<p>Answering bjekre’s question, DD did not apply to Canadian universities for a few reasons.</p>
<p>After she had jumped through all the academic hoops at a very competitive suburban US high school, numerous AP exams, SATs I and II with excellent scores, it felt like going off to a Canadian university would raise the question of what was the point of all that effort. She has numerous Canadian cousins currently or recently in attendance at UBC, UVic, McGill, U of T, having gotten themselves admitted just by passing through a much less rigorous seeming Canadian high school experience with decent grades. Considering that on world rankings those universities outrank most US schools, including the one she’s at, our attitude may not have been entirely rational.</p>
<p>DD herself felt that after having been educated in the US since mid-elementary school, although proud of her Canadian origins and despite having spent most of her summers in Canada, she notices that her Canadian contemporaries see her as an American and tend to put her firmly in her place when she tries to claim any Canadian identity. She thought that would make her uncomfortable as an undergraduate in Canada - always being made to feel the foreigner where she’d like to feel at home. She thinks grad school in Canada, when she and her fellow students are a few years more mature, might work a lot better.</p>
<p>Barry, you are lucky to live in a state with a great public university like U of M. And it has a superb engineering school, consistently ranked in the top 10 in the US. I know a lot of engineering students from Michigan who have gone on to very successful careers (happened to live with a cluster of aerospace guys there, they were some of the brightest people I have ever met). If your son has the stats and could get in, there really isn’t any question that it is going to be the best deal for a great engineering degree he could find. Oakland University isn’t going to be anywhere near as high a quality of education or have the career potential that a U of M engineering degree has if he can get in there.</p>
<p>weatherga…personally I loved my University of Toronto undergrad experience. I also like the fact that if they do go out of state, we have lots of friends and family in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver to “be there” if needed! The journey begins!</p>
<p>bobwallace - if the calculators are not reliable, how does one weigh which schools to select if $$$ are a determining factor?</p>
<p>You can run the calculators, but you also need to look at a couple of other things:
Review the financial aid websites and see what they say about merit scholarship that are available.
For each US school you are interested in, Google “<college name=”"> common data set". That should bring you to links for a standard set of information that almost every college posts. Look at the most recent year available and find the section on merit aid. It will tell you what percent of the students have merit aid and the average amount.
Sometimes you can find good information here on CC in a college forum about merit aid at the college.</college></p>
<p>Of course, you have to look at the overall price and take the merit aid off. An awful lot of colleges with merit aid offer from $15,000 - $20,000 in aid for a very good student (that is about the range my D saw last year) – but when the cost is approaching $60,000 full price, you are still looking at $40,000 per year. Which is why you are lucky to have a very good in-state public university.</p>
<p>Many students apply to quite a few schools so they can compare the cost of attendance. My D applied to 8 last year. Also… run the net price calculators even if you think you are not eligible for need based aid – you might be surprised, it is worth doing.</p>
<p>For a starting point on merit aid, read the merit aid section of the FAQ in the Financial Aid forum. Schools that give merit aid give it to the students at the top of their applicant pool, but the size of the pool and the amounts of the awards vary greatly from school to school.</p>
<p>Having an in-state school as strong as U of Michigan is a blessing, and finding enough merit aid to compete on price at comparable schools will be a challenge.</p>
<p>intparent - its amazing how much I’ve learned here in 24 hours. My son has had Maize and Blue in his blood since the first fall we moved here and I enjoyed the big house with 110,000 others. As a result he already has his goal!!!</p>
<p>From what I’m sensing from everyone so far, it appears that $25K/year is what i need to expect as a best case scenario - even with merit money included. That is…unless he “resides” at his grandmother in Canada for four years! ;)</p>
<p>McGill has a significant Quebec resident discount, but I’m not sure Toronto has anything but one price for Canadians and another for Internationals. McGill’s rate for non-Quebecois Canadians (i.e., Ontarians) is roughly the same as Toronto’s. And both are substantially less than Michigan’s in-state rate, unless you are in engineering, in which case they are somewhat less than Michigan.</p>
<p>That’s in state of course, bjekre. Georgia’s HOPE scholarship program is well known as a good deal. It has also had the predicted effect over time of bringing up the competitiveness of admissions at all the state’s public universities and colleges. Nowadays the HOPE program (lottery funded) has some financial difficulties and has been made less generous than in the past. However, the top echelon of students (3.7 high school GPA, 3.3 in college to keep the scholarship) still get the full tuition “Zell Miller” scholarship.</p>
<p>For “domestic” (Canadian) engineering students entering the University of Toronto in the fall of 2013, tuition and fees are $12,363. At Michigan the comparable figure for Michigan residents is $13,124-- a difference of $761, pretty negligible, especially for someone living in southeast Michigan as travel costs would likely eat up most of the savings from attending UT. Other costs–room & board, books, personal & miscellaneous–should be pretty similar.</p>
<p>Arts & Sciences at UT is cheaper, $5,865, except for specialties like computer science, communications, visual studies, or digital media (all $10,466).</p>
<p>For a non-Quebec Canadian, McGill is cheaper than UT for engineering, but more expensive for arts & sciences (about $7,500 for either). I’m not sure the <$6,000 difference between McGill and Michigan is break-the-bank territory, but of course that’s every family’s judgment call.</p>
<p>I don’t know for certain, and I’ve wondered that myself. The McGill website isn’t perfectly clear on the question, but at one point I came across the following:</p>
<p>That seems to imply that a Canadian citizen residing anywhere–even Michigan!–would be eligible for the “non-Quebec Canadian” rate, so long as they can provide proof of Canadian citizenship, for which a passport should suffice. The University of Toronto uses similar language in discussing its “domestic” tuition rate.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, McGill’s a pretty good deal for your family, but you should probably check with McGill to verify this.</p>
<p>I actually think you’ve got 4 great public options: Michigan, McGill, and Toronto, with Michigan State as a fallback and worth keeping on the list to see what kind of merit money they offer. That’s a great list to start. From there you can explore other private school possibilities. Unfortunately, most of the top private engineering programs are at schools that offer only need-based aid (MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Northwestern, etc.). There are some good private engineering schools that do give a lot of merit aid, e.g., the University of Southern California for National Merit Scholars, and Case Western in Cleveland for high-stats applicants. But for the quality of the program, it’s tough to beat Michigan for engineering.</p>