<p>I'm planning to major in chemistry and I need to know what the best science school in canada is. Please help! I'll appreciate it.</p>
<p>What's with the obsession with "the best" anyway (don't you watch that Penn & Teller show)? The usual suspects (McGill, University of Toronto, UBC, Waterloo, Queen's if that's your thing) are all fine schools when it comes to science.</p>
<p>McGill for sure. I now live in the U.S. and a McGill degree offers a higher level of prestige than any other Canadian school. McGill is by far the only Canadian school that is recognized internationally. In contrast, McGill's reputation in Canada has been underrated however, this year's McLean's magazine placed McGill #1.</p>
<p>I disagree with leytron, UToronto and UBC are well known internationally. In the US, people are really ignorant of Canadian universities - oftne the only one they have heard of is McGill.. If you do business with people in Europe, they know UT, UBC and other Canadian schools. UT is very highly regarded.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, the 2005 World University rankings by the Times of London reflected these Canadian Schools:</p>
<pre><code> World Rank N. American Rank
</code></pre>
<p>McGill 24 13
U. of Toronto 29 16
U. Of BC 38 20
U. de Montreal (f) 132 42
U. of Alberta 149 47
Waterloo 159 50</p>
<p>This ranking is based upon research universities so it does not include LACs. It ranks the top 200 universities world wide and the top 50 by continent.</p>
<p>Rest assured that McGill has an excellent reputation - anywhere. You also have to look at other aspects, like where you want to live and what kinds of things you want to get involved in. Those things are far more important because once you get here you realize that many of the undergrad programs at many of the top universities in Canada are very similar. You have to cover the same basics, regardless of what university or what country you're in. The Science program at McGill is more than sufficiently challenging.</p>
<p>hmmm well i was just on McGill's website and apparently they feel that an "average" student at their institution should spend 45-48 hours a week studying in addition to attending each class...if my calculator is correct i believe that is around 6.5 hours a day. Now I am enrolled in four AP classes this year and study no more than two hours a day. I am willing to study twenty hours a day to satisfy my academic pursuits, but will my competition be this hardcore?</p>
<p>Don't believe those numbers. They are highly variable. You could spend very little time or up to all your (extended) waking hours studying, depending on your program, the courses you pick and your ability to understand new concepts quickly. In any case, most people adapt to the workload and adjust their working habits/courses selection over time. Make sure to talk to older students in your program when you get there (where ever you decide to go), you'll get a much better picture of what's really required of you.</p>
<p>What's the average of undergraduate kids who get accepted to McGill? How do they decide who to accept? Personally, I'm a Canadian who is thinking of applying to McGill and was wondeirng if a 2200+ SAT would help my app at all.</p>
<p>p.s. I'm wondering because if they only consider averages, isn't that a bit subjective?</p>
<p>I don't think they look at ur SAT if you're a Canadian inside Canada, but if you're from a different school system, they would probably look. If I remember correctly, the ways of dividing groups of students to evaluate is: Quebec students; Ontario; Rest of Canada; USA...and then all the euro matching and rest of world</p>
<p>if you're wondering about which canadian schools have the best rep inside of canada, it would be much as what is listed above. U of T, McGill, UBC, Queen's and Waterloo are the best ones here, reputationally anyways.</p>
<p>being a science student at mcgill (anatomy) i would say mcgill has a very good science faculty, especially for chemistry, where they have numerous distinguished professors and great facilities. However, the science classes are huge in the first few years and harder to get individual help. My smallest class last year was about 400 people and largest 600. In my opinion, choose the school you feel you will get the best education from, which may be big or small - as a smaller school with a lower reputation may suit your needs better.</p>
<p>On the subject of how many hours a week you need to work if you go to McGill, I can only tell you my brother's experience. He said that as a freshman the workload was very managable, as a sophmore the works gets a bit tougher, as a junior the workload gets a lot tougher, and as a senior the work becomes killer. He's currently a senior and I'm sure he does at least 10+ hours of work per day, not even counting classtime. He says he wakes up reading and he goes to sleep reading, and from what I have seen, I believe him.</p>
