McGill Decisions Class of 2027

Colleges and Universities A-Z McGill University
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McGill Acceptance today! (Jan. 5th)
Faculty of Science

Application payment was 10/8 but I think it took her a while to complete the full application (maybe around Thanksgiving). Self reported grades after 1st quarter.

Attends a public HS in NY. Some additional college coursework outside of HS.
Advanced coursework including:
College Physics 1 and 2
AP Calculus BC and Calculus 3
AP Biology (in progress)
AP Chemistry
All A and A+

4.0 unweighted GPA
4.7 weighted GPA

1560 SAT one exam (780/780)
National Merit Semi-finalist (waiting to hear about finalist status)

No news on entrance scholarship but I was told by someone who just received one that it came a couple days after the acceptance. So we’ll see…

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Have they started rolling out decisions for international students yet? Or is it just the US?

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Grade Deflation at McGill - Serious Concern for Grad School

So there are about 300 people in the world that know about McGill’s “well known” grade deflation issue. Try explaining to Grad Schools, Med School, Law School, how McGill has lower grades etc… i mean seriously they can’t all study grade inflation/deflation ala University of Waterloo how they study high schools. Why doesn’t McGill seek to just kick out and curve up to the average median and mean grade that one would obtain at Dartmouth/Cornell/Brown/Princeton etc… and maybe shoot for that Median for Arts Faculty, Science Faculty, and the rest.

  1. No one gives a care that McGill still apparently prides themselves on having their profs hand out CRAP grades to grow these terrible students the hell up, and not curve them at least after the fact to a modern standard. The grades McGill awards its students, decades ago, were IN LINE with the schools your son or daughter may well be competing against to get into grade school. But the problem is (if you care about your students that is) that the train left the station on having a broad and lower distribution of grades, in almost all higher ed institutions, rightly or wrongly, a while ago. And admittedly, these kids are all damn near geniuses that are getting into the Iveys plus top 20 now adays, apparently McGill wants to make the point that their students arent “that” smart. I like the idea in generaly, people could use some reality, some criticism, but you don’t do this to your own. If you’d like, give them all the crap marks, and then adjust them to where the “standard” is in the other top institutions in North America, after the fact for the transcript, after you’ve scared the heck out of your own geniuses with their first B or C.
  2. There is now an even great emphasis on Grades as opposed to LSAT and GMAT, MCAT Scores, due to pandemic combined also with the move away from old thinking of what “meritocracy” was and new age thinking. This means that there is LESS CHANCE not more than your son or daughter could explain away their 3.62 GPA at McGIll, by virtue of a Fantastic LSAT or MCAT score, when applying to Johns Hopkins Med, or Harvard Law… the Test used to help maybe paint that picture, if the admissions committee was more rigorous and were super plugged in and were aware that McGill was sadomasochistic, in the fact of all other Ivies basically giving out averages much higher than McGIill’s
    What does McGill’s own admission process pride itself on? Just the marks baby ! Just the marks, how beautiful right? And yet they “hope” Hopkins med school, or Harvard law, has the time to do ■■■■ that they themselves are too (insert adjective here) to do, in order to adjust for McGIll’s grade deflation… and yet McGill themselves makes virtually no adjustments for averages… they have a cut off, print a list out, and don’t care if they come from a High School that awards everyone all A’s, or has some old school masochistic policy like McGill. The latter student, doesn’t get into McGill, its simple. No essay can explain it away.
    But then they (those who have chimed in here multiple times in response to previous posts over the last 15 years on College Confidential about McGill’s drive to delight their professors by their wondrous ability to not caudle your child, and hang low grades on them, just like their grandparents did) would tell potential applicants don’t worry we’re going to hang lower grades on you for your future, that’s what we also pride ourselves on, what a joke.

Its such a sad sack situation, when you’re just hurting your own. Its so filled with Irony, and really the worst administrative laziness that I would hope the new leadership at McGill address this right away, and do so quietly in case someone fears that McGill grads actually do get some goodwill at some other school or process later, b/c some other school or process later is more holistic and dug into school’s grading differentials, than McGill itself is its very own admissions process.

