GPA UW 3.6 (W 4.15) Pretty competitive school. Probably somewhere around the top 10-15% of his class of 500+ but not one of the top 10 kids. ACT 34. SAT Super-scored 2250/2400. He tests well but his transcript was definitely not all As. A STEM kids who wanted to major in CS.
Offered merit aid from RIT WPI, Northeastern and Drexel ranging from $16k to $22k per year. All schools that I would consider great schools but not top 25.
There are schools out there that want to attract solid students.
“She’s open to going to school in Canada,”
McGill is the best known university in Canada, and is academically very strong (and very difficult). However, there are a lot of other very good universities in Canada. Most are easier to get into than McGill and also less expensive for an international students (McGill can charge more due to its reputation). Many are likely to cost about the same or only slightly more than your in-state public school.
@nhtigerdad, I gather that you are from New Hampshire. That puts you relatively close to some very good Canadian schools that are worth considering. In Quebec there is McGill (which you know about), Concordia (a relatively large university in Montreal just up the street from McGill) and Bishop’s (a small university in Lennoxville very close to Sherbrooke and 30 miles from the Vermont border). The other universities in Quebec teach in French. Dalhousie is a very good university in Halifax Nova Scotia. Other very good small schools in eastern Canada include Mount Allison, Acadia, and St Francis Xavier. We toured all of these schools and were quite impressed with all of them. If you average all of the rankings for the last twenty years or so, Mount Allison and Acadia probably come out as ranked #1 and #2 among small primarily undergraduate universities in Canada. If your daughter is #10 out of 250 at a normal public high school in the US, admission might be hard to predict for McGill, but she should be able to get into any other university in this list.
My understanding is that some merit aid is possible, but I think that if you look at the cost for international students you will probably find that you don’t need it at any of these schools other than McGill.
Looking slightly west from New Hampshire, there are of course a large number of very good universities in Ontario. However, for the few where I have looked at international student costs, these have been more expensive for international students when compared to the ones in Quebec and eastern Canada. I mostly looked at the best known ones (Toronto, Queens, McMaster, Waterloo) and haven’t looked at the others, many of which are very good (eg, Guelph, Trent, Ottawa, Carleton, York, Ryerson, …).
By the way, we had a similar situation regarding “assets that we couldn’t sell but show up on the NPC”, and found that the most economical schools were likely to be our in-state public university, or schools in Canada.
Thanks, 123mom. I doubt my daughter will have test scores like your son’s. impressive.
Awesome reply, dadtwogirls. I have been looking into some of the schools you mentioned, but it’s hard to compare them to US schools. Concordia seems to have average SAT scores about the same as UNH. Seems like a lateral move to me. She loves Montreal - like everyone else. University of Ottowa is really confusing me. It’s highly ranked in Canada, but seems to have quite low average ACT/SAT scores - maybe I’m not finding accurate data. I did take a look online at Bishop’s and liked what I saw. You’ve brought up some options I hadn’t looked into, thank you. McGill would be awesome and I’d gladly pay $40k+ for it, but probably a bit out of reach. I’m trying to convince her to commit herself to learning French - that would open up a bunch of possibilities.
If @curmudgeon was still posting here on CC, he probably could help. When applying to a mix of CSS profile schools and some FAFSA only schools, he found that his ranch meant no aid at CSS profile schools. His DD ended up going to a FAFSA only school, but with a large merit scholarship.
To piggy back @mom2collegekids post- Curm’s daughter she had to turn down Yale and Amherst because the money did not work out. She got big merit at Rhodes had a great 4 years and then went to Yale Med School
“I’m trying to convince her to commit herself to learning French - that would open up a bunch of possibilities.”
French is not needed for any of the schools that I listed. A little bit of French would probably make living 4 years in Montreal or Sherbrooke/Lennoxville a bit more interesting, but could be learned after arrival there. Bishops has a very good language program which includes introductory French classes for students who don’t know any. I would expect that the same would be true for the two schools in Montreal but I haven’t checked. For the French language schools in Quebec, I would think that a student’s French would need to be very strong before even applying.
Lots to learn about financing options. This website is very good for that.
I should have said I was kidding about learning French. That would be a bit extreme. We love Quebec City. It’s too bad Laval isn’t possible.
I took a look at all the schools Dad two girls mentioned. Mount Allison is close and looked interesting to me. U of Ottawa is looking really good to me. Cheap, 6.5 hour drive, should be within reach for her, good coop programs. Haven’t been to the city, but have heard it’s beautiful. Maybe we’ll make a visit over April vacation.
A couple of years of high school French to get the basics, and then a few months of intensive French in a program designed to get her fully up to sped for classwork could work. Depending on the cost of that intensive French coursework, it still might all work out cheaper than some other options.
Well, she does have an A+ in French 4 honors at the moment. Maybe it’s not a crazy idea. U of Montreal looks very good.
It’s not the US classwork or grades. It’s being functional in a foreign class setting, with the speed natives speak, idioms, etc, when/if taught in another language. And her own ability to communicate academic thoughts. Imagine trying to explain a formula or offer an analytical comment.
Where classes are in English, fine. Unless there’s field work or some outside research projects. You know her best. Some kids adapt beautifully.
I think she’d be better off applying the time and effort it would require to learn conversational French to sat prep.