- Hello, everyone and
welcome to our session
about the Faculty of Mathematics
at University of Waterloo.
My name is Vicky Liu,
I'm Undergraduate Recruitment
and Admissions Officer
at math faculty.
I'll be delivering the session
together with my colleague, Amelia Burton.
We know that is now a
hard time for everyone,
we hope you and your family
stay safe and healthy.
We're happy to deliver
valuable information virtually
that you may find helpful.
In about half an hour
we're going to talk about
what math is, kind of
sharing our experience
while you should come to
study mathematics and CS
with us at Waterloo.
You may already know the term Co-op
or cooperative education.
We're gonna spend a time on
how co-op works at Waterloo,
what program we offer at
Faculty of Mathematics,
then very important, what
kind of jobs are there
for math and computer science students?
At the very end Amelia
is going to talk about
admissions or how to
get into our programs.
What is mathematics?
You may have never thought about this,
I actually have both my
bachelor's and master's degree
in mathematics, but didn't
really think about it
until a few years ago
when I was asked to share
some of my thoughts or understanding
with a bunch of colleagues.
First, I wanna borrow the
statement from Dr. William Tutte.
This is perfectly said.
For those who don't know about Dr. Tutte,
he was a British
mathematician and codebreaker.
During the Second World War,
he broke a Nazi-German code,
the Lorenz Cipher system,
which was used by Nazi-German
High Command for top
secret communications.
So in some way, he may
have hastened the end
of the Second World War,
saving millions of lives.
He also did foundation work
in the field of graph theory.
He joined the University
of Waterloo in 1962
when our Faculty of
Math didn't even exist.
If you get a chance to visit
our campus in the future,
we have a William Tutte way
between our math buildings,
which was named after him.
There are so many myths
about mathematics such as,
it's just about numbers or
it's just about addition,
subtraction, division, geometry,
all that kind of thing.
From our understanding, and
I think many mathematicians
would agree, the essential
part about mathematics
is to find patterns or
connections or some rules
that control or manage
what we have in our world.
Mathematics is a type of
language that we come up with
to represent these patterns.
Unlike typical languages such as English,
French, Spanish, German,
Italian, Korean, Chinese,
the language of math
is way more universal.
Doesn't matter where you
come from, mathematicians
use the same math language to
communicate with each other.
Now let's do some math together.
I want to show you a very quick example
of Fibonacci numbers.
Which, I believe, many of
you are very familiar to.
So it goes one, one, two,
three, five, eight, 13,
there are a lot of interesting
patterns to these numbers.
In terms of calculation
it's pretty straightforward,
one plus one equals to two,
one plus two equals to three, et cetera.
In terms of applications,
Fibonacci numbers
occur in nature very, very often.
If you happen to have sun
flowers in your house,
lilies, rose hips or daisies,
count the number of the petal
on them or if you have an
pineapple, count the scales.
Under most circumstances,
your end up getting
Fibonacci numbers.
Now let's try something else.
If you divide the larger
number by the smaller one,
say divide 13 by eight, you'll get 1.625.
If you divide 21 by 13, you'll
get 1.615 so these ratios
are getting closer and closer
or say if we take the limit
of these ratios, we'll get a number 1.618,
which might look familiar.
It's the golden ratio.
This number appears
many times in geometry,
art, architecture,
science and other areas.
There are many other interesting patterns
that you may like to
play around and explore.
I wanted to do this with you
because many people think
math is so hard math is too boring
but there's a beautiful side to it.
Learning mathematics a great
way to train your brain.
It trains you how to think logically,
also makes you understand things better.
If you can see stuff from the core
or the inside of structure, you
definitely can get very deep
understanding about it.
So just summarize, I like
to quote this statement.
"Mathematics is not
about just solving for X,
it's also figuring out Y."
We often hear people say,
"Well, mathematicians are so smart."
Well, that's true because
that's how we get trained.
Why you should choose to study mathematics
or computer science here
with us at Waterloo.
The Faculty of Mathematics
is the only dedicated
Faculty of Mathematics in North America.
Other university may have
smaller math departments
or programs under Faculty
of Arts or Science,
which is different story.
Math at Waterloo is a big thing.
We are a powerhouse
for mathematical computational education.
There are over 8000 student
here in our faculty,
over 240 full time professors
and we offer more than 500
courses in mathematic,
statistics and computer science.
Both our math and
computer science programs
are ranked top 50 in the world.
We attract the smartest
students who love math
and computer science
from all over the world.
So if you come to study math at Waterloo,
you'll be sitting in
classrooms with other students
who are as passionate
about math as you are.