The ■■■■ is a joke, people need to talk about it, ON HERE AND OTHER FORUMS

It can change quickly, but someone with a brain needs to consider it. Sorry for the rant. We’d love to love love McGIll, but just can’t because of this. We can’t willingly potentially screw over our own, unless McGIll either reconsiders their policy, or they distribute a pamphlet about their grade medians and means, that we can distribute onto Grad School Admission committees, so those Committees can look at more evidence and do more analysis, b/c McGill is so importrant they can make them do that, where they themselves do not analyze the grades at all for McGills own admission. we haven’t sent any kids there yet, and would really like to, if not for this ridiculous sado masochistic prediliction to give kids C’s and that just doesn’t friggin happen at XYZ Top 20 US School Love Montreal, love the Bilingual city environment, it just doesn’t add up on this one issue.

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McGill’s admission standards are not the same as those schools.

Grad and professional schools are aware of McGill’s grading standards. At least in the past the average class grade was also reported on transcripts.

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TomSr.,

I realize you know a lot about McGill, i’ve seen your totally informative posts on here for years and i realize you have connections to the program. This forum you all provide is a great service.

I would love to hear you address the graveman of my complaint. as it relates to our students going there. I believe your response, while I appreciate it, is a partial deflection, and avoids my core questions.

IMHO Duke’s admissions comitttee does not have a keen awareness, or any awareness that McGIll grades like crap. They look at a GPA, a lot. Just like McGill.
McGill prints off a list of your top six classes for Ontario students for instance and digs NO DEEPER THAN THAT, and that is both refreshing, that they don’t load applications like US Schools do with BOGUS extra curriculars of rich kids solving cancer and starting an e commerce business along with 4 charities… and also amateur hour, when it comes to believing the totally unbelievable proposition that Grad and Professional schools are “aware” of McGIll grading like crap , or 'standards?" What those grad school admissions committees, who are bombarded with thousand and thousands of applications see, is a GPA, first and foremost. If they reallly really do some research, these grad schools and prof schools you speak of, (like the kind that McGill itself does not do for its incoming class) then perhaps they would take that into account, but they really don’t. They are busy, they get thousands of applicants, if you don’t have a 3.6 or 3.7, then you are in the explanation pile. Is that where McGill ought to want their kids. In the pile that requires Esssays and all sorts of crap, and pleas, and begs for an awareness that maybe since the grad school is in the Northeast somewhere, maybe then maybe they’ll have heard thru the grapevine and curve the GPA they are staring at, back upward into their stack rank. Why does McGill continue to sort of get off or self gratify by making their own graduates fight with that hand behind their back. To what end I ask.
Again, I’m asking this for the parents out there, in this admission cycle in the Class of 2027, that desperately also have this very same question. And the answers that we’ve seen over the last decade on this forum, are woefully non answers. Does anyone on here have the power to escalate the questions we all have to the administration at McGill? What pleasure do they take, is our question.
Sincerely, Class of 2027 and 2028 parents, [who would just LOVE to counsel kids to go to McGill, but can’t because they’ve been counseled by too many McGill grads that you are just screwing yourself for grad school, unless you want to rely on that a busy admissions committee knows what you know Tom Sr, and you seem like the foremost expert in America on McGill. So I’m not sure my chances are good that the admissions committee at UCLA has analyzed and would pick McGill students out of their pile for Medical School admission and bump them up 1 GPA point. ]

Its a serious serious question, its been on this forum for 15 years, its been danced around its been talked about, its been conflated with other societal issues, its been forgiven as the cost of growing up and being independent, its been said that grad schools will hopefully “understand” and dig in deep into each file, the way McGill does not do itself… and it oughta be fully fleshed out here. I’d like to know what other administrators think on this, parents, etc.

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It’s your opinion that Duke [or other schools?] doesn’t have any awareness that McGill grades like crap, but on what do you base that opinion? Likewise the assumption that only “300” people in the world know about McGill’s grade distribution- from where does that come? Why wouldn’t grad school admissions committees have an understanding of the contexts from which applicants are applying, as many undergraduate admissions committees have of high school contexts?

Speaking as a parent of a prospective 2027 daughter, I am clear-eyed about McGill’s grading scheme, as is she. She’s definitely aiming for grad school after McGill. However, neither of us have concerns that rise to the level of inspiring such a rant as this. She’s spoken to a number of graduates with similar trajectories [including my partner], and a number of current students; none of their experiences have suggested any such desperate concerns as those voiced here. You don’t speak for me as a Class of 2027 parent.

