<p>I'm wondering if any of you have thought about, looked at, or know about colleges in Canada. They sure are cheaper than schools in the US, so I would like to research them for my kids. What are the differences between the Canadian system and the US system? I read (correctly or not) that their schools are easier to get into, but harder to stay in, because kids get weeded out. Any thoughts on anything are welcome. (I understand there is a board on international schools but am interested in the Parents Forum's perspective)</p>
<p>I don’t know very much, but there are some that are cheaper than out of state publics. McGill, UBC and I think U of Toronto are all considered pretty good. I’m sure there are others but thse are three i can recall reading about. From what I understand they typically don’t coddle the students much, and housing may be a separate issue from college. Many of the college info. books contain info. about Canadian schools. 2 of my very good friends sent their kids to Canada and both have been very satisfied. You do want to make sure you consider travel costs in your financial calculations.</p>
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<p>That sounds about right. I’ve heard McGill makes you take credit for your APs. This can be a problem if you didn’t learn the material that well. </p>
<p>They all have large student bodies, but don’t have quite the collegiate atmosphere of US schools. McGill has large classes and a bureaucracy. But they have some great professors all of whom teach undergraduates. A lot of people love it. Montreal can be great. Toronto too. </p>
<p>Queens looked more like a US college. </p>
<p>There are issues if your child isn’t 18 by the time they start. You need to find a Guardian. There are services that can provide this, but it seemed a little awkward.</p>
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<p>What large public research university in the US does not have large classes and a bureaucracy?</p>
<p>McGill University has an active forum here on CC that I have posted in a couple of years ago relating my experience as an American in Montr</p>
<p>The size is part of my concern. I’d like my daughter to look at smaller schools, also. There’s a person on cc that is a champion of Mt. Saint Allison, and I will look into that, but Canada doesn’t seem big on LAC type schools (unless I’m wrong), especially in metropolitan areas.</p>
<p>I’m looking on Amazon for a good guide to universities in Canada but don’t see one yet. Anybody?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, small is not valued in Canadian higher education, except for a few schools in the Maritimes like Mount Allison. Macleans magazine publishes an annual guide to Canadian higher education:
[The</a> 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings – - Maclean’s On Campus](<a href=“http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2012/11/01/2013-university-rankings/]The”>http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2012/11/01/2013-university-rankings/)</p>
<p><a href=“https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/MH/RMP/store_mme_mug_1995_US_2012.jsp?cds_page_id=115769&cds_mag_code=RMP&id=1353505012796&lsid=23260736212019128&vid=2[/url]”>https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/MH/RMP/store_mme_mug_1995_US_2012.jsp?cds_page_id=115769&cds_mag_code=RMP&id=1353505012796&lsid=23260736212019128&vid=2</a></p>
<p>BTW, in Canada “college” generally means a community college. Degree granting schools are “universities”.</p>
<p>Thanks! I’m very grateful.</p>
<p>son is a dual citizen and applied to both mcgill and mcmaster when he was going through apps. accepted at both, but ended up staying in state. he loved mcgill. but as others have said large classes etc</p>
<p>Macleans is a good guide but you do have to take it with a grain of salt, as you do the various rankings of American Colleges/Universities.
I’m Canadian and I live in BC. UBC is excellent and makes an effort in first year to offer courses taught by some of their best profs. (at least when I went ages ago). I know that at UBC it is pretty crucial to get a housing deposit in quickly to get the desired dorm. I lived on campus there, H lived off campus. Most of the students come from the surrounding Greater Vancouver area and commute, but there was a pretty good on campus community as well. Winters are mild and rainy usually. I rarely had to travel far from campus but the bus service is very good.
The University of Victoria is much smaller than UBC, it doesn’t offer as many programs - for example, it doesn’t have civil engineering, but it’s very good for software or computer engineering. The campus is very pretty and accessible to the rest of Victoria. Again, I’d get the housing deposit in quickly if going there. Victoria also has a mild climate, think Pacific Northwest. If you can stand a rainy winter it may be preferable to the schools out east. It just depends on where you come from and how keen you are on snow.
