On 3/22/2019 at 10:34 AM, deklr said:

 

I also have some curiosity as to how you changed or developed your CV/application in between not being accepted and later being accepted. If you have the time or energy to let us know I'm sure it would be a point of curiosity for several folks waiting to hear/or having heard back already! Congrats on being in the program and thanks for your updates. 

My GPA was not initially high enough, and my undergrad was completely unrelated (biology). I took social science courses through Athabasca and got high 80s-90s but that didn't really seem to have an impact. Then I found the online pre-req courses for the Waterloo post grad BSW and took 7 of those, again grades in high 80s-90s, this seemed to make the difference because I was accepted after doing them. I think this is for a couple of reasons:

a) They were social work courses directly related to the program and I could demonstrate I was competent in the area through high grades

b) It meant I had an academic reference from a prof who was also a social worker (also happened to be a graduate of Laurier so that may have worked to my advantage)

c) Because I was taking social work courses, I knew the language they would be looking for in the application and the types of things I said in my personal statement changed. 

So, if you need to boost your GPA I would definitely recommend the Waterloo BSW pre-req courses over other online courses such as those at Athabasca. It would also open the option of applying to the 1 year BSW as a backup if you don't get into an MSW.

I also focused heavily on gaining experience in the field from the first time I applied to when I finally got in. I believe I had about 4000 hours (volunteer and paid combined) when I applied last year. As I gained more experience I also began to talk about those experiences differently in my personal statement and my CV. Volunteering at a distress centre was a valuable experience for anyone looking for something that looks good on the application. This is also an easy way to break into the field if you do not have a related education because that can be really difficult.  It also helped prepare me for the individuals class and as I moved into field placement because I was already familiar with some counselling skills and very comfortable talking about suicide with clients. Additionally, the distress centre where I volunteered (and I would think this is the case at many) was very familiar with writing references for students applying to grad school, and wrote fabulous social work related references.  

For Laurier (this is the only school I applied to so I can only speak to it) - I would make sure there is an emphasis on social justice issues in your personal statement. Ensure you have socially located yourself, and make it clear you are able to engage in reflexivity. There has been a huge focus on these things in all classes and this will be attractive to the faculty on the committee who chooses successful applicants.My successful personal statement had a larger emphasis on these things than previous years when I was not successful.  Include lived experience. As much as it is no ones business what your struggles have been, it seems that those who include it in their personal statement are more likely to get in. 

If you were looking for more specific details feel free to send me a private message