You can definitely work
together and also learn
from each other.
It's always fun to work
with these top minds.
If you like math, we are like a wonderland
for all math lovers.
Faculty of Math provides our students
with wonderful resources and support.
Tutorial centers are in
both our math building
and also your residence.
You will have academic
and program advisors,
you're encouraged to communicate with them
about your academic plan
or course selections.
Our computer lab is
available to our students
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So technically, if you
don't own a computer,
it won't be a problem at all.
We have all the equipments
for you in our buildings.
If you have very cool ideas to start
something of your own, take good advantage
of the university's
Intellectual Property policy,
which protect your ideas
from being taken away.
You own your ideas that
you develop at Waterloo.
Co-op and regular.
Most of math programs are
offered through both co-op
and regular, some programs are co-op only
which means co-op is mandatory.
At Waterloo, there are
three, four month terms
every academic year.
September to December,
fall term, winter term's
from January to April, then
spring term from May to August.
For our students in our regular system,
you spend eight months,
from September to April
in school taking courses and
then you have a summer off.
For students in co-op system,
you're normally alternated
between four months
of school taking courses
and then four months
as full time employee of the organization
you're working for.
You'll learn to successfully
interview for jobs,
apply for your skills
to real life problems
and to graduate with up to
two years work experience.
How co-op works at Waterloo.
In their term before you work
term, our co-op employers
submit their job posting
at our online platform.
You can review them and apply
to jobs that interest you.
Then you will interview with employers
who select you based on
your resume and experience.
Some interviews happen on campus,
while others can be done through phone
or other platforms such as Skype.
After a round of interviews,
you get to rank the employers
in order of preference and they rank you
in our matching process.
Our co-op program is a very
competitive job application
process preparing you for
whatever your experience
when you graduate but we are here to help.
Cooperative Education
provided with a lot of support
to help you with job search strategies,
creating a resume and a cover letter
and also practicing for interviews.
All the key skills you need for a career.
We have over 7000 co-op
employers around the world,
more than any other
university in North America.
Co-op combines going to
school with the relevant
paid work experience.
It's an amazing way to explore careers,
gain valuable experience and making money
while earning your university degree.
You can try up to six different jobs
in various industry or
different companies,
even different countries.
You can really learn more about the world
and yourself as well.
You get to know what kind of jobs you like
or something you may not like,
which is equally important.
If you are in the regular system of study,
you will be in school between
September and April each year
and have your summers off.
You'll graduate sooner
but receive the same support from us.
You may earn an EDGE
certificate for your career,
which provides with workshops
and experiential education
courses to help you identify and showcase
your marketable skills
as part of the add
certificate program program,
which is available only
to regular students.
In my faculty, there are three core areas
of programs, mathematics,
computer science,
math plus business accounting.
In mathematics, there are 14 majors,
all of which are second
year or later entry.
You need to apply directly
to honors math program,
study first year courses
like calculus, algebra,
computer science, communication courses
and non math electives.
You can choose your
major as early as the end
of the first year.
A few majors, actuarial science,
actuaries address the
uncertainties associated
with life insurance, property
and casualty insurance,
pensions or other employee benefit plans.
In this program, you'll take courses
such as the math of finance, risk theory
and a pension mathematics is taught by
professional actuaries in
one of the North America's
top actuarial schools.
Combinatorics and
optimization or we call it
cena-no in short.
Combinatorics looks at
permutation and combinations,
optimization explores
ways to make any operation
work more efficiently
with given constraints.
Together, they provide
powerful methods for modeling
and solving large management
skills from optimizing
flight schedules to
making factories layout
as efficient as possible.
Computational mathematics is a combination
of computer science and mathematics.
You'll learn how to code
with mathematical models
to solve industrial sized
problems in business,
economics, engineering environments,
finance, medicine and science.
You can harness the power
of computers to generate
and run mathematical models analyzing data
for quantitative real world solutions.
Data Science is being
very popular right now.
Every day huge amounts
of data are generated
by the business, scientific
and social activity
taking place around us,
with data coming from
sensors, digital images,
streaming video, satellites
and medical imagery
and from interactions
with cloud computing,
data driven approaches to decision making
are being applied in areas
as diverse as medicine,
business, advertising and entertainment.
You'll take courses in
computer science and statistics
and then learn the
methods you use to analyze
large data sets in order
to predict and improve
business strategy, products and services,
marketing campaigns, medicine
and public health and safety.
In mathematical physics, you'll
combined theoretical physics
with high level math courses
and differential equations,
vector calculus and applied mathematics.
You'll also get plenty of
chances to apply that learning
with hands on labs in
mechanics, electricity,
computer programming and more.
