<p>I'm applying to McGill this year, and I was hoping some current students or friends of current students could share some positive and negative experiences. </p>
<p>What has been your best experience at McGill? Your worst?
Are there many work opportunities for undergraduates in Montreal?
How is the course load?
How are the study abroad programs?
Anything you wish you knew when you were applying as a freshman?</p>
<p>what I hate about McGill: students party all night, get drunk, smoke weed, many of them are actually brainless. Don’t get me wrong, I come to an university to take classes and hopefully learn something. And I’m currently very disappointed with students here, especially the ones living in dorms. At least they won’t disturb you if you don’t want to, but not exactly a motivation to study.</p>
<p>That being said, the city looks gorgeous and living costs are cheap. Professors are really friendly and helpful. Some courses are really difficult and you won’t get around easily with academics here. So yeah, a good GPA in McGill might open doors to prestigious grad schools.</p>
<p>Are you in any clubs/organizations? Or maybe you intern somewhere? </p>
<p>I feel like that drinking/partying will be happening at most schools, but the opportunities might be different. Do find you made friends really easily or is it difficult because most kids party?</p>
<p>I’m a first year student so no internships yet. But one of my buddies doing intern in RIM (the blackberry company) said that the economics here is picking up rather fast. So yeah, opportunities are abundant.</p>
<p>I find clubs/organizations in McGill are rather boring and uninvolved compared to my high school. But that’s just my opinion. People here, however, are very friendly and out-going; you won’t have problems getting friends here, only the “kind” of people you want to friend with matters.</p>
<p>Ah ok, that actually helps a lot, thank you. The only club/organization I’ve tried to find out about in McGill is McMUN, which from the looks of the website seems pretty ok. I’m not sure if the team competes internationally. I was trying to find out about their debate opportunities, which also seem limited to Canada.</p>
<p>From my research so far, I find that most universities outside of the United States don’t have very involved campuses as compared to most American universities. Difference in culture?</p>
<p>I hope you enjoy McGill this coming year. =]</p>
<p>McGill administration is awful and class sizes are huge. Most students however ignore this because they are happy to be living on their own in montreal and partying every night. If you are not the type of person who enjoys drinking themselves silly, I’m afraid you’ll find options rather limited. (I know I sound like an old hag but from the stance of someone who is allergic to alcohol, there wasnt much to do or any other ways to meet people).</p>
<p>If you come from any other major city (NY, London etc), Montreal will seem pretty small and grey.</p>
<p>mcgill university is in rapid decline.</p>
<p>The students are not that smart. Academic wise, the school is in shambles. You will meet a lot of dumb students. Which is unsurprising considering the whole culture is one about drinking and bar hopping so if you don’t want to do that 4 days a week then you are on the outs.</p>
<p>The administration does nothing to help, it is limited by its very small funding. Almost everything is run down because there is not enough money. Admission standards are too loose, and the opportunities aren’t great. For business majors, if you want to work at elite bulge bracket firms that is almost out of the question. McGill is considered third or 4th tier.</p>
<p>But most people don’t care too much because they are drunk.</p>
<p>econgrad, why don’t you transfer if you are so unhappy and dissatisfied?</p>
<p>To others who read this: If you look at econgrad’s posting history, you will see that he takes every chance to denigrate McGill, its students and faculty. He seems to have made a bad choice by coming to McGill but instead of transferring to a "better’ school, he lurks on CC for any opportunity to blame his wrong choice on McGill.</p>
<p>He also considers any criticism of him to be a personal attack.</p>
<p>econgrad,</p>
<p>1) then how come mcgill is said to be the most competitive school in canada?</p>
<p>2) everyone knows their business program isnt the best, but NOT 3rd tier. people even say that it is first tier.</p>
<p>3) whats wrong with u?</p>
<p>I can only really echo what the two previous posters have said. There are many highly successful McGill grads who have taken the opportunities afforded to them and made it to “elite bulge bracket firms” and other great companies.</p>
