<p>And why is that? Without rankings or reviews how can you determine which schools are better? Have you attended all of them? Rankings shouldn’t be the only factor in deciding how “good” a university is…but it is a pretty influential one.</p>
<p>*they are (poor grammar)</p>
<p>We’ve had too many of these topics. Go to whatever school you like and whatever is best for your career goals. If that is UofT, then so be it. If it is UPenn, then so be it.</p>
<p>/thread</p>
<p>^ Agreed. </p>
<p>Just one final point: middleschool8, the THE rankings only account for research output and ignore quality of undergraduate education. Because these rankings miss such a crucial evaluative aspect, they’re largely invalid.</p>
<p>^Again, I agreed.</p>
<p>No sane person on this planet would think of the undergraduate education quality at U of T as ‘significantly better’ than that at Penn.</p>
<p>True, but I have to say…mcgill and u of t are better than brown…this is according to both rankings</p>
<p>^As a whole, UofT and McGill are “better” than Brown, but once you look past rankings and see which one is better for you as an undergrad, then Brown would come out on top.</p>
<p>
You haven’t proven that research output is irrelevant to undergraduate education, nor that other objective factors exist to measure the quality of undergraduate education. I agree that the THE rankings are poor, but let’s not get carried away without sufficient evidence.
This.</p>
<p>Class sizes matter. From personal experience at UBC (very comparable to other top CDN schools)</p>
<p>1st-2nd Year Courses: Over 100 people per class, taught by PhD students, adjuncts, or post-docs </p>
<p>3rd-4th Year Courses: 30-80 people per class, adjuncts or “real” professors </p>
<p>You would never have that at a LAC. If I’d known that when I was in high school, then I would’ve applied to a US LAC for sure.</p>
<p>^ This is utterly and absolutely false. Please ignore this person, they have NO IDEA what they are talking about.</p>
<p>How so?</p>
<p>10char.</p>
<p>@ starbright: Nicole12’s advice sounds valid enough to me, much more valid than your usual money scare replies. So, how can you possibly ask us to entirely discredit Nicole12’s personal experience at a CDN college? Can you PROVE she experienced otherwise? </p>
<p>Seriously! You have a lot of growing ups to do!</p>
<p>prjiki, starbright is an adult who has been a professor at both Canadian and American universities. Her understanding of the differences between the two countries’ universities is vastly more informed than one student’s experience at one Canadian university. I have two daughters who attended U.S. colleges and three in Canada. The differences are not as vast as some here on CC like to think. Generalizations like Nicole’s are not terribly useful, as they are not the experience of every student at every university in every program, on either side of the border.</p>
<p>I’m at a top 10 US school now and as a freshman my classes have 15, 18, 30 and 75 people. All of which are taught by full professors. I love it here and although it’s an awful lot of money I think it’s worth it. I’m wanting to go onto Wallstreet and I get opportunities here I would never in a million years get at a Canadian school. You can definitely succeed going to Canadian schools, but it’s harder.</p>
<p>^Yup. That just reinforces what I believe: Canada is where I’d want to live, the US is where the opportunities are.</p>
<p>Of course, you can get big time jobs out of a Canadian uni, but it’s just easier in the US. But, once again, the student is the one that creates opportunities for himself or herself. It’s not as if the school is going to give you a job.</p>
<p>@alwaysamom: HAHA! I have known starbright is an adult who claims at every opportunity that he has been a professor here and there. From the way he writes his replies, I find that hard to believe. You, on the other hand, must have verified his official credentials, huh? Note, pleeease, neither his self-calimed credentials nor his being an adult does NOT give him the right to discredit someone’s PERSONAL experience.</p>
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<p>It might be helpful if you could explain what these opportunities are that you would never in a million years get at a Canadian school, Jono.</p>
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<p>Viggy, what kinds of opportunities are you expecting?</p>
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<p>I don’t mean to speak for starbright, but my guess is that she was not discrediting nicole’s experience, but rather the sweeping generalizations in her post, which are not universally true.</p>
<p>The big thing for me has been networking opportunities with people in the industry. I’ve gone to a half dozen recruiting events already (they recruit my school hard which is another huge plus). I’ve gone out to dinner with recruiters where there were 3 recruiters and 9 students. I’ve given stock pitches as part of my school’s investment club to recruiters. The even better part is everyone who comes here to recruit is a grad of the school. I took classes at a Canadian University while in high school so I have experienced both systems first hand as a student within a year. In my experience there was a large difference. Going to the States isn’t for everyone, if it’d put you majorly in debt or you plan to go straight to grad school then it may not make sense. But it was the best decision for me.</p>