This program's also available through
Faculty of Science, you'll be
taking the same core courses
in math and physics but
if you enroll the program
through science, you need
to complete science required
courses and graduate with a
Bachelor's Degree of Science
or if you're a math, you'll
need to finish math courses
and graduate with a Bachelor's
Degree in Mathematics.
Davis Cheriton School of Computer Science
is a part of math faculty,
there are four direct entry
programs, so you need to
apply directly to them.
Business admission and CS double degree,
we work Wilfrid Laurier University
to have this double degree program.
You'll be taking CS
courses at Waterloo with us
and studying business courses with Laurie.
In just five years,
you'll earn two degrees,
a full honors Computer
Science degree from Waterloo
and a full honors Business Administration
degree from Laurie.
It's a co-op only program.
You'll be graduating with
co-op experience as well.
Computing in financial management or CFM
is a program that combines
computer science and finance.
In the School of Accounting and Finance,
you'll learn concepts of
modern financial management
in the Cheriton school, computer science,
you acquire the skills to develop
and maintain financial software.
If you want a career in computer science,
finance or combination of
both, financial technology,
the CFM program can help you
stand out in the marketplace.
You'll earn a
Bachelor of Computing and
Financial Management degree
that includes majors in Computer Science
and Financial Management
and up to six co-op terms
to grow your experience.
Software engineering
program's a joint program
between Faculties of Math and Engineering.
All the applications and
admissions will be reviewed
and processed by the
Faculty of Engineering.
Math plus business accounting.
There are four direct entry programs
you need to apply directly
to this programs again.
Business Administration and
Mathematics double degree.
This is the other double degree program
that we share with Laurier University.
Same idea, math courses at Waterloo,
business courses at Laurier.
You'll get a Bachelor of
Math degree from Waterloo
and a BBA degree from
Laurier in five years
with co-op experience.
Mathematics, Financial
Analysis and Risk Management
or we call it math FARM here.
The world of finance require professions
with business survey and logical thinking
and strong background in mathematics.
There are courses in
mathematics, statistics,
and computer science
with corporate finance,
micro and macro economics
and other business related courses.
You will be prepared for your
Chartered Financial Analysis,
CFA, or Professions Risk
Manager, PRM, designation.
Foreign program at a Waterloo mathematics
is recognized by the
Professional Risk Managers
International Association
and the CFA Institute.
Math FARM programs also available online.
What can I do with a degree
in math or computer science?
We get this kind of question very often.
The answer is there's a lot you can do
with a math or computer
science background.
Much more than you can imagine.
A Bachelor of Math or
Computer Science degree
from University of Waterloo
is a pass to almost any career
you can think of.
Our strength in math, stats
and computing give our students
a very competitive edge in
some of these fast growing
and high paying career areas.
Career Cast do job
ranking every year based
on poor salary, drop outlook, work stress
in a work environment and
projected growth, et cetera.
This is the most recent
of three years ranking.
There are usually more
than half the top 10 jobs
related to a math or CS degree.
In 2019, seven out of 10 top jobs
started with a degree in mathematics.
Having a background in
math opens so many doors.
If you are interested in
game design, special effects,
in movie industry, human
health, IT, operations,
finance and risk management,
or artificial intelligence
and machine learning or
cyber security and privacy,
they all start with math.
If you saw the film Star
Wars The Last To Die,
the Guardians of the Galaxy
two or Blade Runner 2049,
you have seen the work of some our alumni.
Kevin and Christine had a site
fix, a Toronto based company,
that provides digital artists
with procedural 3D animation
and visual effects tools.
Their are software called
Houdini is the premier software
used in the street for visual effects.
In fact, every movie nominated for
Visual Effects Academy
Award in 2018 used it.
Eldon graduated from
University of Waterloo
with a BMath degree in 1991,
major in Computer Science
and a minor in Economics.
He's Founder and Chief
Innovation Officer of eSentire.
His company is a pioneer of
managed detection and response,
a new approach to security
that provides clients
with around the clock
embedded incident response.
He credits the co-op
program for helping him land
a full time position
right out of university.
For the first few years,
he worked as a programmer,
systems administrator
and network administrator
before moving into information security.
Before graduating with his degree
in Combinatorics and
Optimization in 2019, Isaac
and his co founder Danielle
win the grand prize
at the Velocity Fund Pitch
Competition in Toronto.
Their company, SquidBio,
is developing a system
to allow for rapid prototyping
in synthetic biology,
including a bench-top
DNA synthesis device.
