momofboiler1, it was interesting to read about your D’s varied experiences during her 5 years. How did she get matched up with her co-op company? Is she in engineering? I know a lot of engineering schools do co-ops, is this also popular with non-engineering students at Purdue?
I’ve been trying to figure out how co-ops differ from internships. The most obvious difference is that co-ops often seem to take place during the school year, but it sounds like your D did her first co-op rotation in the summer. Then you described the fourth year summer as an internship at the co-op company, how is that different from a co-op rotation during the summer?
Thanks for this info about applying early. I’m guessing there are probably other schools where it makes a difference to apply early (such as in Aug/Sept, when the advertised priority deadline is in Nov/Dec)? Are there threads on CC where I can find this info?
For us here in Canada at least the terms are somewhat interchangeable but generally “internship” is used to denote programs where students undergo 1 continuous placement and the term “co-op” is used for programs where students undergo multiple placements.
U of T and Queen’s are examples of schools that offer 1 year internships. McGill’s program of a 4 month placement would technically qualify as well.
UBC and Waterloo’s programs where students undergo multiple placements are more traditionally called “co-op”.
U of T seems to have a lot of positives (and their race car team sounds great). We didn’t have it on the list because the tuition is quite a bit higher, and we’re trying to focus on schools that are likely to be affordable. However, it looks like U of T does offer some merit scholarships to international students. How difficult is it to get these scholarships?
For US schools I’ve been using this site to get a rough idea of which ones might offer merit, and then looking at the average stats of admitted students to guess at whether merit might be offered. But it’s no good to me for the schools in Canada. If there are better resources for figuring this out, I’d love to learn more.
International tuition at UofT is quite high I agree. Unfortunately I don’t know how competitive the scholarships are.
Merit scholarships are not as common in Canada as in the US at least not at the level you are accustomed to since our domestic tuition is significantly cheaper. Typically the automatic entrance scholarships based on grades tend to be small 1 time awards ($1,000-$2,000). Some of the lesser selective schools (e.g. Carleton, Trent) do offer more as incentives to try a lure top performing students away from the “Tier 1” schools and quite often their awards are also renewable.
I’ve never really looked into what amount of awards are available for international students though. You could try posting on the International board and see what people there have to say.
Oh and edited to add, when considering the cost of international tuition for Canadian schools, don’t forget to factor in the favourable USD$/CAD$ exchange rate.
It sounds like your son has many interests and has an artsy side. There are lots of hidden gems that have top notch film schools where non-film majors can get involved.
Went through this with youngest son. He’s at FSU and has gotten involved with film projects and film students. He’s very happy with his major but enjoys the creative outlet.
I’m thinking DePaul in Chicago would be a match. Top film school with some other excellent programs like CS and business. Maybe Pitt? Pittsburgh has a pretty decent film industry and Pitt is building up its new film program. Drexel and Fordham could work.
All colder climate schools in large cities. Probably would get enough merit to be affordable.
Might need to get his SAT up for more merit along with a few more safety/match schools.
Yes, many interests with an artsy side. There are plenty of schools that would fit academically, and a range of majors that could fit, so I have been looking for the extracurricular factors (film, music, race car club, cosmopolitan vibe). Thanks for these ideas and the note about your son’s experience!
Pitt sounds like it checks a lot of boxes (thanks also to tsbna44 for your comment on Pitt). DePaul is not one we had looked into before, we will definitely look into that one.
Re: the SAT, he took the SAT with no prep, his HS college counselor told him not to spend time on prep because “SAT isn’t important now.” I was surprised at that comment. This is a major Bay Area HS that sends lots of kids to top schools every year, so I would hope her advice would be good? I feel some regret that I have been very hands off in this process until now, I went overboard to avoid making his HS experience all about college admissions (same is true for his ECs, he simply did what he wanted to do in HS without thinking of building a list of ECs for college).
I can’t speak to the academics for your son whether Oregon state would be a good option but it’s definitely in a rural area. University of Oregon is in Eugene and while not a huge city it’s definitely more populous than Corvallis.
Thanks MistySteel27! We are actually going to visit Oregon State on our trip to UW Seattle and UBC, we can swing by Eugene and compare. Corvallis is definitely not urban… but Oregon State has an amazing race car team that is a joint effort with a school in Germany, so we figured this school is worth a look as it is not far out of our way. Home - Global Formula Racing
Enjoy your tour, that sounds like a wonderful trip! Please come back and share how it went and how your son liked the schools if you don’t mind. We’re a curious bunch and I know I get a lot of enjoyment and knowledge reading others experiences.
It sounds like you took a great approach to his high school years – especially for being surrounded by the high-intensity college craziness in the Bay! I’m from there and I always felt super lucky that my parents didn’t put the same kind of pressure on me as some of my friends’ parents, and I think our relationship was all the better for it over both the short- and long-term And I always think that letting a kid discover and follow their passion drives much more growth and learning than forcing them to do things they don’t care about for a ‘resume’ that won’t actually reflect them or their interests.
