<p>Regarding #3 Virtually all students from outside Quebec take a standard 4 year program. That is about half of all undergraduates. This may be shortened if you have relevant AP credits, or those exemptions can be used to take other university courses. Quebec students take a three year university program because of the CEGEP system. CEGEP is a separate educational level in Quebec. They took the last year of high school (Quebecers graduate high school after grade 11) and the first year of university and created these colleges "Coll</p>
<p>hows the social life at mcgill? is there a lot of school spirit? what about residential life will i meet a lot of friends that way? i really like mcgill, im just afraid the social experience will not be as good as at american colleges. thanks</p>
<p>Seems like Americans applicants have a lot of preconceived notions of what social life is in college/university. I won’t repeat what has been said, but I’ll summarize it in 3 points:
-social life is what you make of it;
-it’s great at McGill if you know what you are getting into;
-but it’s different than your standard American college social life.</p>
<p>This might be a silly question, but do you guys know what kind of service Mcgill uses to mail acceptance letters? </p>
<p>To start the visa process, I need the letter of acceptance first of all. When I sent my application documents to Mcgill through regular mail, it took little more than a month to arrive >.< It worries me that if I receive the letter late, I might not be able to get the permit on time.</p>
<p>haha, how much stuff are you planning on bringing. your dorm already has a bed, dresser, and chair at least. my first time up my parents and i filled a minivan… mostly with clothes and a few storage units. you shouldn’t need a uhaul until you have to move into an apartment and you have to move all of your personal furniture.</p>
<p>Does anyone knows why McGill bilateral exchanges are so poor ?
I mean everybody seems to think it’s a terrific Uni, but I can’t find any “good” partner - bar the ANU.
Do you have any idea ?</p>
<p>In what way is McGill different from a traditional university experience like you see depicted in movies? I talked to one guy who is graduating this year who told me “I’m in a fraternity living practically on campus in downtown Montreal, You really don’t think I’m getting a college experience?”</p>
<p>Does this hold true? I assume its a little different due to most people living off campus after first year.</p>
<p>hey i was in a fraternity, joined it because some of my good friends from first year new people in it. as it turns out, we didn’t even associate with the IGLC mentioned in the article and kind of kept to ourselves, save our philantrhopic fundraisers. moreover, we didn’t really have an official residence, just a large apartment where some of the guys lived, and some other non-members lived too (we only had a handful of guys each year). in fact, our parties were never frat-sponsored events, but just house parties with friends. the fraternity scene is limited at mcgill and with the majority of residences being brownstones and apartment buildings, there are no houses to store the 100+ members of large frats at large universities. furthermore, there is no need for them in mcgill where the drinking age is 18 and the parties/clubs/bars are literally blocks away from everywhere.</p>
<p>all in all, i met a bunch of good guys, and it was not too ritualistic or strict at all. we called ourselves the ‘anti-frat’ because we were all good friends who happened to be in a club as well.</p>
<p>anyway, i went to college never thinking i would ever join, but when my friends started hanging out with them i said why not. if you have any specific questions about the greek life i can tell you more. as for the traditional university experience… not at all… mcgill is 1st and foremost above and beyond what you see on tv. it is truly unique among universities. the only thing i missed were large house parties (there are plenty of apartment parties), however after coming back home and enjoying a few… i’d prefer 4 years of apartment parties over dirty house parties.</p>
<p>I hate clubbing but love house parties. Am I gonna be happy with the party scene at McGill? Seriously, I live in Canada so I’ve gotten past the novelty of clubs a long time ago and just hate them.</p>
<p>But, in what way is McGill different from the traditional experience in aspects other than Greek life?</p>
<p>I am not sure what you define as the “traditional experience” but I will take a stab at it. </p>
<p>My best friend in high school, and still today, went to Indiana University in Bloomington. He said it was like in the movies. 80% of students lived on campus in regular dorms or fraternity/sorority houses. There was something like three dozen greek houses. They were a major presence on campus. There were many traditions on campus like the Little 500 Bike race (if you ever saw the movie “Breaking Away”, you know what I mean). Basketball is HUGE at IU too. While my friend liked the expereince at IU, he eventually got tired of almost everyone in town being a student or otherwise associated with the university. IU was essentially the entire town. The nearest city was 50 miles away and that was Indianapolis (no commemt). He began to miss city life. In Canada, Queen’s U is the closest approximation to that traditional experience.</p>
<p>McGill is an urban university and like most urban universities you are part of the city. In McGill’s case, it is the incredible city of Montreal! You will be involved in city life and living in the city after first year. You may socialize with U de M or Concordia students or non-students or limit your circle of friends to McGill students. When you ride the m</p>
<p>Just curious, why do all of the classes start at something:05 or something:35? Seems kind of odd…</p>
<p>And also, when you are choosing a rez, it said on Minerva that you get your rez preference based on when you accept your offer to study at McGill. But I thought it was all a lottery system?</p>
<p>It used to be on the dot, but then some profs would also begin and end on the dot so that if you had consecutive classes in separate buildings you were forced to miss part of at least one class. Putting beginning and end time 10 minutes apart solved that problem.</p>
<p>^ its the same thing as what your school does. think of it as allowing you to be 5 min late. the mcgill campus is so compact that 10min is literally enough time to get to just about every classroom you may need to go to, thus the majority of non-lab courses use this. Moreover, because of the campus size, classroom space is limited, so it only makes sense that the majority of courses follow the same pattern.</p>
<p>Do you feel connected to the school at all? My one problem with my current school is that everybody is so disconnected. Everyone commutes and leaves after regular hours. I have no problem feeling that I’m part of a city, but I’d really like to feel like I’m part of the school as well. Is the McGill ghetto extremely close to the campus? Not a big fan of commutes</p>