<p>So I've been thinking that if i did not get accepted to my top choices with an amazing financial aid package (which is very likely) I would attend McGill over my state schools. However, I have a few concerns:</p>
<p>I know McGill has a great reputation in the sciences, but are the humanities majors (especially English), any good?</p>
<p>I know the ranking is high, but I've read that the administration is terrible and the classes are huge freshman year; do the classes become smaller/more focused each year?</p>
<p>I'm visiting soon and I know that Montreal is amazing but I'm worried that I might be making the wrong decision if I decide to attend since I am almost certain I want to major in something humanitites-related and possibly go to law school... any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>McGill is #14 worldwide in humanities, tied with Cornell and ahead of Brown and Penn. Despite being a French city, Montreal has produced many English authors: Mordecai Richler and Kathy Reichs (of “Bones” fame) are my favorites. </p>
<p>In what way is the administration supposed to be terrible? McGill is a large school and there is a lot of “red tape” but if you follow the rules (register when you are supposed to etc.) you should have few problems. If you don’t follow the administrative rules, you will have issues. BTW, social rules at McGill are minimal. </p>
<p>Many freshman classes are large, a few are huge. But if you are comparing McGill to big state schools as you say, you will find big/huge classes there too first year. The classes at McGill become progressively smaller each year. A friend went to Indiana University, a top school, and told me he had business classes with over 300 students even in his junior year. I never had a business class at McGill with more than 50 students, even first year. </p>
<p>As for law school in the US, A McGill degree in any major is highly respected. </p>
<p>the US News rankings seems to be based on “citations per paper”…so…how much is that indicative of the quality of undergraduate education at mcgill?</p>
<p>I believe that is just one of the “methodologies” used. That website describes the methodology as:
"Subject area rankings are solely based on the results from an academic peer review survey. Early in that survey process, respondents are asked to identify their broad faculty area of knowledge from five areas: arts and humanities; engineering and IT; life sciences and biomedicine; natural and physical sciences; and social sciences. Academics then rate schools in the subject area or areas where they have broad knowledge. Respondents are able to nominate more than one faculty area, and the total therefore adds up to more than 100 percent. Those five subject area ratings are then compiled to produce the separate rankings in each of the subject areas.’ and so on for a few paragraphs. </p>
<p>I am not sure what that all means but it seems to be a lot more than “citations per paper”.</p>
<p>The above is the only subject ranking I have ever seen. 000ace00, do you know of any others?</p>
<p>In terms of citations per paper, this is referring to how respected the pieces of work/literature the professors and assistant professors at each school are releasing. The fact that McGill is high in this regard attests to the fact that the work of the people that will be teaching you is considered significant and influential, a good thing. To give an example, in my science classes, while liberal arts schools and other schools were learning about biochemical processes from textbooks complied of research from years ago, I was taught about new developments within these processes by the people who were discovering them. Thus essentially I was learning things 5-10 years before they reached a textbook. It is not as cut and dry in English and the humanities, but the same thing applies. More citations = more relevant and significant = more advanced in the teaching as well.</p>
<p>Ok, back to the original question. The humanities at McGill are considered top notch. Traditionally these are more difficult to rank because they are so broad and diverse, however, as tomofboston said, McGill has produced several award-winning authors as recently as this past year (all of these awards can be found on the main website). As a result, McGill continues to attract top professors and educators of all kinds, you will be challenged as well as enlightened.</p>
<p>The administration is what you make of it. You have to actively seek out help and assistance and plan ahead if you need it, nobody will hold your hand. For me the advisors often seemed a bit out of touch on some topics I needed to ask, but they sought to help in every way they could nonetheless. Do not worry about the administration, you would be hard-pressed to find a school that is organized to the satisfaction of the majority of the students.</p>
<p>Classes are large depending on your faculty. Management is traditionally small, science and arts are traditionally large. Moreover, at every major university, first-year courses are large, its a matter of requirements and weeding out the less serious. Many humanities classes get significantly smaller as you continue. English classes are generally smaller, yet philosophy classes are large. It depends on the program, the class, the room schedule. I would also not worry about this. If you are someone that can definitely not learn on their own, just make sure you go to the professor or TA’s office hours. A good relationship with a prof can go a long way toward improving your understanding and ultimately your grade.</p>
<p>thanks for the input, i didn’t mean to sound condescending at all- this is a very difficult decision and i want to make sure i know what i’m getting myself into. i appreciate it.</p>
<p>No problem! I posted the link to that ranking to show that McGill ranks high in the humanities in addition to science and engineering. It is the only subject ranking breakdown I have ever seen. </p>