Cdns applying to US schools - Worth it?

College Search & Selection
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<p>No I didn't make up the stats. They were researched for a story I was doing several years ago and I had posted on another thread. They came from the schools themselves. U of T's stats came from a press release and from calling their Public affairs which at the time as a reporter I had on speed dial. LOL. Let's see if I can find that those numbers again.</p>

<p>2003-2004 enrollment U of T:
<a href="http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin5/030618c.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin5/030618c.asp&lt;/a>
Does not list number of applicants as I got that directly from U of T public affairs themselves and were preliminary. But if you click here: (<a href="http://www.cou.on.ca/_bin/publications/onlinePublications.cfm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cou.on.ca/_bin/publications/onlinePublications.cfm&lt;/a> ) you will see application stats for 2003 and beyond. On the 2003 report skip to page 17 as that has the breakdown. I think the acceptance rate is even lower than what I was originally given by U of T Public affairs for my story. </p>

<p>Here is a provost report on application and acceptance rates. Remember these are broken up over campuses and in some cases programs but they do reflect the numbers I have been saying. They are also pre double cohort so the number of total applicants (if you combine all campuses and programs may still be under the 2003 applicant numbers.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/userfiles/page_attachments/Library/6/37705_pi2003.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/userfiles/page_attachments/Library/6/37705_pi2003.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It's not strange that people you know who apply to Canuck schools get accepted. Generally Canadian universities publish automatic acceptance minimum grades so people generally apply if they have those minimums and get accepted. Most universities will open spaces for qualified students who meet the minimum admission standards. There is very little guess work on whether you will be accepted cause most students in high school know what mark they need to get automatic access to their university of choice.</p>

<p>And remember acceptance rates say little about quality of education. But that's another debate</p>

<p>Hope this helps. I am too tired to dig up McGill stats. Going to bed. Cheers.</p>

22

<p>Ivyleaguer, I think your "accepted" stats are actually the # who matriculated.</p>

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<p>no they are not. Check out the links. While I was re-looking up the information I came by matriculation rates. but didn't know a question about them would come up. I think the U of T provost document may contain some though if I recall right.</p>

<p>best</p>

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<p>I know a bit about canadian universities acceptance rates because at my school lots of people apply to Canada (I live in the Middle East). Now I think the top Canadian schools are great don't get me wrong but the dificulty of getting in is significantly easier than places like HYPSM. From my class three people applied to canadian universities. The first two were great students who had great stats. They both applied to Waterloo, UofT, Queens and got into all of them. One of them applied also to Yale, Brown and Caltech and was rejected by all of them (both were international students btw). The third guy is I guess an average student who did only so so on his SAT. He got into UofT (applied to one other university that also accepted him). I don't believe for a minute that the third guy would have even had the faintest of chances at an ivy school. What I'm trying to say that there is a difference in difficulty between difficulty of getting into a top canadian university and one on the US.</p>

25

<p>Ohh came on don't even try to compare the acceptance rate of CDS and the ivys of any top school school in EUA .Like i've said we were 5 applying to CDS universities we all got accepted ..i'm not saying is a piece of cake but hey us university you need SAT1 sometimes SAT2 plus high GPA....the botton line is it is worth applying to canadian university depending on your major and your citizenship.</p>

26

<p>According to the 2006 Fiske Guide:</p>

<p>McGill: 23,226 applications; 48% accepted; 49% of those accepted actually enrolled.</p>

<p>Toronto: 75,382 applications; 59% accepted; 28% of those accepted actually enrolled.</p>

<p>I love the Canadian universities (I have a degree from U of Toronto), but it's almost not possible in the Canadian academic mindset for undergrad to be as exclusive as the top US privates. That's one thing that's nice about Canadians and Canadian universities...they don't plot to run their neighborhoods and schools like elite country clubs that keep out anybody who can't pass a rigorous series of social, intellectual, athletic, and/or financial tests.</p>

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<p>I am not disagreeing the Fiske guide has these stats, but how accurate they are is another story. First of all they don't make sense. 59% acceptance rate means U ofT had accepted 39,000 students. That's more than half of its student body including grad school and part time students.</p>

<p>U of T does not give stats to most US sources as do most Canadian universities. After all from the links I gave about directly from U of T and the Council of Ontario Universities would contridict the Fiske report highly. I think the Fiske report may get some stats from the princeton review which many Canadian universities "boycott". According to an official I once spoke to at U of T, they were baffled at how US sources had completey wrong information when it came to selectivity and admission rates and standards for their school, she said every year they grapple with supplying these sources with real stats but generally decline doing so as potential students can log onto their website and find these facts themselves or request them from the university.</p>

<p>Again it depends on who you wanna believe a US source or actual enrolment and admission stats compiled from the school themselves and the council of ontario universities.</p>

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<p>(75,382 X .59) X .28 = 12,453</p>

