Ottawa's GPA rule for 2027 entry
The University of Ottawa's Faculty of Medicine has a GPA rule that is simple to state and easy to get wrong if you learned it from an old forum thread. Here is the rule as published for the 2026–27 OMSAS cycle (Fall 2027 entry), from the OMSAS Ottawa page.
The rule
Ottawa calculates a cumulative GPA from your most recent three years of full-time undergraduate study completed toward a bachelor's degree. The minimum for the 2026–27 cycle is 3.50 on the 4.0 scale, and the page is candid that admission is competitive well above that.
Three details matter. "Most recent" means the calculation follows your calendar, not your best years: if you did a fifth year, it counts and your first year falls out of the window. "Full-time" is defined as five courses per term. And the three years are pooled with no extra weight on later years, which is where the old thread will have misled you.
The weighting that no longer exists
For many years Ottawa multiplied the weight of each year, with the most recent year counting three times as much as the earliest. That weighted GPA was dropped starting with the 2020 cycle. The current page describes the three years as a cumulative GPA with no multipliers. If a calculator or a friend tells you Ottawa "weights your last year more", they are describing a rule that has been gone for several cycles. Our calculator implements equal weighting because that is what the current page says; we could not find any current published formula that says otherwise.
What full-time means, and the four-course exception
Full-time is five courses in each of the fall and winter terms. A year with only four courses per term can still be recognised as full-time if the missing courses were made up in another academic year or as summer courses. This exception exists, but it is applied by Ottawa's admissions office when they read your transcript, not something you can assert. If you are relying on it, keep the transcript lines that prove the make-up courses were completed.
Summer courses count
Unlike Western's September-to-April window, Ottawa's calculation includes individual spring and summer courses completed during the years in the window, unless they were completed abroad. So a summer course taken between second and third year is part of the second-year block for Ottawa's purposes, and its grade counts.
A worked example
An applicant has completed four years: year 1 at 3.40, year 2 at 3.70, year 3 at 3.85 and year 4 at 3.90, each year full-time at five courses per term, with one summer course after year 3 at 3.70. Ottawa's window is years 2, 3 and 4 plus the summer course. Pooling the converted grades by credit gives roughly 3.81. The 3.40 first year is outside the window and is not counted at all.
Now change one fact: in year 3 the applicant dropped a course in November and finished with four courses in one term and five in the other. Unless the missing course was made up elsewhere, year 3 is no longer full-time, and the window becomes years 1, 2 and 4. The 3.40 year is back in, and the pooled figure drops to about 3.67. A single dropped course moved the number by about 0.14 without changing a single grade.
Applicants with fewer than three full-time years
The page frames the rule around three years, and the minimum degree requirement for Ottawa is a completed or in-progress bachelor's degree. If you have fewer than three full-time years by the time grades are assessed, read the OMSAS Ottawa page and, if still unclear, ask the admissions office directly rather than guessing. Our calculator will compute on whatever full-time years exist and flag that there are fewer than three.
Other Ottawa requirements worth knowing
Ottawa does not require the MCAT. It assesses the Autobiographical Sketch and asks you to flag your top three entries in each sketch category (up to 18), and it has geographic and francophone streams with their own rules. None of that changes the GPA arithmetic, but it changes who is competing in your pool, so read the full page, not just the GPA paragraph.
Planning notes
Because the window is "most recent", an extra year of strong full-time undergraduate study genuinely helps at Ottawa in a way it does not at every school: it replaces your earliest year. Because full-time is defined numerically, dropping to four courses in any term is a decision with a GPA consequence, and it should be made with the exception rule in mind. And because summer grades count, a summer course is not a free pass; it is part of the record.
This article describes published rules as understood on 2026-09-06. Rules change each cycle; the linked official pages are the authority. Not affiliated with OUAC, the AAMC or any school.