When Evan Wray applied to the University of Calgary engineering program last year, he felt confident his average of 89.5 per cent would be good enough to earn him admission.
“I 100 per cent felt like I had the grades,” said Wray, who graduated from Calgary’s STEM Innovation Academy public charter school in the spring.
The program was his top choice — it would allow him to save money by living at home, and he wants to work in the oil and gas industry.
Instead, he was surprised to learn he had been rejected, and left scrambling to figure out a back-up plan he did not consider he would need.
“We were told growing up that if you work hard, and you work as hard as you can to achieve something, that you’ll get it, right?” said Wray.
Wray decided to take a gap year, and was able to find a job working in construction, for which he considers himself lucky given the challenging state of the youth labour market.
While he works, he is upgrading some of his high school courses online, with plans to re-apply to engineering at the U of C next year — crossing his fingers the result this time will be different. He hopes to improve his odds with early admission.
He’s not alone. Wray says other friends and classmates are in the same boat, and online, students with grades in the high 80s have shared their woes of being rejected from the very same program.
It’s a story of more students vying for a coveted number of spaces not fully keeping pace with Alberta’s booming population. The increased competition means grades that might have been enough to earn admission several years ago no longer make the cut.
The University of Calgary said in a statement it “continues to see strong domestic demand for its academic programs related to significant province-wide population growth among university-aged individuals.”
The school says the total number of applications increased nine per cent in 2025, compared to the year prior.
“As demand continues to outpace available capacity, admission averages are rising accordingly,” the statement reads.
The University of Calgary is essentially at “full capacity,” president Ed McCauley told the Calgary Eyeopener earlier this month, with 38,000 students currently enrolled.
And that means students like Wray, with strong averages, are being rejected.
“Right now very, very high averages [are needed] to get into the University of Calgary. For every four qualified students, we can only accept one,” said McCauley.
More spots have been added to some popular programs at the University of Calgary in recent years.
“Since 2022, UCalgary has expanded enrolment capacity in six high-demand faculties, including engineering and science. This growth, in both undergraduate and graduate levels, has been made possible through targeted funding from the Alberta Ministry of Advanced Education, aimed at increasing access to post-secondary education,” the U of C said in a statement.
McCauley said the university anticipates having to add 10,000 more slots by 2030 to meet demand, working closely with industry, donors, the community and the province to fund that increase.
The University of Alberta calculates a three-year trend when it comes to averages from high school students successfully applying. Engineering is listed as requiring grades in the mid to high 80s, while science needs mid 80s to low 90s, according to its website.
“Because demand and capacity can change from year to year, both course requirements and admission averages fluctuate,” said the U of A in a statement.
“While some programs are highly competitive, the U of A offers many accessible options for students.”
Calgary’s Mount Royal University said in a statement that admission remains competitive, “meaning students with higher grades will be considered first.” The school said averages have remained fairly consistent, with no noticeable increase in grade requirements for science or tech programs.
Lisa Davis, the founder of STEM Innovation Academy, has been tracking the escalation, monitoring the averages that are needed to get into programs like engineering and the sciences that she says the majority of her students gravitate toward.
“Last November, if you looked at the University of Calgary’s website, it said you needed mid-to-high 80s to get into engineering. The cutoff actually ended up being 90 per cent,” said Davis.
That ‘cutoff’ is the university’s admission averages finalizing offers data, which shows the high school averages for the fall intake of students. Engineering lists a 90 per cent average for fall 2025 — just higher than what Wray had when he applied.
“It’s particularly frustrating because when you talk to faculties like engineering for example, they will tell you that there’s no difference between a student who had an 80 per cent in entrance and a student who had a 90 per cent in entrance in terms of how they perform in engineering,” said Davis.
Davis started this school year speaking with students about the reality that they could soon face when applying to university.
“I was talking to both our Grade 11 and our Grade 12 students, sharing with them this in-year escalation on marks that we saw last year, and you could really see kind of the horror and stress on their faces,” said Davis.
For Alberta high school students there can be a unique added pressure when it comes to their marks, given that so much of their final grade will come down to one exam.
“Our students have this increased rigour because we’re the only province in the country with diploma exams,” said Davis.
Pragnya Gundlapally is a Grade 12 student hoping to study health sciences at university next year.
“It definitely does make me nervous, especially as … a student [in] Alberta because of the diplomas,” said Gundlapally, “For any 30-level course, 30 per cent of my grade would be one of the diplomas.”
As she looks into university programs, she says she has noticed grade expectations inflating when she compares year-over-year, which she says brings an increased sense of pressure for herself and her peers.
“I know a lot of people who act in the interest of keeping their grade averages. Some people try to plot their schedules … in such a way that it’s less of a heavy workload for them. Some people only choose to apply with courses they are strongest [in],” she said.
Wray felt the pressure throughout his Grade 12 year.
“It is an unreal amount of pressure, like I was stressing the whole time about it,” said Wray. “Back then, I didn’t know the shortage of spots within all of these programs, and even then it was still stressful.”
Census data from Statistics Canada as of 2021 shows Alberta with the highest proportion of people who studied engineering — 12.1 per cent of people hold a post-secondary diploma, certificate or degree in the field, compared to 9.6 per cent of people overall in Canada.
And demand to study engineering is on the rise.
Christopher Yip is the vice chair of Engineering Deans Canada, an organization that oversees engineering programs at post-secondary institutes across the country. He cites a changing labour market and evolving technology, like artificial intelligence, with the increased interest.
While Yip says there has been no change to the class requirements in order to apply, “what has obviously changed is the demand for these programs has gone up so significantly over … even the last five years.”
“And that’s what’s really driven the the change, and probably the entering averages, if you want to look at it that way, it’s just that you’ve got so many applicants for basically a fixed number of seats”
This year, his own program at the University of Toronto has its largest first-year class ever, with 1,500 students.
“I would love to take more students if I had more physical space, physical classrooms to put students in,” he said.
But space is the key issue, with engineering in particular a faculty that includes a lot of hands-on learning, like labs and field courses, Yip notes.
The ministry has ordered an expert panel to review how Alberta’s post-secondary funding is allocated and how it stacks up against other provinces. Economist Jack Mintz chaired the panel that has now submitted its findings to the government.
A report based on the panel’s findings is expected to be made public this fall.
In a statement, the ministry said the review looked at issues like “funding allocations, the impact of federal immigration policy on institutions, regulatory and administrative burdens, and Alberta’s competitiveness as a post-secondary destination.”
“We are investing in transforming and modernizing Alberta’s post-secondary system to ensure it remains both accessible and affordable for students,” the statement said.
“Our government is committed to funding post-secondary education in a responsible way that respects taxpayers, delivers value for students, and ensures Alberta continues to produce the skilled workforce needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow.”
But if changes do not come soon, Davis worries the situation will drive more Alberta students to look elsewhere for post-secondary schooling.
“We have set these marks so high that our students are going to be forced to leave the province, pay an additional, you know, $15 to 20,000 a year in living expenses to get a degree they really should be able to access here in Alberta,” said Davis.
