It's relative to what other experiences you have.

Have at least, 5 things, you can put on your PSE, and 3/5 of those, should be things that you can EXPAND on, and RELATE to how it can make you a good teacher's candidate (ie. how it makes you want to teach, how it might give you teaching experience, or provide you with qualities that teachers should have. etc.)

if you have those, then go ahead and take a spare.

In my grade 12 year, I had 2 spares + gym (AKA skippable). But I did other stuff, so my PSE looked fine on paper.

so yeah, spares are great! but so's tutoring experience. Lol. You'll just have to weight it out.

Hi elenapark95,

I can't answer most of your questions, but I know the answer to the one about work experience. It doesn't only refer to paid work. If you have a continued commitment over a long period of time (i.e. a place where if you skipped without notice they would miss you) then that can count too. This is coming from the Queen's-Trent office in case you're wondering the source (who use essentially the same PSE for their admissions - they are Queen's staff as well!).

As for your other questions...

SOLUS didn't exist back when I applied to Queen's.

If it says the experience have to be from the past two years, then talk about those experiences.

The number of people accepted and the number of people who register are different. Not everyone who gets accepted goes. For example, I was accepted to Queen's Con.Ed but chose Queen's-Trent instead (which is a very common thing to do). They know people do this, so they will probably accept far more people than there are spaces available.

The questions on the two PSEs are very similar, but I would call the con.ed office at either school to verify that it's OK to do that. Mine were different, but I'm just the type of person to make them different. A word of caution though - the length limits for the two programs are different, so you may want to send in slightly different PSEs anyways since I believe Queen's-Trent gives you more room to play around with.