<p>Toronto according to Fiske: 75,382 applied, 59% of those were accepted, and of the ones accepted, 28% actually enrolled. So 12,453 actually enrolled. Sounds about right.</p>

<p>Ivyleaguer, you seem to be interpreting the terms incorrectly. "Accepted" means the university just approved their applications, and told them they could attend if they so desire. It doesn't mean they actually enrolled.</p>

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<p>No I not mixing them up. I realize schols accept more students than spaces but that's vastly overduing it don't you think? But clear ACCEPTANCE RATES are in the reports I posted. I didn't quote matriculation. Lets look at another school for comparision then and get off U of T.</p>

<p>Look at Queen's for example. 2004-2005</p>

<p>Application and enrolment
• 25,000 APPLICATIONS for 3,454
full-time spaces available in
direct-entry programs
= 7.23 %
<a href="http://www.queensu.ca/about/QAR/QAR_complete.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.queensu.ca/about/QAR/QAR_complete.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This number was probably a bit higher with part time applications. But I assume FISKE has this school at 50% admissions rate or something? What does it say in the guide about this school's admissions? Is it even close to what Queen's published?</p>

30

<p>I'm sorry, but from my personal experience, I find it incredibly hard to believe that Queens has anywhere CLOSE to a 7.23% acceptance. Again, I don't know anyone who was ever rejected from Queen's out of the handful I know who applied. However, I do know several Brown, Columbia, Amherst, etc... rejectees out of the 5-10 who applied to those schools.</p>

31

<p>
[quote]
Here is a [University of Toronto] provost report on application and acceptance rates. Remember these are broken up over campuses and in some cases programs but they do reflect the numbers I have been saying. They are also pre double cohort so the number of total applicants (if you combine all campuses and programs may still be under the 2003 applicant numbers.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/userf...705_pi2003.pdf%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5DIf"&gt;http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/userf...705_pi2003.pdf

[/quote]
If</a> you look at the beginning of this document (PDF p. 4), you will find the following explicit definitions:
[quote]
a) Offer Rate: the number of offers made as a percentage of applications received
b) Yield Rate: the numbers of students who actually register as a percentage of offers made
c) Overall Acceptance Rate: the number of students who register in the program as a percentage
of the number of applications received

[/quote]
So UT's "offer rate" is equivalent to what is commonly called the "acceptance rate": it represents the percentage of applicants that are offered admission to UT. In contrast, UT's "acceptance rate" is actually a "matriculation rate".</p>

<p>The UT acceptance rates (= "offer rates") vary by campus and discipline, but appear to typically exceed 50%. Here's an example (from PDF p. 5):</p>

<p>Arts, Sciences & Commerce at the St. George campus had 22,084 applicants in 2001-2002. About 58.2 % were accepted (= UT's "offer rate"), and of those, about 32.4% actually enrolled (= UT's "yield rate"). This represents a matriculation rate of (0.582) x (0.324) = 18.9% (= UT's "acceptance rate").</p>

<p>These numbers seem reasonably consistent with those quoted earlier from Fiske.</p>

32

<p>
[quote]
Look at Queen's for example. 2004-2005</p>

<p>Application and enrolment
• 25,000 APPLICATIONS for 3,454
full-time spaces available in
direct-entry programs
= 7.23 %

[/quote]
Not sure where the 7.23% figure comes from here. If we make the unrealistic assumption that every accepted applicant goes to Queen's (i.e. yield rate = 100%), then 3,454/25,000 = 13.8 % acceptance rate. </p>

<p>More realistically, suppose that Queen's has a similar "yield" rate to University of Toronto, say about 33.3%. In that case, Queen's would need to accept 10,362 applicants to fill 3,454 slots, in which case the acceptance rate (assuming 25,000 applications) would be ~ 41%. </p>

<p>Of course, if Queen's is less desirable than U of T, and has a lower yield rate, then the acceptance rate would have to be higher. For example, if the yield rate was only 27%, instead of 33.3 %, then acceptance rate would be ~ 51%.</p>

33

<p>yes, Corbett in the case of Queen's I did think of yield. but Queen's has the lowest acceptance rate among Canuck's major universities something they brag about. They generally state their acceptance rate, however they calculate this at about 10 to 14 percent depending on the year.</p>

<p>As for you U of T if your final 18.9% is correct I don't see how that is accurate with Fiske? sure your numbers correlate with what the other poster said but he gave me the final number of 59% it's that number that I didn't agree with.</p>

<p>perhaps what universities in Canada state as an "acceptance rate" isn't using the same formula as US schools however,like I said the two education systems have different goals. And the only thing that matters is quality of education.</p>

34

<p>
[quote]
According to the 2006 Fiske Guide:</p>

<p>Toronto: 75,382 applications; 59% accepted; 28% of those accepted actually enrolled.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>In the example I cited previously, UT's reported "offer rate" was 58.2%. That's similar to the "59% accepted" reported by Fiske. </p>

