I’m from the us and have become extremelly interested in Canadian Univerties. However I don’t understand how their gpa system/ admissions work for Americans, particularly McGill.
Thanks everyone!
For McGill, here are the Admission Standards for American applicants:
At almost all Canadian universities (University of British Columbia being an exception) admission is based purely on high school gpa and SAT/ACT scores. ECs, hooks and ethnic backgrounds are irrelevant; it is a pure numbers game. There is also much more of an emphasis on your later marks in high school (grade 11 and especially grade 12) when considering an applicant. McGill in particular doesn’t even consider your gpa from grade 9, just your gpas in grade 10, 11 and 12. In addition, the admission requirements at Canadian Universities vary greatly based on what program you are applying to (eg, Humanities, Life Sciences, Computer Sciences ect.) with the more technical degrees tending to have more difficult gpa and test score requirements. Look at McGill’s admission requirements in the link I sent you above for whatever department you are interested in and aim to meet or exceed all the test score and gpa requirements. If you meet all the academic requirements you should get in no problem.
Feel free to message me if you have any further questions.
@NamelesStatistic Thank you, it is sometimes hard to decipher what they look at… I’ve looked at schools that claim to only consider grade 12, although their language is sometimes a bit cryptic
Looking at the McGill decisions thread here on CC it appears that if you are significantly above the minima in all categories you will get a decision early on without grade 12 first semester grades. If you are closer to the minima they may request first semester grades before making a decision.
Trust TomSrOfBoston when it comes to McGill, he seems to know the ins and out of that university better than pretty much anyone else I have seen here on College Confidential, especially in terms of helping American applicants.
Grade 12 grades (or grade 11 grades if you get early admission) do have the heaviest weight at McGill, but they do look at grade 10 grades as well. That link I posted lays out pretty clearly exactly what the minimum grades and scores required are, so that should at least help clear up any confusion for McGill.
What other Canadian universities are you considering, btw?
@NamelesStatistic @TomSrOfBoston perhaps Trent university, queens, and McGill (which is a reach). One of the biggest appeals for me is the low cost and the fact that most universities disregard freshman and sophomore year sort of. Also, I noticed they have different criteria based on your major. I want to study political science yet I couldn’t find grade requirements for this course. Would it be under arts or something?
Political science is under Arts.
Hey guys,
You seem to know a lot about McGill University. Do you know as much about Queen’s University? I too like NJperson3675309 am in the American high school system. The thing about Queen’s University is that many people say that the school puts emphasis on ECs. Problem is I never did ECs. But I have stellar grades. I’m talking about getting a minimum of 95 percent in the classes I take and I also have decent SAT scores, more than 2000. So do you guys have any idea about what my chances of going to Queen’s look like?
Thanks!
Queen’s only looks at EC’s for its business school.
I think queens is far less difficult than McGill, also, I’m fairly certain the Canadian system disregards freshman year.