What is the SAFAA? Everything you need to know when applying to SAF

On Episode 7 of SAF Ready the Podcast, our Recruitment and Admissions coordinator Kelly joins Sam as they discuss the SAF Admissions Assessment (SAFAA) and everything you need to know when applying to SAF. Interested in applying to the undergraduate programs offered by SAF? This episode is a must-watch for you!

Transcript

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to SAF Ready The Podcast, here at the University of Waterloo. On this podcast we’ll have a variety of guests, students, faculty and staff to let you in on all that the School of Accounting Finance has to offer. I'm Sam and I'll be your host, and we want to ensure that you're hearing everything that you want to know about the School of Accounting and Finance. So after listening to episodes, feel free to DM us on our variety of social chains as well as email us at saf@uwaterloo.ca with any more questions, topics, or people that you want to hear from. Tune in soon for our next episode on Buzzsprout, Spotify and YouTube. Honestly, any platform that's offering a podcast, we’re most likely on there. Today we have Kelly and she is our Recruitment and Admissions Coordinator. Hi, Kelly. Hi, Sam. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. We're really excited. So we’re going to be talking today a lot about admissions, specifically our SAFAA, which for students who aren't aware when you apply to the School of Accounting Finance for our SFM and AFM programs, if you're referring to what those acronyms mean, just go to the first few episodes I talk about it, but you have to complete a supplementary application for our programs. So we're just going to kind of go into a little bit of the detail about that. So first, let's get to know you. I mean, the students will get to know a lot of you if they're going to be asking questions and things like that. So do you want to give it like a little overview on your role here at the School of Accounting and Finance? Yeah. So you pretty much summed it up when you said that I’m the Admissions and Recruitment Coordinator for the school, that is my job. So I do all things recruitment related, trying to get prospective students to figure out what kind of program they're interested in. Once they're interested, get them to apply, and then eventually hopefully get them into the program that they want. Specifically, Accounting and Financial Management, AFM, or our brand new Sustainability and Financial Management program. Yes, awesome. Definitely reference our episode with Jennifer Murray, who is our– one of our co-directors of the program, if you want to kind get a little bit more in-depth about what Sustainability and Financial Management is or if you want a student perspective, Ethan is a great resource, his episode as well. He talks more about the student side of SFM. But yeah, so we'll jump right in. But yeah, so in November, so then you do your the regular application process, submitting your transcript, things like that. And then can you kind of go into a little bit detail about what the SAFAA is, like the acronym for it, all that fun stuff? Yeah. So the SAFAA is the SAF admissions assessment. It used to be known as the AFMAA, but now that we have the SFM program, Sustainability and Financial Management, we want it to be much more inclusive. Yea. So that's why we moved it to the SAFAA. So the SAFAA is a two step process. The first step is to do an online interview which consists of three prerecorded questions. And I apologize because it's me who's going to be asking those prerecorded questions. The second part is something called the trait assessment. So have you ever done like a Myers-Briggs type, questionnaire kind of thing? I love that stuff. I love doing those for fun. I’m like now I know my personality type and everything, it's so good. Yeah. So that's very similar to what the trait assessment is. Essentially 78 questions that you complete on a sliding scale of, say, weak to strong. So how would you rate your leadership skills on a scale of weak to strong? Yeah, and it really shouldn't take you more than like 2 seconds to figure that out. Yeah. Just go with your gut instinct kind of thing. So, those are the two components that make up the SAFAA. Now you need to do both components in order to be considered for admission into the program. Ideally, what would happen is that you would do your online interview first, followed immediately by the trait assessment, get it done and out of the way. Yeah. Now I will say when it comes to receiving an offer of admission, if you complete your SAFAA between January 12th and January 16th, you will be considered for early offers. Oh okay, cool. Yeah. And during this time, where more and more universities are pumping out those offers much earlier in the game. It would be really nice to have that in your back pocket. Yeah, absolutely, definitely. If you're like, you know what? Doesn't really matter. I want to take the extra time and that's perfectly fine. Then you have between February 12th and February 16th, to complete the AFMAA (SAFAA), but you must complete it and submit it by the 16th, either in January or in February, in order to be considered. Don't miss that deadline date, because if you do, you're not going to be considered. I'm going to put it in the bottom of the video. Due, this is the date. Yeah. I will say, though, just so there's no confusion if you do the SAFAA between January 12th and January 16th, but you don't receive an early offer, don't worry, you're automatically going to be considered for rolling offers. Okay, So you don't like do it again? No. Okay, cool. Yeah. And both AFM and SFM applicants must complete the SAFAA. If you're applying to both programs, you only have to do it once. You don't have to do it twice. Okay, That's good. That's good. Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, if it's the same questions, then yeah, doing it twice. Just like ugh. No, we wouldn't put you through that. Yeah. So do you have any kind of tips, tricks I know they kind of talk about on the website in detail too, but do you want to just kind of let us know about some of the tips and advice you have for students who are going to be completing this process? Yeah, for sure. So definitely I would say we'll put the link below of where you can find the information on the website. Definitely review that first. It’s going to walk you through how you set up your computer, how you set up your audio, which browsers that you should use that work best. But from my perspective, when it comes to the online interview, the nice thing about the platform is that you can go in and you can practice as many times as you want. Oh nice. And you can actually playback those responses. Oh cool. So take advantage of that. So when you're playing back your responses, listen to your response. Did you actually answer the question that was being asked? That's huge. Did you say what you wanted to say within a minute and a half? Because that's all you have to say your response. Otherwise it's going to cut off and it's going to move to the next question. Yeah. Did your passion and your enthusiasm come clear or come through clear? Yeah. Was there any distractions? That's a big one. We see this a lot. Was there anything that would distract the team of evaluators from what you're saying? If so, eliminate it. So if that’s, you know, having someone vacuum in the background, all that noise, eliminate. Do you have distracting posters or things in the background? Eliminate. Do you have a brother or sister that's going to come barging in, tapping you on the shoulder? You know, eliminate it. Ideally, if you could put a sign on your door that says, please do not disturb for the next 30, 40 minutes, that is the best thing to do. Make sure that you have an absolute quiet space for you to think. Again, practice, practice, practice, as many times as you want. As soon as you feel comfortable and you're like, yeah I've got this, because the practice questions are exactly the same as a formal interview. Then you can hit the start interview button. Do not, I repeat. Do not. Do not hit that start interview button until you are absolutely ready to proceed to the formal interview because once you click it, you cannot go back. Oh okay. And you only have one shot at completing the formal interview. So even if you do it by mistake, which we hear, I don't know how they do it by mistake, but if you click it by mistake, go through the formal interview. Do not stop. Yeah. Okay. Again, you just did the practice session. You know the questions. You've got this. Just have the confidence and the faith in you that you can go through it and do a really good job. Once you're actually in the formal interview process, you can't playback those responses. Okay. Again, one shot. Again, you have about a minute and a half to respond to each of those questions. So after you go through all of that and you're done your formal interview, what's going to happen is your responses are gonna then be submitted to a team of evaluators. Okay. And then you're done. Immediately following that, you should do the trait assessment. So you're going to receive another link for the trait assessment. It'll take you to a brand new platform. In there, again, you'll have 78 questions that you'll do on that sliding scale. Okay. Now, when it comes to this, you can't practice ahead of time. There's nothing to study from. We're just trying to get to know you more as an individual and find out some of your strengths and some of your weaknesses. So don't overthink the questions. It's a big one. Don't sit there for 5 minutes pondering, well, am I a leader, am I not a leader? Well, there is this example when I was but then there was this example. Go with your gut instinct on each question. So the entire process for the trait assessment should probably take you no longer than 5 minutes to complete. Oh that's nice. It's not like a super extensive process like the interview. Yeah, no, not at all. So those two combined should probably take you less than an hour, depending on how many practice sessions that you go through. If you want, you can practice the online interview, go away and come back, if you want. Yeah. Again, just don't hit that start interview button until you're absolutely sure that that's what you want to do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's really good to know. And yeah, and if you want to access the questions, they’re on the website already and the practice questions are the same as the interview questions. So definitely feel free to start looking at it now if you really want to, but it will open on those dates that Kelly mentioned. I'll also put them like in the caption below here so you know exactly the dates for early admissions and then rolling. So definitely take the time, mark that in your calendar. And the nice thing too is that the early one is like right around the time where like your general admission, your applications are due. I think it's right usually around the first week of January that just like applying for the school is due. So it's just nice to have them right there next to each other. Maybe just do it right at once. Yeah. So you have until February 1st to apply. Yeah. And then you have until February 16th to submit all your documentation. Okay. So February 16th is also the deadline for the SAFAA if you want to be considered for rolling offers. Okay, gotcha. Cool. I think it's also just I