<p>In the example I cited previously, UT's reported "yield rate" was 32.4%. That's similar to the 28% rate reported by Fiske.</p>

<p>If you use UT data, the "offer rate" is the number of interest, not the "acceptance rate". The latter is a matriculation rate. Check the UT definitions.</p>

35

<p>In order to help our friend who created the topic we need to stick to the question " Cdns applying to US schools - Worth it?" .You guys are discussing acceptance rates!!Came on.</p>

36

<p>Worth it if you want the things SOME American schools have that Canadian schools generally don't have: passionate interest in sports teams, big on-campus social and Greek activities, pastoral rural campuses, warm weather, AND/OR smaller undergrad classes. In other words, a Canadian coming to the US would be getting something he couldn't get at home if he went to, say, Notre Dame, USC, Duke, Williams, Princeton, U of Florida, U of Miami, or Davidson. But if he came over to go to NYU, BU, or George Washington, or Case Western Reserve, he'd be getting pretty much what he could get in Canada and paying a lot more for it.</p>

<p>Re the weather...the U of Windsor (which is right across the river from Detroit) makes a big deal out of the fact that they are the southernmost university in Canada (the implication being that its weather is balmy--which it really is compared to places like U of Alberta and McGill). But its climate is exactly the same as Detroit's. So a whole bunch of American colleges would be a lot warmer than the warmest in Canada--even those with the relatively mild British Columbia winters. I spent a year at the U of Toronto, and winter was pretty much late October through early April. I can see how a Canadian would want to go south just for weather reasons.</p>

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<p>Toronto has no winter, it's freaking tropical (proof: they had to call in the army because of a snow storm...). And there are a few "pastoral, rural" campuses in Canada (but not nearly as many as in the US, for obvious reasons). But you are absolutely right TourGuide446, you have to look for these kind of differences if you want to decide whether applying to US universities is worth it (as in terms of money, US schools are generally more costly, it's also more complicated to apply).</p>

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<p>The original question posted is one that I have spent a great deal of time considering for the past few years and, ultimately, I think there are some intangible benefits to a Canadian going to school outside of Canada; whether you take advantage of that boils down to whether you have the financial freedom to choose and whether you attach enough value to those intangible benefits to justify the cost.</p>

<p>We are Canadian and my S goes to school in the US. The incremental cost is significant. One of the reasons he went was that he was an athletic recruit and there is simply nothing comparable in Canada to the quality of play he would experience in the US. For him, that was the first intangible benefit of choosing to go to college in the US. He went to a school that has a policy of not offering athletic scholarships, so taking advantage of this opportunity required a level of financial commitment on our part.</p>

<p>That he attends a prestigious school with a world wide reputation is fine, but I think that had he gone to McGill or Queen's or U of T he would be at no great disadvantage in terms of getting into excellent professional or graduate schools and ultimately having good career opportunities. Some will disagree with that view, including a number of alums of my son's school who believe that the school they went to opened doors for them to opportunities that would not have been otherwise available to them. This is a second intangible benefit and one that is susceptible to a wide disparity with respect to the value that people would attach to it. </p>

<p>I think going to school outside of Canada has broadened my son's outlook and his way of thinking, but the same objective could have been met had he gone to England or Australia or a lower cost school in the US. This is unquestionably a third intangible benefit, but it is available at different price points and with different types of experiences.</p>

<p>Our decision to support our son going to school in the US and to bear the increased financial cost has been met with two distinct reactions from our friends.</p>

<p>One group thinks we are wasting our money and that substantially all of the "benefits" of going to school outside of Canada can be obtained by going to graduate or professional school after completing an undergraduate degree in Canada. This group collectively does not accept the proposition that the education received at a top US school is any better than that on offer at a top Canadian school, and generally does not attach much value to the intangibles, if any.</p>

<p>The other group believe for a variety of reasons support our decision. For some, it is the chance to play college athletics at the highest level in a supportive environment. More commonly, there is a belief that the top US schools offer a better education and better opportunities. Those who hold this view simply feel that the publicly funded Canadian schools have been so starved of resources by the various provincial governments for so long that they have moved far away from the standard of the well heeled private US schools with multibillion dollar endowments. They intuitively conclude that the Canadian schools simply no longer offer a comparable product. Added to that, is the view that the smaller size and ruthless selectivity of the top US schools creates a student body that is overweighted in ambitious, intelligent and creative individuals relative to the average Canadian school and that this is a positive factor in a student's undergraduate experience.</p>

<p>It all boils down to personal choice. In my son's case, he loves everything about his school and is having a terrific experience. That alone makes me happy to spend the extra money to send him there. Whether his education is better than what he would have received at McGill or Lakehead or Brandon doesn't really matter much because I believe that it isn't any worse and that wasn't the reason he choose to go there. Whether he will have more opportunities in life doesn't really matter much because I believe that he won't have fewer - what matters is what he does with his opportunities.</p>