<p>I’m trying to say that there are more opportunities in the US for business-type people (ie. Wharton grads, Duke grads, etc.) and the like. I think my claim is quite valid. Of course, for some fields such as teaching (professor, high school, etc.) it wouldn’t really matter where you went but the opportunities are more common in the US than in Canada for some fields.</p>
<p>alwaysamom, it strikes me that while nicole’s statement was undoubtedly too broad a generalization, starbright’s statement (“This is utterly and absolutely false. Please ignore this person, they have NO IDEA what they are talking about”) also qualifies as overly broad and, whether intended or not, has the effect of discrediting nicole’s experience.</p>
<p>I’ve spent part of my life as a student and then a professor at HYPS institutions and have worked with and visited folks at Canadian universities as well as American ones (and Australian and South American and …). I have relatives and friends teaching at several Canadian schools. So, my experience of Canadian schools is second-hand. I’ve advised kids who had great times at McGill but also kids enrolled in 800 person classes who watched lectures on TV and stumbled, relatively unnoticed, through McGill. . </p>
<p>In my opinion, Starbright’s analysis is partial and is a too favorable to Canadian schools – but only when compared to the top 15 US schools. The difference is not (as Starbright points out) in the quality of the education but in three or four dimensions: 1) horizons; 2) contacts; 3) alumni network; and probably the ambition and overall academic level of one’s peers. JonoWono has noticed the alumni networks and probably contacts. As I mentioned in my earlier post, JonoWono, a nephew who went to McGill is now working with one of the really high-end I-banks, but going to McGill may pull one toward a Toronto-based bank rather than a global investment bank. But, you are correct that a powerful and well-placed alumni network can help a proactive student to the kinds of opportunities he/she wants to pursue (but only if the alumni network is placed to help with those opportunities)</p>
<p>Beyond the top 15 or so schools, I do not see a meaningful difference in quality between Canadian schools and US schools, but do see two differences of kind:</p>
<p>First, the US has a much greater prevalence of LACs in the US. That will provide a great fit for some and not for others. ShawSon attends one of the elite US LACs, and it is stunning how much time and attention he got as a freshman from his professors – one professor spent an hour a week with him outside of class and office hours (ShawSon could not attend office hours). That would not have happened to a freshman at any of the institutions that I attended or taught at. I highly doubt it would happen at UBC or Queens or McGill. On the other hand, ShawD and I visited Mount Allison and Acadia and King’s and I think a similar thing could happen at Mount Allison and maybe Acadia. </p>
<p>A second difference between Canadian and US schools is the greater heterogeneity in terms of academic abilities of the Canadian school’s student bodies. In the US, the distributions of GPA/SAT scores (call this the academic score) at each school are fairly truncated. (Let’s not argue about whether these are the right measures, but accept them for this purpose). There’s a top tier of HYPSMC with very high academic scores. The next tier is almost as high (Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, Williams, etc.). Then there is another tier (Bowdoin, Middlebury, …) and another (consult USNWR as I don’t really know the tiering). There are some but few kids at Middlebury who had the grades/scores and talent/drive of kids in the tippy-top tier. In general, most such kids been scooped up by the top two tiers. Similarly, there are very few kids with mediocre grades and scores at Middlebury. They just don’t get in. So, the distribution of academic scores is quite truncated at each tier. At Canadian schools, there is a much less truncated distribution of academic scores. That means that many schools have kids who, if they were in the US, would have gone to the tippy top tier (I’ve met two, for example, at Mount Allison). And, it also means that the distribution of academic scores at a school goes farther down into the distribution of academic scores than would an American school. For example, compared to Queens or Acadia, the University of Rochester will have disproportionately fewer OK but not great students (they just wouldn’t get in) and disproportionately fewer absolutely brilliant students (they’d be shuffled off to the very top tier). Whether that’s good or bad probably depends upon the kid. My nephew was frustrated that there were not enough really smart kids in his program at McGill, so he didn’t have as many kids to bounce ideas off. He found the opposite to his satisfaction at Oxford. But, the much broader distribution does allow a strong student to stand out and get faculty mentoring, as it does at Mount Allison.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, these distinctions only matter if the student takes advantage of the advantages offered. I was at a party the other day with a woman who attended Harvard but realizes now that, for whatever reason, she didn’t take advantage of what Harvard offers to the proactive.</p>