More than a decade ago, the then-boyfriend of one of my nieces went to the business program at Western Ontario. My niece originally went to McGill, but transferred to Western a year later, in its pre-health-profession program. Anyway, for what it’s worth:
– The boyfriend loved the business program at Western. He wound up staying an extra year and getting an MBA. He was an ambitious kid from a poor family in Toronto, and it got him exactly where he wanted to go, a good career-track job at a multinational corporation. He was a smart kid, and felt challenged (but not too challenged) and stimulated by the business curriculum. I had the impression the undergraduate program was very broad, not particularly focused on sub-areas. But that sort of thing could have changed a lot in the last 10-15 years. (And anyway my niece broke up with him during his MBA year.)
– There were a bunch of reasons why my niece left McGill. There was the boyfriend at Western, and a very lucrative part-time job in Toronto. But she didn’t like McGill at all, found it very bureaucratic, large classes, difficult to make connections. Her best friend, a really intelligent, scholarly young woman, also transferred out of McGill for those reasons alone, no boyfriend or job noise in her decision. (My daughter’s BFF, on the other hand, also went to McGill in a humanities honors program a few years later, and had none of those problems except for the bureaucracy.) Western, although it has about the same number of students as McGill, felt much friendlier, and far more user-friendly.
– Economics is not the same as business. Sure, business uses economic analysis as a tool, some areas a lot more than others. But an economics student is going to spend a lot of time on theoretical issues that have little or no business application, and a business student is going to spend extensive time on subjects like marketing and management that economists barely address. Lots of people use economics as a substitute business degree at colleges that do not offer business degrees, but it’s a very imperfect fit.
Personally, I believe a smart student should concentrate on an academic subject (like economics) as an undergraduate, not a semi-professional, career-oriented program that represents a mishmash of academic areas that are never explored in depth (like business). I also think smart undergraduates benefit from being around the faculty and graduate students of a world-class research university (like McGill). But if you don’t agree with me, Western is a really good option.
and congratulations since it’s really hard to get into !!!