With this device, researchers
will be able to synthesize DNA
and put it into bacteria to
solve real world problems
in house and on their own
time, cutting down on costs
and the weeks they currently takes to have
the same product ordered and delivered.
SquidBio's win came with $50,000
to invest in their company
with a hope that they will be
able to accelerate the pace
of research leading to a
new life saving therapies,
Rayner manufacturing over chemicals
and a slew of other
disruptive innovations.
I've talked a lot about
math as a big picture
and what a math CS looks like at Waterloo,
now I like to pass along to Amelia,
she'll share more
information about admissions.
- Thanks, Vicki.
As Vicki mentioned, we're
now gonna switch gears
a little bit and the next
part of this presentation
will be focused on what
exactly we're looking for,
for admission into the Faculty of Math.
We will be looking at
three key components.
When you're applying to
any program in Mathematics,
Math in Business or Computer Science.
The first component are your grades
that you're currently receiving
in grade 12 in high school,
no matter what curriculum you're studying
from around the world.
The second component is your
Admission Information Form
or your AIF and the third
component are contests
and these are specifically from the
Center for Education and Math
in Computing or the CEMC.
In the next section, I'm
now gonna be breaking down
these different areas and going into
a little bit more detail
on what we're looking for
in these different areas.
As I mentioned, the first
component are grades
and courses that you're
taking in high school.
If you're a student
that's currently studying
in an Ontario High School,
we're looking at a total of six courses
to calculate your admission average.
Included in these six
courses are three specific
required courses, the Advanced Functions,
Calculus and Vectors and
any grade 12U English.
The other three courses that
we would use to calculate
your average would include
your highest U or M courses.
These six courses then
are used to calculate
your admission average.
Of course, we put an
emphasis on the math courses
that you're taking in your
final year of high school,
as you're applying into
the Faculty of Math,
as well as Computer Science.
That means that we're gonna
put a special emphasis
on your Calculus as well as
your Advanced Functions course.
In addition to your grade 12 grades,
we may also look at your grade 11 grades
and any of those courses
that you are also submitting
to the university when you apply.
If you're a student that
is applying to Waterloo
from outside of Ontario and
another province across Canada,
or from a different curriculum
from around the world,
we also have specific
admission requirements
that we are looking for
that we use to calculate
our admission average
and that can be found
on our website at
uwaterloo.ca/math/future.
In terms of grades,
what we're looking for,
to be competitive to gain admission
into one of our programs,
we're looking for high 80s
to low 90s for an overall
admission average.
Some of our programs are
more competitive than others
and those include Computer Science,
Computing and Financial Management,
Financial Analysis and Risk Management
as well as our double degree
programs that we offer
with Wilfrid Laurier University.
We offer a range, because we're looking
at more than just your grades.
We also include the score
that you will receive
on the admission information form.
And it's important to note
that admission into a program
that includes co-op is
slightly more competitive
than admission into a program
that's regular studies.
As I mentioned, in addition
to grades, we're also looking
at your admission information form.
This is the chance for
you to brag about yourself
and tell us all of the great
things that you're doing
outside of the classroom,
whether that art clubs
or sports that you're part
of both in high school
as well as outside of high school,
arts, whether you're
doing a part time job,
or if you're involved in other
competitions or contests.
All of this information
gets included on your AIF
and it is a requirement as
part of your application
to the Faculty of Math.
We read every AIF that's submitted to us
and give each one a score
and this is then included
as part of the application process.
For more information, you
can also head to our website
to see some videos on what
students have suggested
that you include on your AIF.
And remember to keep in mind
that the more information
you give us about yourself,
the more we can include
as part of your application.
The way that we make admissions decisions
in the Faculty of Math is by combining
your admission average
with your AIF score.
That makes up the final
admissions decision.
It's important to keep in
mind that while the AIF
is a requirement for
admission into the faculty,
the grades form the most important part
of any admissions decision.
If you're a student that
has repeated a course
or taken a course out of
outside of regular day school,
we ask you to explain this
on your admission information
form and we will take
all of that into consideration
during the application process.
As I mentioned at the
beginning of this section,
we do look at three different
things for admission
to the faculty.
The two that form the most important part
of any admissions decision
are the grades and your AIF.
We also do highly encourage
all students to participate
in our CEMC math contests.
This includes the Canadian
Senior Math Contest,
as well as the Euclid Math Contest.
The Canadian Senior Math Contest or CSMC,
is written in late November each year.
The Euclid Math Contest
is written in early April.
Both of these contests are
requirement for consideration
for our math entrance scholarships
and they can also be used
in our admissions decisions.
We do highly recommend
participation in these contests
as it also shows your great interest
in the field of Mathematics
and Computer Science.