<p>Perhaps a positive attitude and a ‘can do’ mentality had something to do with this.</p>
<p>all i know is, my family is canadian and some of the smartest of my parents’ friends’ children have gone to mcgill. it is not easy to get into, and its basically the best school in canada, so you’re likely to meet a lot of really smart kids. my family friend graduated from mcgill, was accepted with a scholarship to duke law school, and is likely to be extremely successful. and a mcgill education is getting her at least halfway there. maybe im biased because of the positive experience my family and friends have had with the university, but can you really argue with success?</p>
<p>for the record, i live in connecticut and was raised in the usa (born in toronto).</p>
<p>McGill is currently ranked 19th in the world by QS…
I think it is certainly a world class, first tier school. It outranks, all but the most prestigious Ivy League Schools in the United States, which is certainly saying something.</p>
<p>Rankings are based on research output and not undergrad education (i.e. they only matter to graduates, who actually care more about their specific department, so essentially they’re useless). </p>
<p>Please don’t be so naive as to think that McGill is better than an Ivy League school. McGill is an amazing university, but it simply can’t compete with the elite American schools because of its funding and size. Ignore rankings. U of T and UBC are actually surpassing McGill now, and smaller schools like Queen’s and Western offer wonderful undergraduate educations. </p>
<p>I’m not bashing McGill; I applied and was accepted. But just don’t read too much into rankings (QS is the worst of the bunch). Americans seem to think McGill is our only university for some reason.</p>
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<p>You say to ignore rankings but you cite UofT and UBC as surpassing McGill. That is only in one of the rankings (Thomson Reuters) you just told us to ignore.</p>
<p>ARWU and Thomson Reuters, arguably the two biggest publishers of world rankings, both put U of T and UBC above McGill, actually. And the only reason McGill is first in Macleans is because U of T and UBC have boycotted their rankings, which forces them to use old data. And U of T was first for like a decade before that, so you know it’s not sour grapes.
U of T and UBC have much better funding than McGill which allows them to improve their facilities and faculty. </p>
<p>I meant that he shouldn’t pay attention to McGill being ranked above an Ivy because obviously that’s ridiculous (it is for any Canadian school). And I mentioned U of T and UBC because they’re often overlooked by Americans when they’re at least as good as McGill.</p>
<p>IamPos is completely right on this.</p>
<p>mcgill’s slipping reputation is because of financial reasons. We are BROKE! So broke that we are running a budget deficit.</p>
<p>How did we get this broke? Well, the socialist Quebec government imposes a tuition freeze of $2500 a year! That doesn’t make any sense. If you are looking at $2500 a year, that is community college. So obviously being located in Quebec is huge detriment to the reputation of the university. It makes mcgill a great party school though.</p>
<p>Now with no money how can mcgill compete in hiring good profs? award brilliant students with generous scholarships? It can’t. So apart from the 60% quota of Quebecois, it accepts almost everybody that is international so they can charge international tuition.</p>
<p>That is why if you look at the brilliance of mcgill pop, ontario and bc folks are generally the smartest bunch. Everyone else brings down the average.</p>
<p>Americans, don’t fool yourself in coming to mcgill expecting a great education and be hopelessly disappointed. It is really comparable to around 60 or 70 in the world.</p>
<hr>
<p>I do sympathize with the mcgill administration because they are doing everything right and they are not the problem. The problem ultimately is the government fault. In a socialist province, mcgill was never meant to be great, it is suppose to be mediocre or “egalitarian”. Nothing elite whatsoever about mcgill at all.</p>
<p>I am a first year student at McGill, and I am planning on transferring to a different school. McGill is a pretty good school, but it certainly has its bad side. I don’t understand half of McGill’s decisions… but oh well. For example, the McGill food and dining services just raised the prices on basically everything on the menu in the cafeterias, without warning to students. When we found out about this, people protested and complained about the increase in the prices. And how did they respond to us? By telling us that the next time they raise the prices, they will let us know beforehand.</p>
