<p>My kid is a Canadian Applicant (with potential to come to the States), please help us on comparing the two options,</p>
<p>Michigan: LSA Honors, rejected from Ross pre-admit, $0 award.
Toronto: guaranteed business school, full tuition award.</p>
<p>Any advise is appreciated.</p>
<p>Toronto</p>
<p>it's a great school and i think i'd be hard to justify the price difference, unless your kid REALLLLYYYYYYY wants to go to michigan</p>
<p>If you guys need fin aid...id have to say go w/ toronto...its a pretty good school after all...and theyre giving you lots of aid....</p>
<p>I think that it makes sense to turn down a full ride when you have the opportunity to go to another school which is clearly far superior than the place you could go to for free. This is not the case here.</p>
<p>Toronto...hands down.</p>
<p>KB</p>
<p>If you can go to a University as good as Toronto for free, why pay $30,000 to attend any university...even Harvard? It just isn't worth it unless you are a millionaire or unless your son is definitely going to excell at Michigan, get into Ross and decide to work on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot.</p>
<p>We are far from being a millionaire even though we might not be qualified for fin aid. if it were Harvard we would be able to make our decision easily. We are just not sure how much the difference between UM and UT worths. Per Alexandre, it doesn't worths $30k/yr unless ...... I think so too sometimes but not always.</p>
<p>It seems my kid likes UM better and going to UM might be getting better opportunities for working in the states in the future.</p>
<p>I don't think Michigan will give your child that much of an edge in the US...not because Michigan isn't excellent, but because UT is also excellent. I just don't think it is worth paying an extra $120,000 for an education when your alternative is a school as good as UT. But like I said, the one area where Michigan has the edge over UT is Ross' ability to land its students jobs with exclusive companies on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Even if they were the same price it would be a close call. I live near Michigan and graduated from UofT. They are both big serious places with unlimited opportunities and diverse students. If one is free and one isn't, go to the free one, no doubt about it.</p>
<p>We are most likely going to Toronto ( a tough decision. we already put deposit on Michigan). Just a couple of more questions here - if we found we don't like Toronto after one year or so, could we transfer to Michigan? Does Michigan accept transfer students from Canada? Is it difficult? Thx.</p>
<p>TourGuide: how did you like UofT? I heard that the class size in UofT is a big concern, some classes are over 1000 students and many students have to watch TV screens 'cause they cant see the professor.</p>
<p>Michigan might have the similar issues as a state U but I heard it is better.</p>
<p>I attended the University of Toronto. I felt the classes were much, much too large. Esp. first-year introductory classes. My SOC101 class had over 1200 students in it. My smallest class had 50 students in it, and that was an upper-level elective. I left UT after my first year, took a few years off, then transferred to an in-state university back home, which was not hard to do. However, I did have many friends who completed their education there; including some who did so in the business school.</p>
<p>It really depends on what your son is looking to get out of his college experience. Please, feel free to contact me if you have any further or specific questions.</p>
<p>Kevin: I got a master's degree at U of T. I didn't deal with undergrads much, so I don't have a good feel for the class size. All I know is that it's a very very impressive university, and the students and faculty were superb. I never heard anybody mention that they didn't like the place, or would rather have been somewhere else. I took a couple courses at one of U of T's suburban campuses. I can't imagine the classes on those campuses would be as large as on the main campus in the city, because the buildings simply aren't that big.</p>
<p>For as big as the UofT enrollment is, it didn't seem TOO big. The campus is large but compact. I can't say enough about the city of Toronto. I went to undergrad in Boston, and Toronto was FAR more interesting than Boston.</p>
<p>TourGuide, I did love the city of Toronto. (I lived in Boston, too.) I had literally just turned 18, had come from a very small school, and found it was just not a good fit. I think that some upper-level classes must be smaller, and in all fairness I was in a v. popular track (pre-international relations) with a set list of reqd courses. You probably had more experience with the faculty, though; they tend to be relatively inaccessible to undergrads, going so far as to ban questions in class. That being said, its academics are strong, and UT offers some great opptys.</p>
<p>Wow, that must have been a shock, coming from a small high school. Yeah, I would agree that it's not for everybody. Whenever I read a section about Toronto in a college guidebook, it always says something about it being a big, bustling place that is not a good place for shy people. Of course, from what I can tell, U of Michigan is about the last college in the US that I'd recommend for a shy person looking for a nurturing environment too. So it's important here to keep in mind that we're not comparing Toronto to Amherst...whatever flaws Toronto's size causes, Michigan might be better, but probably not by much.</p>
<p>That's true...Although, I would say that Michigan would probably have a more collegiate feel nonetheless. From what I gather, Ann Arbor is a college town, and its campus does not span 20 city blocks. Additionally, there is more campus life--Greeks, etc. Toronto has its virtues too. But the personalities of the two schools are pretty different.</p>
<p>Tourguide, I love Toronto. It is an awesome and very diverse city with so many nice things to do...and excellent restaurants too. The University of Toronto is excellent to be sure. It lacks the resources of major American universities, but it more than makes up for it with its straight up approach to academics. One of the most interesting and appealing women I have ever dated is a Philosophy PhD candidate at Toronto. What a woman! hehe</p>
<p>Pip: U of Toronto has about 14 frats. I lived in an apartment across the street from one of them. They could unload a truckload of beer cases faster than an army of longshoremen could. Think about it:
FRATS + CANADA + Cold Weather + 19-yr-old drinking age = Perfect Storm of Beer Consumption</p>
<p>Alexandre: Glad you enjoyed Toronto. You say UofT "lacks the resources" of major American universities, but I never saw anything there that wasn't first class. I'm glad you got to know a nice philosophy gal. I hope your philosophical discussions went past the Platonic and into the Hedonistic.</p>
<p>It's freaky for somebody from the US to be there, because it's a very big city, but crime is never a concern. Once miles from campus I saw a mail bag full of letters on the ground next to a mailbox. I flagged down a passing police car, and told them about it. They said not to worry--that sometimes if the mailboxes are full, the postmen just leave a bag near a mailbox for people to put letters in. </p>
<p>But yeah, the varsity sports there are a real yawn--quite different from Michigan (although there are a hell of lot of people at Michigan who are oblivious to varsity sports too). I went to one UofT football game, and it made an Ivy League football game look like Woodstock.</p>
<p>I know UT has alot of frats. It was a question of popularity/membership. Noone I knew gave a fig about them, and they recruited desperately.</p>