<p>I surely would appreciate information from Canadians about the reputations these three schools have in your country: UBC, Victoria and Simon Fraser. Thank you!!!!!</p>
<p>Of the three you mentioned. UBC is the most prestigious. Simon Fraser considers itself the Stanford of canada because of its balance between athletics and academics. Simon Fraser also has a beautiful location in the mountains and is more on par with a liberal arts school in the U.S. Victoria is also a good school too, in fact it has a joint program with Columbia university I believe on the graduate level in international relations that gives you a Columbia degree when you graduate. The latter is something that is becoming common in Canada these days. For example Queen's university now gives executive MBA's a degee from both Queen's and Cornell University, and York university law gives you a law degree from both York and NYU. We'll have to see if this trend between American and Canadian schools continues.</p>
<p>From Petersons on line description,</p>
<p>some interesting comments on Queen's:</p>
<p>"the most exclusive university in Canada"</p>
<p>"polls of high school counsellors, academic administrators, and CEOs of major Canadian corporations consistently rank Queen's first in terms of its reputation for the quality of its programs, for its reputation for educating Canada's leaders of tomorrow, and for having the highest admission standards in the country"</p>
<p>"Canada's most prestigious university"</p>
<p>Waterloo is a great school for engineering, and prob. has the best mathematics program in north america.</p>
<p>Does anyone know anything about U of Ottawa in terms of social life, academics (specifically political science), and school spirit?</p>
<p>Ottawa U is just an Ok school and Ottawa just an OK city. great architechture though being the capital of Canada, but doesn't compare to Toronto nor Montreal in terms of being a world class city or having great schools.</p>
<p>some interesting comments on Queen's:</p>
<h2>"the most exclusive university in Canada"</h2>
<p>This is again an example of a U.S source trying to understand a canadian university. Firstly, the poll they refer to is the one done by Maclean's magazine which I don't think has ever had Queen's first in any of the criteria mentioned -- two or three but not number one. </p>
<p>That said, Queen's has a very low acceptance rate because it's a small school for a PHD school, in comparson to its peers like U of t or Mcgill or UBC, it's tiny, which means it can only accept so many students: 9% I believe. That's what makes it exclusive. It's a great school. In most people's minds in Canada it's top 2 or 3 here and rightfully so but don't get carried away by the Peterson hype. U of T for instance is more presitgious here than Queen's and Mcgill is just behind Queens in terms of prestige:</p>
<p>here is a good link: Canadianivy.ca
or Macleans.ca, to see the latest results from the survey that Peterson misquoted.</p>
<p>Thanks for the Canadian Ivy link. I have a Kaplan book from 2001 that has a section on Americans studying in Canada that looks like it was taken practically word for word from there (or someone took it from someone).</p>
<p><a href="http://canadianivy.ca/about.asp%5B/url%5D">http://canadianivy.ca/about.asp</a></p>
<p>Yeah I thought Petersons was laying it on pretty thick too but I do get the impression that a Queen's experience is quite different than a McGill experience.</p>
<p>Now this is from Canadian Ivy on Queen's:</p>
<p><a href="http://canadianivy.ca/queensu.asp%5B/url%5D">http://canadianivy.ca/queensu.asp</a></p>
<p>"the highest admission standards in the country"</p>
<p>"National magazine polls consistently rank it first in terms of its reputation for the quality of its programs and its admission standards. "</p>
<p>"non-academic opportunities that are virtually unsurpassed by any other university"</p>
<p>I agree that low acceptance rate does not guarantee better students or especially better teachers, facilities, preparedness for graduate school, etc.</p>
<p>oops, it was the Fiske 2001 book (not Kaplan).</p>
<p>SFU is a great school, but most people commute there. There is not much on-campus life. University of Victoria is beautiful. It's known for being very political because it is in the province's capital. It's also famous for its marine biology program.</p>
<p>How is UofT's graduate department of computer science? I am interested in studying there and noticed that there was a Turing award winner on faculty. How hard is it to get in (they listed a 10-15% acceptance of over 1000 applications, but I'd like to hear from someone who actually got in) compared to top 20 US computer science schools? Do Canadian schools look at GPA more than everything else? Thanks.</p>
<p>Canadian grad school and especially ones at U of T are VERY selective. You being an international stdents would help but only slightly. They will look at more than just at GPA at grad level, GRE scores, referrals, essays, and recs. </p>
<p>usually it's canadian undergrad to U.S grad school. Strange seeing it in reverse.</p>
<p>Could anyone rank the following schools in terms of the difficulty of the premed program, or the school in general (i.e. are ppl cut-throat? difficult to get high GPA? etc)</p>
<p>Sure we could rank them. if we knew what schools you were talking about. You have none listed.</p>
<p>Wow..my bad, I didn't even catch it. Here's the entire post:</p>
<p>Could anyone rank the following schools in terms of the difficulty of the premed program, or the school in general (i.e. are ppl cut-throat? difficult to get high GPA? etc). Thanks!</p>
<p>McGill, McMaster, Queens, Toronto, Western (abc order)</p>
<p>I'd say:
Toronto
Queens
McGill
Western
McMaster</p>
<p>But that's just based on some things I've heard here and there.</p>
<p>so...Toronto is the hardest university to get a high GPA in premed, while McMaster is the easiest university? Is this true?</p>
<p>I heard that York University was the worst canadian university for science. I have no idea whether this is true or not.</p>
<p>I am looking to get either an econ. or business (I guess the degree is called "commerce" in Canada) degree. I have excellent stats, so from what I have read, I should have no problem getting into any Canadian school. So, I was wondering how UBC, U. of Western Ontario, U of T, and McGill (the 4 I am looking at in Canada) compare in each of these fields, and how a commerce degree is viewed in Canada, especially as opposed to an econ. degree. Also, if there are any other schools that come to mind that I should be looking at, that would be nice to know also ;). Thank you very much.</p>
<p>all the school you mentioned are fine. Western has a strong grad program in business and some feel that transfers to undergrad. the other school you may want to consider is Wilfrid Laurier.</p>