Academic Requirements

If your education was completed outside of Canada, you may apply if you have permanent residency or hold Canadian citizenship. Official academic records must be sent directly to ORPAS from the originating institutions. Photocopies of academic records may be used to process your application, but official documents will be required before any firm offer of admission can be made. Official English translations done by a certified translator for all non-English documentation must also be submitted to ORPAS.

You must demonstrate English language proficiency if you were educated outside Canada and/or completed your degree at a university where the language of instruction and examination was not English. In this case, you must complete the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), with minimum scores of:

• Paper-based test: 600 with 5 on the TWE and 50 on the TSE.        
• Internet-based test:100/120 overall and 22/30 on the writing and speaking sections.

Please send TOEFL results to the University of Toronto, institution code 0982.

English facility test results are valid for two years. Alternatively, the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto, offers the certificate Academic English whereby a minimum grade of “B+” in Level 60 meets the English language facility requirement. All official English facility results reports must be forwarded to the Department of Physical Therapy no later than March 1 of the application year.

• Co-operative education courses
• Courses with non-convertible grades such as pass/fail (i.e., no grade awarded; courses for which a “Pass” grade is assigned are not included in the calculations and courses for which a “Fail” grade is assigned will be included as a failure)
• Continuing education certificate courses
• Diploma courses
• Sports performance courses
• Visual, music, or dramatic arts performance
• Naturopathic medicine courses
• Chiropractic medicine courses
• Many theological courses
• Nil/Zero credit courses
• Community college credits
• Internships, placements, vocations, and apprenticeships 
• Upgrading courses that are not completed at the senior level (see below for more details)
• Consecutive Bachelor of Education (BEd) undergraduate degree courses 
• Transfer credits from the college level that have not been assigned a grade by the university issuing the degree

*Please note that the list above is not comprehensive. The Admissions Committee reserves the right to refuse consideration of courses not considered eligible or comparatively equivalent to undergraduate study in the liberal arts or sciences.

If a course is repeated, and both the original course and the repeated course are within the last 20 half courses, then the grades from both courses will be included in the sub-GPA calculation.

ORPAS does not include graduate level courses in the sub-GPA calculation. The Department of Physical Therapy will review graduate level studies manually. Graduate students are assessed on their last 20 half-course equivalents completed by December 31 of the application year, including graduate courses and undergraduate courses. 

Courses taken in addition to those required for a Bachelor’s degree may be considered upgrading courses. The guidelines for upgrading courses are:

1. Upgrading courses completed should be at the senior level (3rd or 4th year courses)
2. MScPT prerequisites courses can be at the junior level (1st and 2nd year courses)
3. We recommend taking courses in the life sciences/social sciences/humanities, as these subjects are most relevant to the MScPT program

• one half-course equivalent in Human Physiology: The course should cover the principles of human physiology including the living cell, the internal environment; neuro-muscular, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal and endocrine systems; metabolism; reproduction; and homeostasis. An example of an accepted course from the University of Toronto would be course PSL201Y, Basic Human Physiology. Plant physiology will NOT be accepted nor will a combined animal/plant physiology. Combined human anatomy/physiology courses are acceptable as long as applicants have one full-course equivalent.
• one half-course equivalent in Human Anatomy: Course content must be comprehensive, covering gross anatomy of the human musculoskeletal, visceral, and neurological systems. Combined human anatomy/physiology courses are acceptable as long as applicants have one full-course equivalent.
• one full-course (or two half-courses) equivalent in Life and/or Physical Sciences: Examples of Life Sciences include biology, basic medical sciences, pathology, etc. Examples of Physical Science include biomechanics, chemistry, physics, geology, physical geography, etc.
• one full-course (or two half-courses) equivalent in Social Sciences and/or Humanities and/or Languages: Examples of Social Sciences include anthropology, political science, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. Examples of Humanities include history, religion, philosophy, classics, literature/English, etc. Examples of Languages include French, Italian, Spanish, etc.
• one half-course equivalent in Statistics or Research Methods: Statistic courses that may be acceptable include basic statistics, psychology statistics, geography statistics, kinesiology statistics, biometrics and quantitative research methods. Calculus is not acceptable as a statistics course and statistics content in other courses does not meet the requirement.

You may take two half-course equivalents within the Life and/or Physical Science category and within the Social Sciences and/or Humanities and/or Languages category to meet our requirements. For example, for the Life and/or Physical Science prerequisite, it would be acceptable to take one half-course equivalent in biology + one half-course equivalent in chemistry. 

When you complete the prerequisite section of the online application, you must include a URL that links to the online course description from the university academic calendar. It is acceptable to include a link to a large PDF of the entire academic calendar – please put the page number the course is located on at the end of the link (leave a space and then enter “pg x”.). All Canadian universities offer an “archived calendar” section on their website. If you cannot find a course in the current academic calendar, provide the link to the archived calendar from the year you took the course.

If you are unable to provide a link to an online course description, (e.g., applicants educated outside Canada), you must use the Secure Applicant Messaging (SAM) tool to upload detailed course descriptions to ORPAS. When uploading the course descriptions, be sure to include your full name and ORPAS/OUAC Reference number. ORPAS will forward the documentation to your university/program choice(s). Course descriptions should be no more than three pages.

You must have earned a minimum grade of B- (or 70%) in all prerequisite courses, as per the grade recorded on the transcript. Grades from prerequisite courses will not be counted as part of the sub-GPA calculation unless they are within the last 20 half-courses completed. Web-based and distance education courses are accepted provided they are at a university degree level.

You must verify that your human physiology, human anatomy, and statistics/research methods courses will be accepted by visiting the Prerequisites Verification page. 

Not all universities use the same weighting system. Here are the most common weighting systems used in North America.