An applicant's chances of getting into university in
Ontario have stayed just about steady over the past
decade, according to figures from the Council of Ontario
Universities.
     In 1984, 51 per cent of applicants to first-year
programs ended up registering at a university. In 1993,
the figure was 52 per cent. In between, it rose as high
as 54 per cent (in 1988) and fell as low as 50 per cent
in 1992, the year of the much-publicized admissions
crunch when many universities reduced their first-year
classes just as students who had completed high school in
four years, rather than five, were starting to apply.
     The number of people registering in first-year
university in the province has risen steadily (except for
that 1992 drop), from 36,702 in the fall of 1984 to
46,241 last year. The highest point was reached in 1991,
with 47,620 first-year students registering.
     COU reports the figures as part of its Application
Statistics 1993, collected through the Ontario
Universities' Application Centre in Guelph. Students
apply there for full-time admission to all the province's
institutions, including UW.
     A total of 72,405 people applied for university in
1984; by 1993 that had risen to 89,096 (down from 92,510
in 1992).
     OUCA classifies applicants in two categories, and
the report shows that they're dramatically different.
Applicants from secondary schools, who make up about two-
thirds of the total, had a 66 per cent chance last year
of ending up registered at a university.
     But "regular" applicants, those not coming directly
from an Ontario high school, had only a 24 per cent
chance of being admitted and registering at a university.
     Universities took a total of 39,053 students from
high schools (including 2,805 coming to UW) and 7,188
from elsewhere (including 454 who came to Waterloo).
     The "regular" applicants, those not coming from high
school, included young people who had applied after high
school in a previous year (about 23 per cent), people
from other universities (17.5 per cent), those from
community colleges (17 per cent), and people graduating
from high school in other provinces (16 per cent), as
well as foreign students and those from miscellaneous
sources.
     The COU report also indicates where in Ontario each
university found its students, based on a map that
divides the province into 13 zones. UW's "local zone"
includes Waterloo, Wellington and Perth counties.
     The report says UW got 15 per cent of its secondary
school applicants from the local zone, but 21 per cent of
those applicants who eventually registered at UW came
from this zone. Another 30 per cent of the students who
came to UW from high school were from the Toronto area.