@Deptford44 , what exactly is your connection to McGill and its admissions decisions? There’s a lot of anger in your posts, or at least strong language. Why pitch it to a thread specific to McGill decisions for class of 2027?

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I can appreciate that my post is too lengthy perhaps for this thread thats about 2027 admissions. Its entirely possible most 27 parents, don’t care about the issue enough, at least to discuss it at length in the thread about admit/decision day etc… so my apologies, it should perhaps be moved to another part of the McGill discussions or forum. That said, my context is that I have a junior that I’d really like to consider McGill instead of a Vanderbilt or Northwestern or even Michigan OOS, b/c i really think it would give the kid a global context, outside looking into America a bit, plus strengthen her French language skills, as she is doing AP French this yr. It doesn’t hurt that McGill will literally cost a $35,000 per year for B.A. Tuition, and that is in CAD. So $24000 per year. BC, BU, Northwester, Vandy, they are all around $60K per year, so McGill is a steal… EXCEPT for the elephant in the room. As to where I got my info, I got it directly from one longtime friend, and former grad school classmate who now works in admissions of a professional school, at a prestigious university in the Southeast (top 15 or 20 school nationally) , and when they explain their process, and that it is focused on GPA, I asked her two questions. First question, what would you say if I told you that a 75 percentile graduate of “McGill up in Montreal”, had lets say a 3.5 percent GPA, and a 50th percentile graduating student from McGIll had a GPA of just 3.0, would numbers like that surprise you, and would you adjust accordingly. Answer: well, we look at GPA and quality of school, but we certainly don’t curve up scores from any Canadian university, but that is surprising because I can assure you that the 75th percentile students from Bowdoin, or Hamilton College, or Northwestern, or you name it have a much higher GPA. Why force brilliant kids into a zero sum game was her question, as McGill apparently does, unbeknownst to her. So anyhow, that’s the discussion, sorry for the passion, it is a passion that is pro mcgill and pro mcgill’s students, i have their best interest in mind. If you think that McGill is not an institution of similar academic rigor, as a Bowdoin, then of course I can totally see how you think maybe its harsh, but fair, to have McGill grads enter the world with their peer graduates in North America, with lower GPAs en masse. - and I don’t doubt that they can be explained away, and you can bring attention to admissions committees, that a middle of road student at McGill for instance, is 0.5 or whatever below Colby College. Obviously this should be a discussion item on McGIll boards, and i realize it is anxiety inducing on the board followed by 27 class parents… but if you think that’s anxiety inducing, how about hanging a systematically lower gPA on your child’s head, knowingly, in the zero sum sadomasochistic way McGIll does. If nothing else, a discussion like this, even if McGIll doesn’t change, is good b/c it may bring the issue to light for another 300 people.

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Perhaps the parents who want to rant about grading at Mcgill would be so kind as to move the discussion onto a new thread. Oh, and paragraphs are your friend.

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Where did the discussion reply get buried to? or did it get cancelled?

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I deleted it as outlined in the PM I sent you. I tend to do that when my instructions are ignored. While my post was politely phrased, it wasn’t a suggestion.

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SKi Europe you’re totally right, i can see that the grade D discussion at McGIll, particularly as it relates to U.S. students , really deserves its own thread, and makes little sense to be on the thread about 2027 classes admission chat.

By the way we’re taking the suggestion implied by your moniker to heart this February school break, and we’ve booked flights to Geneva and are shocked at how much of a better deal skiing in 3 Valees, or La Rosiere is than almost anything out west its unreal.

Again sorry to chime on the wrong thread, didn’t mean to hijack it, glad its moved to where it belongs, felt like censorship at first, but its the good kind i suppose

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i was accepted today!! i applied oct. 12 to faculty of science (applied to both biology and physical/computer science) with 4.0 gpa, 12 APs, and 1510 sat :smile:

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Congrats!! Are you from a public school in the US or international?

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i’m from a us public school :slight_smile:

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why are you being so rude. This person does not have to use paragraphs if he does not want to.

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People tend not to bother reading a wall of words. I am one of those people.

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Ayyyyy congratulations! I’m waiting for my decision so impatiently

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Has anyone gotten a McGill decision this week?

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Yes, just got mine yesterday for food science major

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Congrats! When was your application complete?