I worked as an SAT prep tutor up until last summer, and I agree that the test is overall less important now that so many schools have gone test-optional (or fully test-free like the UCs) for multiple admissions cycles now. I think that’s great – high school course rigor and GPA are a much better indication of academic ability, and are less skewed by how much a student’s family can spend on test prep. I know families that spent thousands to tens of thousands of $$ on a year+ of tutoring, mock tests, neuropsych evals to get extra time, etc.
That said, if your son has only taken the SAT once with no prep, he can certainly improve his score with a moderate amount of study and practice. A good tutor would be able to guide him through that efficiently, and might be the way to go since he’s a rising senior and only has a few more chances. At the same time, I’m sure he could benefit from self-study, like taking 30min/day or an hour 2-3x/week to work his way through a good prep book (I like College Panda, Erica Meltzer for Grammar, and Up Your Score). I haven’t really used online video tools but I’ve heard good things about PrepScholar and Khan Academy.
Basically, no need to dedicate his whole summer to the test (I’m sure he has better things to do – passion projects, start working on essays, fun with friends & family), but consistently spending a few hours a week learning the tricks and practicing the timing should definitely yield results. He should plan to take 1-2 more full practice tests before his next test date to build up stamina and fine-tine pacing/timing – there are plenty of old official tests online that you can just print off and do with a phone timer. Most importantly, he must review any questions he gets wrong in practice and learn what he needed to do differently – there aren’t really that many tricks to learn, but you can’t keep making the same mistakes over and over.
Seems like trying a full practice test and finding what was incorrect is the first thing someone should do for self-prep, because that will show where one is missing the questions and therefore what type of questions it makes sense to focus prep on. Doing prep without knowing where to focus the prep on could consume extra time and effort for little or no gain.
If he’s happy and likes where he’s at then you did fine. College admissions isn’t his life.
It’s not too late for some test prep. Some schools/states still require tests. Even if he only adds 50 points it might help. Most schools accept the October scores if I remember. Maybe even November scores.
Thanks! He is taking it again in August. He has a lot going on this summer so he definitely won’t be constantly prepping, but I will make sure he carves out time for some review and practice, as well as starting his essays. I really appreciate all the tips for SAT prep!
Actually, the vast majority of Canadian universities operate like a lot of American colleges: with an exploratory first year (including UBC and the University of Toronto). At most schools, you don’t declare/apply to your major until the end of your first year (end of second year in UBC Arts). At McGill, although you do apply to a specific program, unless you enter with 24 credits of AP/IB, etc., allowing you to start as a U1 with advanced standing, you generally start as a U0 (freshman), and you don’t declare your major until the end of that first year. You can always switch.
From the McGill website: “The purpose of the B.A. Freshman Program is to allow you to take a variety of courses that interest you and enables you to explore your academic interests and career aspirations. Your goal should be to choose courses that will help you to make an informed decision about your program(s) for next year.”
Have you considered Western University (University of Western Ontario), which has a PPE degree? It’s in London, Ontario, a mid-sized city of about 500K people.
You also might want to consider Huron University College, a liberal arts college and affiliate of Western. They guarantee paid internships for every student, and you can take up to 40% of your courses at Western, across the street. You get the best of both worlds: smaller classes but all the resources of a big research university.
As for University of Toronto, keep in mind that the individual colleges at U of T’s St. George campus also offer financial aid. The best-known of the 7 are Trinity, University, and Victoria (it’s a little like Oxford (or Hogwarts) in that you apply to a specific college if you’re entering the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Check out the Award Explorer on U of T’s website for an overview. The Faculty of Arts & Science also gives out its own aid.
FYI, Toronto is a multicultural city (half of Torontonians were born outside the country), and most big Canadian universities see a large number of commuter students. Hence, the University of Toronto (and UBC as well, another immigrant-rich city) are more racially diverse than McGill. (A large proportion of McGill’s international student body actually hails from the USA.)
You also might want to Google “Quebec bill 96” to get a sense of what’s going on for anglophones in Quebec politics at the moment.
Thanks Delly. Those are great suggestions. We will look into Western & Huron.
We should definitely learn more about U of T, too. It would clearly be a great choice in many ways. We simply hadn’t looked into it because the high international tuition would put it out of our range. I don’t have any sense of how difficult it is to be awarded merit aid, but it appears to be a fairly easy process to apply to U of T (if one isn’t aiming at a program or scholarship that requires essays), so it’s probably worth a try.
I did read about this Quebec bill (on some McGill student forum I was browsing), thanks for mentioning it! It seems like it’s hard to know right now what effects it will have… at least we have 10 months before my son has to commit to a university, so there will be some time to see what happens. He already said he wanted to study French while there…
And I always think that letting a kid discover and follow their passion drives much more growth and learning than forcing them to do things they don’t care about for a ‘resume’ that won’t actually reflect them or their interests.