MACS Admission Process and Application State
Program status for September 2023 and January 2024
Admission for September 2023 if full. January 2024 is nearing capacity.
In all cases, domestic applicants are encouraged to apply to the program before the international application deadline for their best opportunity at admission to the program.
The Faculty has recruitment agents in some target markets. We have a capacity for applications through these agents and consider their applications on a rolling-basis.
Conditional offers of admission
Dalhousie allows conditional offers of admission subject to the applicant demonstrating an acceptable English language proficiency score.
With the current levels of interest, conditional offers of admission to the MACS program are only for exceptional circumstances and are rare.
Offer deferrals
The deadline for applicants to defer an offer for a term is the first day of the month prior to the start of the term being deferred from.
- For a September admission, the deferral deadline is August 18.
- For a January admission, the deferral deadline is December 18.
We remain firm with these deferral deadlines to allow time to process the deferral requests.
Internal application process
Our “how to apply” web page presents the steps that an applicant must complete to apply to the MACS program. It also defines what documents we must receive before we consider an application to be complete. We do not consider applications until they are complete.
Once an application is complete, it goes through the following internal process:
1. We perform an initial screening of applicants for basic eligibility based.
That screening considers your:
- GPA in the last 2 years of study
- English language proficiency score (if applicable)
- Computing background
- Initial scan of your reference letters, and
- Presence of academic transcripts for all prior academic programs attended
2. We invite applicants who pass the initial screening to schedule an interview for the program. The time between the completion of the screening of the application and the issuing of the email invitation is measured in weeks and is dependent on the number of interview slots available as well as the number of people ahead of the applicant in the queue.
3. Following the interview, we consider the outcome of the interview and a deeper review of the application material to make a final admission recommendation to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. This final review results in one of three outcomes:
- The applicant is clearly ready for the program and receives an offer of admission on a rolling basis
- The applicant is not ready for the program and we decline admission to the applicant on a rolling basis; or
- We have some concerns with the applicant’s suitability for the MACS program and we place these applications on hold to consider as a group on the 15th day of each month in the application cycle
4. The Faculty of Graduate Studies reviews our recommendation and issues the final decision to the applicant.