<p>lolz 10 chars</p>
<p>
[quote]
p.s. atomicfusion I don't think you'd get a scholarship. McGill doesn't throw it's money around, especially not to Canadians. For all I know, you could be brilliant, however it's near IMPOSSIBLE to get a scholarship here (especially as a transfer).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I meant the scholarships that are given to people who are the top 5 or 10% in their faculty. Not scholarships that are given at the time of acceptance.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The U of Michigan/McGill comparison isn't really an insult.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, I didn't mean it to be an insult. I'm glad someone recognizes it as an accurate comparison. But it does seem like people at UM realize that their school is no where near Harvard. People at McGill don't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
p.s. IIT is an institute of technology, where as Stanford is a liberal arts school that also has an engineering faculty.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is a joke, right? Stanford a LAC?? Are you kidding me? Stanford is one of the biggest research universities in the country. Its focus is on engineering, especially at the graduate level. </p>
<p>It's really stupid to compare any school to IIT though considering it's in another continent where life is totally different. It has such low acceptance rates since all the Indian students study an insane amount and all dream of going there. When you have a country with over a billion people and only one premier school, it's pretty easy to see how the acceptance rate can be so low. I'd imagine it isn't as bad for internationals.</p>
<p>Can we just kill this thread. You're a day late and a dollar short. Talk to most people at McGill, and for the most part you'll hear the same thing, "mcgill isn't the best in canada". For english, there's U of T. For environmental sciences and other humanities there's UBC. McGill's got a reputation for the sciences and engineeering, however U of T is still more heavily recruited from. There's no ego here. People are mostly here, I've found, because they didn't want to study somewhere close to home, and they wanted a school with a decent reputation. For Toronto kids, U of T isn't even an option because they want to leave the place they've been living their entire lives. For Calgary/Alberta kids, it's generally a toss up between McGill and UBC (since U of Calgary is still developing). Halifax/Nova Scotia people have Dalhousie (sp?) but that's reputationally inferior to McGill except King's College (but McGill's arts legacy is the equivalent). </p>
<p>If you take a national look at the post-secondary situation in Canada, kids only have a few options, in comparison to the states. Subsequently people are fairly "straight up" when it comes to reputation. Every canadians heard the joke, "what's there difference between a student at queens and a student at mcgill? they both got into queens". That's all that statement is, though, a joke. I've never seen an institute with such little ego (aside from during frosh week). </p>
<p>(That was the day late part, here's the dollar short) IIT isn't a single institution, it's a collection of campuses (think of the UC system). You have IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, etc. Life isn't as different as you'd think in metropolitan India, and they have MANY premier SCHOOLS. All the IIT's are good, it's just some are better than others at certain things (ie Madras is famous for it's nanotechnological programs). You better believe an international getting in to IIT is harder than anything you could image (think of your odds of winning the lottery).</p>
<p>By my book, Stanford is a solid school that has an engineering faculty. Those are my two cents, though I'm glad I got a laugh out of you. I'm wondering when people will realize that there's more to education than what US N&WR says. </p>
<p>l'etranger I hope midterms went well for you.</p>
<p><a href="That%20was%20the%20day%20late%20part,%20here's%20the%20dollar%20short">quote</a> IIT isn't a single institution, it's a collection of campuses (think of the UC system). You have IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, etc. Life isn't as different as you'd think in metropolitan India, and they have MANY premier SCHOOLS. All the IIT's are good, it's just some are better than others at certain things (ie Madras is famous for it's nanotechnological programs). You better believe an international getting in to IIT is harder than anything you could image (think of your odds of winning the lottery).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I know IIT has multiple campuses, but it's still THE premier school collectively.</p>
<p>
[quote]
By my book, Stanford is a solid school that has an engineering faculty. Those are my two cents, though I'm glad I got a laugh out of you. I'm wondering when people will realize that there's more to education than what US N&WR says.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>More like Stanford is amazing and has an unbelievably amazing engineering department. Both the overall school and the engineering department are easily top 5 in the US and on a totally different tier from McGill.</p>
<p>But yeah this thread is basically dead.</p>
<p>Macleans says otherwise about Mcgill vs. U of T...</p>