<p>Of course, I'm sure the workload you have is highly variable depending on the courses you take and how fast you can work. For example, my brother is currently taking some very challenging courses as an honors Political Science major. He even has a 600 level course, which is occupied mostly by highly talented students in the McGill graduate program, even though my brother is an undergraduate. Even though he does very well, he's not a very fast reader at all, so in order to do well he has to put killer hours into his work.</p>
<p>This is how my brother puts it - If you want to be an average student at McGill you don't have to work very hard at all. You can get by doing no more than a couple of hours a day. But if you want to be a good or a great student at McGill you really have to kill yourself. That's just how it is.</p>
<p>HyRule...or anyone else that may know,
When you say that your brother's freshman year was "manageable", was this due to a lighter schedule from advanced standing credits? If an Arts bachelor requires at least 120 credits, the bare minimum is an average of 5 classes a semester (barring any AP credit). What I would like to know is how "manageable" five classes each semester for eight semesters may be...</p>
<p>ps congratulations on having such a determined brother...i can only hope to be in in similar shoes i four years</p>
<p>I'm only in my first year, so I can't say for the later years, but five classes is totally manageable for Arts (since you don't have all the labs and tutorials on the side like you do with sciences!). It does depend on your courses/profs, but yeah, it is a lot of work, takes a lot of time, and there's generally a ton of reading - but I suppose you're at university to learn, anyway, eh?</p>
<p>Also, if five classes does feel overwhelming, you always have the option of taking summer courses to lighten the load during the school year, and McGill even allows you to have an "extra year" to finish things up if you need it.</p>
<p>Yes, my brother did have some AP credit from high school, and in his first semester of college I know for a fact that he only took 4 courses, though I'm not certain about his second semester.</p>
<p>Part of the reason he has such a heavy workload now was because he didn't manage his scheduling well. By this I mean that he found out that if he wanted to graduate from McGill with honors in political science by the end of the year he would have to be taking a lot of tough courses all at once.</p>
<p>My brother tells me he recommends me taking 4 classes in my first semester as well, so I can get used to the work. But then just make sure you don't put too many things off to the very end...</p>
<p>I'm in my first year too, but I got advanced standing from IB so I got put directly into U1. The courseload is defiantely manageable in first year, especially if you're in U0 and even more so if you're in management or arts (from what I hear for arts, anyway). First year in management consists of a lot of really easy courses that don't require much reading or work, like organizational behaviour, information systems, marketing, etc. I guess it does vary for each person, but I doubt anyone will argue that a lot of the core for management, which is generally done in your first two or a bit more years is pretty easy. It really depends on how you like to study, because personally I put in about 10 hours of work per week, if even, but that's just because I retain a lot of information from class and do most of my learning there. But then lots of people don't go to class and with that time they spend studying independently, and that's just how they learn better. If you want to do honours anything, it'll be really, really tough. A lot of science students that I know take only 4 courses the first year - the requisite math, chem, bio and physics, because of all the labs and tutorials that they have to go to as well. For all other faculties, 5 courses really isn't bad. I'm sure all of you will find the course load just fine. Just be careful not to get too carried away with the partying. I find that that gets in the way for lots of people.</p>
<p>wow thanks for shooting down my dream of success at Mcgill bittersweet...haha nahhh its "work hard, play hard"...but mmmm that drinking age</p>
<p>yeh i agree that partying is a serious distraction as well as general socialising in rez, but this is essential too as the first year is all about building friendships and getting to know your surroundings. I would also say that facebook which many of you will soon find out about is also a major distraction, at least in my case ;)</p>
<p>I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound impossibly difficult or anything. Lots of people are doing just fine. But it's true, partying and facebook are huge distractions. Don't miss out on it either though. You'll all be fine. Everyone here found their groove eventually, if not right away. McGill's awesome. That's all I have to say.</p>