SFU's Personal Profile and How Much Weight It Carries Against Your Grades

SFU's default path is grades-only

SFU's standard admission decision for a direct-entry secondary school applicant runs on your academic average. The university sets a minimum admission average of 67 percent for secondary school applicants, and 2.00 GPA for post-secondary transfer applicants, on top of English language and quantitative skills requirements. For most applicants, that average, calculated from a specific set of courses, is the entire academic side of the decision. No personal profile, essay, or activities list gets scored against it.

This differs from UBC, where nearly every high school applicant completes a required Personal Profile alongside their academic average. At SFU, a personal profile only shows up if you choose to apply through a specific alternate pathway.

Where a personal profile does apply: Diverse Qualifications

SFU's Diverse Qualifications pathway exists for applicants whose grades do not fully reflect their potential, or who have faced circumstances a raw average does not capture. SFU names examples including applicants with refugee backgrounds, student athletes and others committed to extracurricular or artistic pursuits, students with learning exceptionalities, students facing socioeconomic challenges, and those who have overcome systemic barriers, sociocultural adversity, or personal hardship. The list is explicitly non-exhaustive. SFU invites any applicant who believes their grades do not represent their full potential to consider this route.

Diverse Qualifications is optional, not a replacement for the standard process. You still submit a standard undergraduate application first.

How the Diverse Qualifications process works

• Apply through the standard undergraduate application at apply.educationplannerbc.ca, the same starting point as every other SFU applicant

• Once SFU assigns your student ID, complete a personal information profile explaining your circumstances and achievements

• Provide two referees: one educator and one character reference, neither a family member

• Have a referee email a supporting letter directly to [email protected]

Diverse Qualifications runs on its own deadlines by term, separate from the general application deadline, so submit your profile and referee letter early rather than waiting for your standard application deadline to pass.

The floor still applies

Diverse Qualifications does not waive SFU's minimum admission standards. You still need to meet the university's minimum admission average, 67 percent for secondary applicants, along with the English language and quantitative skills requirements every applicant faces. The pathway gives SFU context for a borderline or complicated academic record. It does not substitute a strong personal statement for grades below the floor.

What this means for you

If your grades meet or beat SFU's program-specific competitive average, you do not need a personal profile at all for the standard SFU decision. Spend your energy on your course marks and your application to programs where grades are genuinely the deciding factor.

If your transcript does not reflect your full ability, because of a documented circumstance, disability, athletic or artistic commitment, or hardship, Diverse Qualifications is where a personal profile and referee letters can add real context SFU otherwise would not see. Start that pathway early, since it needs referees to respond on your timeline, not just yours.

Why UBC and SFU take different approaches

UBC treats a written profile as a standard part of nearly every high school application, regardless of your academic average. SFU treats it as an exception process, reserved for applicants who need their circumstances considered alongside a transcript that does not tell the full story. Neither approach is more rigorous than the other. They reflect two different admission models: UBC's broad-based model scores every applicant on two inputs, while SFU's model scores most applicants on one input and offers a second, optional input for a defined group.

If you are applying to both schools, do not assume the effort you put into UBC's Personal Profile transfers to SFU. SFU will not read it unless you are applying through Diverse Qualifications, and even then, SFU's personal information profile answers its own specific prompts, not UBC's. Unlike a US application, where holding deposits at two colleges breaks the rules, applying to both SFU and UBC carries no such conflict, so compare both offers before you commit.

Preparing a strong Diverse Qualifications submission

• Be specific about your circumstance and its actual effect on your grades, rather than describing it in general terms

• Explain what you did despite the circumstance, not only what happened to you

• Choose an educator referee who can speak directly to your situation, not just a teacher who taught you a course

• Give your referees enough lead time to write a real letter, not a rushed one, ahead of the Diverse Qualifications deadline for your term

• Keep your standard application on track in parallel. Diverse Qualifications adds to your file, it does not replace the base application

A common misconception

Diverse Qualifications is not a way to push a borderline average over the line through a well-written essay. SFU still holds every applicant to its minimum admission average. The pathway exists to explain context behind a transcript, not to substitute writing quality for missing academic requirements. Applicants whose average already clears their program's competitive threshold gain nothing from this pathway and do not need to use it.