An applicant with an MSc in Mathematics (7.5 CGPA), one year of teaching experience, IELTS 8, no gaps and no backlogs was refused ('won't leave Canada' / bonafide concerns) for an Advanced Project Management and Strategic Leadership program with a Fall 2022 intake.
Member diagnosis and advice:
- Program relevance was the problem, not the profile. The academics and language scores were strong. Members zeroed in on one thing: a project management/leadership certificate has no visible connection to a mathematics degree and teaching experience. 'The requirement is any graduate degree' is not a defense - meeting admission requirements and convincing a visa officer are different bars.
- Choose a program that is a mixture of your last study and your job experience. The most repeated advice: reapply with a course that bridges the MSc Maths and the teaching background (education, data/analytics, or maths-adjacent fields) so the progression story writes itself.
- Coherence in the study plan matters. One member asked the right question - how was the program choice explained, and were the reasons coherent? If you keep a less-obvious program, the SOP must explicitly draw the line from past study and work to this course and back to a career at home.
- On relodge vs refund: since the college would not defer, members leaned toward changing program/college rather than relodging the same file - a same-file relodge invites the same refusal.