For those students that have also applied
to computer science, we
recommend participation
in the Canadian Computing Contest
that's written in February of each year.
As you're preparing for these contests,
we have lots of great resources
that you can make use of
to help look at past contests
and to prepare to write them yourselves.
You can find all of these
resources on our website
at cemc.uwaterloo.ca.
Also on that website, you'll
find other great resources,
such as our grade 12 course ware,
that covers all of our grade
12 Ontario math curriculum
to help keep you mathematically
sharp as you're preparing
to come to university.
This also includes a chance
for you to learn how to code,
learning Python from scratch
and other great resources.
This is a great place to find
lots of different problems
to work on and to really
get to hone and practice
your problem solving skills.
For those students that are applying,
that have not been studying
in an English language
system for the most recent four years,
we will also require an
English language test.
If you are academically
admissible to the university,
then we also will be
looking at either your TOEFL
or IELTS test.
If you're submitting a
TOEFL test, we're looking
for an overall score of
90 and a 25 in writing
and 25 in speaking.
For those students that are
submitting an IELTS test,
we're looking for a 6.5 overall,
with individual band scores as well.
The Faculty of Math may
also consider it IELTS
with an overall score of seven
with no band score below six.
If you are admissible
mathematically and academically
to the Faculty of Math, however,
your English language test
score is slightly below
our recommended cut offs,
we also do have a program
that will help you to prepare
and improve your english
skills before starting
in your regular studies
in the Faculty of Math.
For more information on this program,
we encourage you to visit our website,
we'd also be happy to answer any questions
you have about this.
I now would like to focus a
little bit on scholarships.
There are two different
categories of scholarships
that are available to
students when you're applying
to the Faculty of Math.
The first category of
entrance scholarships
that you'll be considered
for as an applicant
to the Faculty of Math
are the University Wide
Entrance Scholarships.
There's no application
required for these scholarships
and you're automatically considered
using your admission
average that we calculate
when you're applying to the university.
There are different categories based on
what your admission average
is coming into Waterloo
and again, you're automatically
considered for these.
So that will appear as
part of your acceptance
on your quest account once
you've heard from the university.
The second category of scholarships
are the faculty specific scholarships.
Within the Faculty of Math,
we have one category of scholarships
that does require an
application and one category
that does not.
The first category that
does require an application
consists of our olympiad,
national and global scholarships.
We have an application
that's due at the beginning
of February each year.
This application asks
you a little bit more
about contests that you have competed in,
other competitions, both from the CEMC
and outside of the university,
as well as any other
extracurriculars that you've done,
both in and outside of high school.
In addition to those,
we also have the general
Faculty of Math scholarships.
These scholarships are
given out to students
based on their competition and completion
of the Canadian Senior Math Contest
and the Euclid Math Contest.
Based on your completion of the
Canadian Senior Math Contest
and Euclid Math Contest,
We will use this in
addition to your grades
to make final decisions
for these scholarships.
That covers everything that
you need to keep in mind
when you're thinking about admissions
into the Faculty of Math at Waterloo.
We wanted to encourage
you to continue learning
more about the university.
The first way to do
that is by learning more
about what it means to
be mathie at Waterloo.
On our Instagram account,
you can follow students
that are doing student takeovers
and it will help you
understand a little bit more
about what it means to
be a mathie at Waterloo
and what a day in the life of a student
in the Faculty of Math.
You can also to our residences
and campus virtually online.
Watch other information sessions
to get a little bit more
detailed information about other things
you can get involved in and
continue to monitor email
for upcoming webinar opportunities
where you can learn from more experts
in the field of admissions and recruitment
to help you better
understand what it means
to be a student at the university.
If you have any more
detailed questions for us
that weren't covered
in this webinar today,
we encourage you to reach
out and let us know.
You can email us at mathinfo@uwaterloo.ca.
and we would be happy to set
up a one on one virtual meeting
with you to help get all of
those questions answered.
We wanna thank you very
much for joining us
in the webinar today.
We hope you've learned a little
bit more about what we have
available in the Faculty
of Math and what it means
to be a student at the
University of Waterloo.
As I mentioned previously, if
you have any other questions,
we'd be happy to hear from you.
If you're a student that's interested
in Math or one of our Math
and Business programs,
you can email us at mathinfo@uwaterloo.ca.
If you're a student that's
interested in one of our programs
in Computer Science, you can email
future-ugrad@cs.uwaterloo.ca
and you can always follow
us on our social channels
to keep up to date on what's
happening at the university
and learn a little bit more
about some of our students
and the research happening on campus.
Thank you again for joining
us and have a great day.