<p>However in my experience you're going to get the same quality of education doing undergraduate at U of T, McGill or UBC. They are all good, solid schools equal probably to the higher ranked US public schools. Some programs in each are better than others, but overall they are quite similar. </p>
<p>But there's so much more to a school than reputation, and sometimes posters on this board lose sight of that.</p>
<p>drmambo, i still have 3 midterms left. I was quite surprised tho so far, the midterm just covered very mechanical concepts of lectures, basically memorization = success on midterms, so far. Nothing horrifying as a lot of people have told me.</p>
<p>Midterms here are neverending.</p>
<p>If you want conceptual/actually difficult midterms, don't look to the chem department/You might like physics, then. The midterm was 20 questions that involved no numbers, and 5 questions that problem solved.</p>
<p>You want a midterm where the median grade is 0 (and I'm not kidding)? Take a course taught by Luc Devroye.</p>
<p>drmambo, which physics midterm are you referring to?</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you want conceptual/actually difficult midterms, don't look to the chem department/You might like physics, then. The midterm was 20 questions that involved no numbers, and 5 questions that problem solved.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Isn't college physics always not supposed to use numbers? In high school physics is a lot of just plugging into equations, but in college it's all deriving expressions.</p>
<p>At least that's been my experience after three semesters of college physics. Here nothing has numbers. The lectures have limited numbers. Less than 10% of the homework problems involve numbers. The quizzes and midterms also have no numbers.</p>
<p>Real physics isn't nearly what they teach in high school.</p>
<p>it's so true. most of my math exams don't use numbers. it's all derive this/show that/prove this. I know the entire greek alphabet pretty much.</p>
<p>High school should do more to prepare students for proof type questions.</p>
<p>But it's high school...the essence of high school is inheriting robotic methods to pass the SAT. </p>
<p>College courses in anything should focus on understand/reasoing alone. Facts should become secondary.</p>
<p>college physics needs to use some numbers to a point. I don't disagree or agree entirely with the past posts, I was just saying the midterm was very conceptual, which was a change. </p>
<p>To a point, non-numerical physics can be just a plug and chug as numerical physics. Just brute force memorizing the concepts is no more noble than memorizing and plugging ***** into equations. </p>
<p>I believe classical physics requires an intimate understanding of calculus before the nuances can be appreciated, so with that in mind you can't blame high school teachers for making physics fairly plug-and-chug-friendly. How can you explain torque to someone without having to also explain the fundamentals of linear algebra? Physics at McGill is taught as a freshman course, but assumes students to have completed/mastered Calculus 1 and 2 (a little backwards in my opinion). </p>
<p>If you don't understand integration, the derivations for K, U, and Work are just confusing. </p>
<p>SO I guess what I'm getting at is this: of course high school is not as intellectually demanding as college.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How can you explain torque to someone without having to also explain the fundamentals of linear algebra?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's really not that difficult to explain cross products as they are used in physics. It's not like we cross actual numerical vectors in calc physics.</p>
<p>Blindly memorizing concepts is just another mistake. Learning concepts involves understanding. See, if you just memorize the verbal or mathematical definition of torque, what good does that do unless the professor just ask you to recite the definition, which is extremely rare. </p>
<p>In reality, numbers become arbitrary. Why waste time punching numbers into a calculator when one can just write X to represent any numerical value? You don't even need to care of tedious busywork, rather, you should be able to further focus on concepts and reasoning. The reason I hated high school physics was that nothing made sense. Newton invented calculus for a reason, so that physics can be thoroughly explained.</p>
<p>"It's really not that difficult to explain cross products as they are used in physics. It's not like we cross actual numerical vectors in calc physics."</p>
<p>I think you missed the point</p>
<p>I get drunk everyday. And I'm doin alright in school. I've just learned not to care. I understand why l3trnager is frustrated. You should have gone to some LAC if you wanted a more theoretical/abstract approach...McGill is too big for that sort of thing.</p>
<p>I used to get drunk everyday...the early freshman days. I miss that...well..sort of. ahah anyways
I'm scared of failing my first semester..if that happens..will they kick me out. Can they do that!!!</p>
<p>
[quote]
used to get drunk everyday...the early freshman days. I miss that...well..sort of. ahah anyways
I'm scared of failing my first semester..if that happens..will they kick me out. Can they do that!!!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There might be some kind of correlation between your early drunkenness and your present failing.</p>