<p>Also, McGill just sold the McGill Daily (a student run newspaper) to Rupert Murdoch, who owns just about everything that has to do with media. The guy is a billionaire!!! He doesn’t need to buy out the Mcgill Daily. But I assume McGill really needs the money, so they just sold the newspaper on behalf of the students. The worst part of it all is that the McGill Daily (which will later have McGill dropped from the name) will be exclusive only to the iPad (and will remain a student newspaper). So does this mean I will have to go out and buy an iPad to read about whats going on on campus??</p>
<p>Oh and Mcgill just shut down the Architecture cafe, the last student run cafe.</p>
<p>And they could have cared less when the midnight kitchen (a vegan cafe on campus that is funded only by donation) was closed because they failed to have the proper health and safety certifications.</p>
<p>And for some reason the housing staff doesn’t care about the students living in rez as well. When I thought I had bed bugs once, I went to the housing office to let them know about my situation. I got there at 4:30 pm one day and no one was there. They had left for the day, even though they are supposed to be working until 5. So I went back the next day at 2:30 pm. And guess what? They weren’t there. They had left for the day.</p>
<p>All in all, McGill is not a friendly place. But it does have its benefits as well.</p>
<p>It is a great place to learn. There are many opportunities to get involved. You just have to go seek them out yourself (which is the same everywhere).</p>
<p>The campus is beautiful.</p>
<p>There are people all over the world at McGill. It is such an incredibly international school. And it is a great place to meet new people.</p>
<p>Thanks for bashing on my native province, econgrad. Why don’t you just leave if you hate it so much?</p>
<p>puryearn writes a surprising comment: “All in all, McGill is not a friendly place.”</p>
<p>Are you referring to the bureaucrats or to the place? I think most large institutions have bureaucracies that have unfriendly elements or people, and perhaps, McGill’s is somewhat less friendly than some others (but trust me, not nearly as cold and harsh as what I experienced at a university in France). Quebec does have a business culture which is different from that of the rest of North America (and that difference is not directly related to language issues); that business culture does explain some of the oddness that occurs in food services. </p>
<p>However, when I think of the friendliness of a place, I think of the people that one interacts with and certainly almost 90% of the people on campus are students and they are the ones that most students spend most of their time interacting with. I have never heard of McGill being called an unfriendly place–maybe there are pockets of unfriendly people, but the experience of my son and others that I know that have attended has been that they have gotten to know many others very quickly. While there are unfriendly cold students everywhere, I don’t know that McGill has any larger a proportion of them than other universities.</p>
<p>@econgrad</p>
<p>I agree with everything you said. It really hurts because I love this school, but I love it in all the wrong ways: my friends, some of my professors. At the same time, I’m so happy (relieved) to be graduating in 3 months. The name “McGill” has made my life easier because it opened doors to amazing graduate/medical schools. On my interview trail, I was surprised how much Harvard’s and Johns Hopkins’ faculty respected the name. I hate to say it, but McGill has been a stepping stone for me to get to better places.</p>
<p>It’s the reality of a public school in the province of Quebec. McGill supposedly has one of best medical schools in the nation. As an international student, I (along with the out-of-province Canadian students) will never set foot in it. Quebec students with 3.3s and 3.5s will get interviews. When my Ontarian roommate called Admissions, they said they only looked at out-of-province applicants with 3.95+. Somehow, her 3.97 still wasn’t good enough. There is no use whining over this situation, and I have little patience/interest in politics. The reality is we all end up leaving McGill and Quebec. As econgrad said, the most brilliant students are probably the out-of-province ones, whose average entrance GPA is something like 90 or 91/100.</p>
<p>McGill is not an unfriendly place, and you won’t get a bad education if you are self-motivated. But yeah, I’m quite ready to leave before our reputation really sinks. I think my problem isn’t exactly with McGill, but with the whole Quebec system. And I’ll stop right there before I get lynched.</p>