know that when we the idea of having to do something extra when you're applying to school can feel pretty daunting. And also like it's a waste of my time know But truthfully, like I think when you we get applications and it's just a transcript there's only so much you can tell about a person. I also feel like everyone's situation is different. Grades are fluctuated differently in different high schools and things like that. So being able to kind of showcase who you are as a person and who you are outside of like your eight classes and the numbers that you get in those classes is something that's pretty awesome. I feel like I would definitely appreciate that way more when I was applying to school and things like that. So I think it's definitely just an added bonus for you as a student. Yeah, and I think a lot of times those students get very nervous. They feel like they need a strong background in accounting, finance or business off the bat to answer the questions that we're going to ask on this online interview. But that's not the case at all. We're not trying to stump anybody. You don't have to do major research before you respond to these questions. And you can actually see the questions ahead of time, like you said, on our website. So if you want to start right now and practicing, even though the Kira platform isn't open, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. Take that time to hone your answer and kind of condense it and make sure that it's the way that you want it to be and the way that you want it to sound. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's kind of nice that we get to like you get access so early and you can just kind of, I know sometimes I like to write it down and then I tend to talk fast and over talk. So it's nice to be able to like, okay, I'm at 2 minutes, I should probably bring it down a little bit. So just like even those things is just kind of helpful because we may have so much to say and it's also just important to learn for when you're doing your co-op interviews, you only have so much time to sell yourself, so it gives you that practice right before you even started, which is super awesome. Yeah, it's like that elevator speech where you have, like what, maybe 30 seconds to a minute? Yeah. To sell something. Exactly. Yeah. No, for sure. So just kind of now that we've kind of gone through what the supplementary application is, I think also a big misconception that comes with when you're applying to Accounting and Finance is that you have to have taken accounting in high school or you have to have taken finance in high school. So I thought you could debunk that misconception and be like, nuh-uh. No, and that's exactly right. Nuh-uh, you don't have to. We understand very much that not all high schools have accounting courses or finance courses. So you're going to be on an even playing field no matter what. If you do happen to take an accounting course, that's perfectly fine. It just means that you'll have a little bit more background knowledge in some of your first year courses, as opposed to the students who didn't take them. But again, professors are well aware of that. So they're going to make sure that all students get the same messaging and that they all can do well in that course. Yeah, absolutely. And one of our professors who came on the podcast, Konrad, he was talking about how if you haven't taken accounting or finance in high school, they offer a bootcamp just to give you like, it’s like an hour long to complete it. It's just to get you familiar with the platforms that they're going to use. So even then you're already kind of stepping in the right direction before you even started school. So, they definitely, we definitely provide the resources available for students. So don't deter from applying if you don't have accounting or finance classes. I only had an accounting class at my university, we didn't, my university–my high school, we did not have like finance, I think they just introduced it, which is like, right after I leave. But yeah, they, it's not like gonna deter you in any way. Yeah, same with data management and that's why we put it as recommended. It's definitely not required. So if you don't take them, we're not going to say no, that person's not in the program. Yeah. It's just a it's a nice to have. Yeah, yeah. So it's just kind of like how much work ethic you want to put in and how much work you want to put into getting on track with everything else, I guess. But yeah, but then there are some required specific courses and can you kind of talk about like grade cutoff? I think a lot of times when we meet students in certain recruitment events they are like, “So if I get a 90, I'm good?” And I think we kind of have to talk about why there is just the minimum acceptance grade and not this is like the general acceptance grade. Yeah, So definitely what I would suggest is going, even Google it, put in UWaterloo admission requirements, it's going to bring you to a site where you plug in your system of study because it's going to be different for every system of study. So for an international student, the grade requirements or the required courses are going to be slightly different than they are for someone in Ontario or someone out west. So definitely that's my first thing. Google it. Go to the university website, check it out for yourself under your system of study. But for Ontario students, you're looking at six grade 12 U or M level courses, which include any 12 U English, Advanced Functions, Calculus and Vectors with a minimum of 75% and an overall average of mid 80s. But again, keep in mind, we also take a look at your performance on the SAFAA. So it's not just marks based. Yeah. Which a lot of students then say well what's the cut-off average and I can't tell you because it would be misleading because we don't just take a look at your marks and it changes every year based on the applicant pool. Yeah. So all I can say is just, you know, try your best in all your courses and on the SAFAA and that's all you can really do. