<p>I am a sophomore transfer to UNC for the fall of 2013. I have been scanning through StudentAwards and ScholarshipsCanada and have applied for about ten scholarships that I'm eligible for. However, 90% of the scholarships say "must attend a university in [my province]." It is like everything is designed to force me to attend the poor academic institutions in that province. I looked up Canadian government funding, but it all appears to be for doctorate students. Is there anything that I am missing?</p>
<p>Canada gives little or no aid to students wanting to study in the US just as the American government gives virtually no aid to Americans wanting to study in Canada. The Universities of Alberta and Calgary are not “poor academic institutions”. I get the feeling that you will be dissatisfied with UNC once you are there for a while.</p>
<p>Why would the government use tax payer money to fund your education in a foreign country? They aren’t forcing you to do anything, but to get the benefits of the Canadian higher education system (eg. scholarships, low tuition fees) you have to actually be part of the Canadian higher education system. The government in any country are usually very unwilling to give scholarships to students to spend at out of country universities because in doing so they are funneling money to a school that gives no benefit to Canadian society (eg. like an American school like one of the UNCs), whereas by giving scholarship money to a student attending a Canadian, they are funding a student and a university which gives back to Canadian society. It just doesn’t benefit the country to have tax-payer money earmarked for higher education education scholarships to trickle across the border. I would assume most governments in the Western World have similar strategies.</p>
<p>Being an international student can be a wonderful experience, but you have to recognize that you have to pay more for that experience.
Just out of curiosity, what UNC are you transferring too, Chapel Hill?</p>
<p>TomSrOfBoston:
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<p>They are Last Chance U’s.</p>
<p>NamelesStatistic:
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<p>This is fair enough. I understood this, but I was wondering why all of the private scholarship donors care so much about where I go to university. I suppose it’s a similar line of thought. Thank you for your answer.</p>
<p>There is very little prestige associated with going to one of the “top” Canadian universities vs. UofA (which is ranked pretty high, btw) or UofC, at least for undergrad. Many students had the opportunity to go elsewhere or apply for American universities, but saw no reason to.</p>
<p>One thing about U of A and U of C (as an Albertan) is that the weather can just be really depressing. More so with U of A, which doesn’t get chinook. Plus, Edmonton is a relatively dull city. </p>
<p>But I agree, for most kids who just want to study and get a job, there’s no point shelling extra cash out to go to a more ‘prestigious Canadian school’ if you can get what you want without paying for res. I feel like the college experience for most of the major Canadian schools is the same, with maybe Queens/ McGill as exceptions.</p>
<p>I agree with both of the above answers. I don’t think that one would actually have a better experience at the U of T than, say, the University of Waterloo. The U of T might even be worse in that respect. Queen’s seems kind of cool, though.</p>
<p>The prestigious Canadian schools are all large research universities like UofT or McGill. While they are fine for undergrad, I really don’t think they are necessarily better than a school like McMaster or Waterloo at this level (and this is coming from a UofT graduate). Their real value is generally in their graduate and professional programs, where they spend the bulk of their resources and have partnerships with various other institutions in Toronto and Montreal (eg. laboratories, hospitals, ect). The prestige these universities have is generally built on the research generated by their graduate schools.</p>
<p>To be honest it is pretty similar for most large public schools in North America. Their high rankings in various university ranking systems and industry reputation is largely derived from their graduate level research. They have large introductory classes and lots of bureaucracy at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level though they are completely different experiences. University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, some of the big UCs would be some large American publics comparable in this regard, as having built their reputation primarily n the strength of their grad programs. The thing is in Canada, we don’t really have internationally renowned small LACish schools, which focus primarily on undergraduate education.</p>