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think we like it can change from year to year, like if the application next year is the average applying student has a 92 average versus the year before may have been a 70 average like you never know. Well 75 that's a minimum. So you never like truly have an idea. So we can't, we never want to like mislead students and be like, this is what you'll do if you want to get in. And also the SAFAA is such a huge, important part now of the application that it’s definitely something to look over because you know, you've got to be a cool person, if you want to get in. No, I– my classification of cool is different to everybody else. I do not say that if you're uncool. But yeah, no, just kind of in general if for the application process take your time when you're looking through everything. Yeah, I would just kind of say what's your advice to students who are starting this whole application process? I know it can be pretty daunting. Just it's, you know, it's the next four years of your life. So if you're starting out I mean, I know there's students in grade nine who are already thinking about this, and I'm like, wow, that's– that's dedication. The first and foremost. You really got to figure out what it is that you want to do. What are you passionate about? What are the things that you're interested in? Can you see yourself doing that as a job? Yeah. If that falls along the lines of accounting, finance, and business. Fantastic! Then AFM, SFM is probably the program for you. If so, then, you know, talk to some of the current students, see how they like the program. Find out more about the courses that you'll be taking because that's another thing, if you can see yourself taking those courses. Do they sound interesting to you? Yeah. Is that something that you can see yourself doing? Definitely come to campus for a campus tour because if you can see yourself living here for the next 4 to 5 years, you know, then this is probably the place for you. If you can't, then it's probably not the place for you and that's okay. Yeah. And I always say, like, give yourself some leeway. Don't stress too too much, no matter where you go, you're going to get a fantastic education. Yeah. Right, so, it really comes down to what do you want to do? What makes you feel good? You know, you may get pressure from outside sources as you have to do this, you have to do that. Yeah. They are not the ones that are going to go through this program. They're not the ones that are going to have this career in the end. So you've got to do what you want to do. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's definitely a great way to look at it too, because it's definitely about the environment that you're going to be in and also keeping an open mind, I feel like we– I know when I was applying, I had a very direct route in what I felt was going to be my career when I graduated and university has completely changed that perspective. So if you also don't 100% know, that's a good thing. That's what co-op is for, that's what like, that's what working is for. That's what university is for, is taking new things and learning new things and being wow, inspired to a new job, to a new opportunity, to a new completely different field. Like it can really jump. So also, I would say definitely give yourself the breather of like, you don't have to know 100%. You can just kind of have an area of interest and push through there. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I talked to so many students who are so stressed right off the bat. Well, I don't know 100% if I want accounting, I don't know 100% if I need to do finance. The good news is you don't have to know. Like you said, you have until third year to really decide which direction you want to go. The beauty thing with our programs too, is that you can come back. Yeah, right. So like if you, especially in AFM, you have your choice of doing two career specializations, say you only want to do the one and you graduate and you're like, no, you know what, I should have gone back and perhaps I should have followed the accounting specialization so I could get my CPA. Or maybe I want to come back and do the specialization for CFA. You can do that. You have that option. So again, it kind of elevates some of that stress. But you’re going to have two years to figure it out, with co-op on your belt, before you really have to sit down and make that decision and you can work with your academic advisors, you can talk to other students within the program and again, just follow your heart. What feels good to you? What doesn't feel good to you? Yeah, absolutely. No, that's great. Yeah. And if you want to talk to current students, definitely go to our Unibuddy page. All of our school ambassadors are on that, they’re– they're in all different programs; SFM, AFM, so definitely reach out to those specific students and they are really quick to respond. I think it's usually within 24 hours. So definitely message them, message us. We are happy to answer any questions. Definitely watch these episodes, there's a lot of different students coming on here who all have different career aspirations, different experiences in school. So getting to hear from them is always good to just kind of gauge what you're going to be expecting when you're going through the application process. But yeah, thanks so much for coming in, Kelly. This is great. Thank you.