Both UVic and UBC have online applications. UVic is pretty basic, UBC’s is similar to the Common App. They are easy to check out.
Hope that this helps!</p>
<p>Also, I thought that I’d add that the Canadian universities are not necessarily more difficult to stay in than American. I think that it is more a case of allowing a wide range of students in and then those who perhaps were more suited to a community college or who really didn’t focus in their first year drop out and go elsewhere. The universities in Canada are less selective in admissions, I think, and you get quite a wide range of abilities. On the other hand, if you flunk out it’s not that hard to get back in later as an older student to try again.</p>
<p>I am a huge fan of Toronto – a relative teaches there, one niece went there, and so did a really close friend of one of my kids. </p>
<p>McGill is more of a mixed bag. My daughter’s high school BFF went there – turning down an Ivy admission because McGill was cheaper – and had a dream experience. Wonderful classes, great opportunities, loved Montreal, and got into a tippy-top US PhD program on graduation. She was in an honors program there, and so didn’t have the freshman mega-lecture class experience. On the other hand, my Canadian nieces, both of whom have gone there, insist that it is second-rate and coasting on its reputation, and I know several other US students who started there and left because of its impersonal feel. </p>
<p>From a faculty-strength standpoint, both McGill and Toronto are world-class. A student who is self-motivated and can get through the lower-level lecture classes without getting disheartened will have as much educational opportunity as the best students anywhere. But neither is a good place for having your hand held by the administration.</p>
<p>Toronto and Montreal are both vibrant, exciting cities. Montreal is more colorful, Toronto richer. UToronto is in a comparatively nice, and fairly expensive, part of Toronto (not unlike, say, UCLA). </p>
<p>The Americans I know who have gone to these universities recently have not had trouble with things like temporary jobs. Transportation can be expensive, though – very few cheap flights to either city, and keeping a car there is prohibitively expensive. </p>
<p>To note: Ontario’s drinking age is 19, and Quebec’s is 18. So Toronto and McGill sometimes seem a little like a controlled experiment in lowering the U.S. drinking age, as many university presidents have recommended. As far as I can tell, they are good arguments for a lower drinking age. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every kid.</p>
<p>Trent University in Peterboroug? is fairly small, and they apparently give lots of scholarships. I have a friend who’s son went there, and they would have sent him anywhere he wanted to go. I don’t know anything about the academics though I do know he was a very good student in HS.</p>
<p>We just finished visiting UBC, UV and Simon Fraser U - all beautiful and varying degrees of acceptance rates. Son is transferring from a CA JC. My husband is Canadian, so we are very familiar with BC and Vancouver area. The beauty of Canadian schools is that the people are incredibly nice. There is not the cut-throat competition factor, existing in many US universities. You will get a fine education in Canada, with many international professors taking a one-on-one interest in the student.
Also, many freshman students are older than the 18-19 teenager. Canada encourages travel at a young age, so students entering university tend to be a little older and, shall I say, worldly. The first time away from home factor is not really a factor in Canada. The dorm frenzy of drinking, binging phenomenon is not really an issue. Canadians enjoy a nice time, but they have a balanced life.</p>
<p>Canadian Universities do not have the LAC type programs that US colleges do have. My D is in the States for her Bachelor and possibly for her Masters but that is not because of the level of programs as much as the possibility of work in her chosen feild, unfortunately the OLD BOYS CLUB still has a lot of pull in the States. As someone else mentioned do not take MacCleans as the end all of Canadian Unies, one thing you may find though is that Canadian HS as a rule do not have AP classes but that most HS students are at the level of your AP’s. My D laughs at the AP students where she is in the States because she leave most of them in the dust and that is only from our HS system. I would not say we are more wordly because of travel as much as from our education system. We learn more about other parts of the world all the way through school than the US system teaches. We do tend to be more laid back with a bit less stress than some US colleges perhaps but that is a hard one to call. Many of our Universities are known to weed out students in the first year. I believe it is only about 20% of students are able to maintain the grade levels needed to renew their FULL merit scholarships. Does binge drinking happen here, you bet, we are not immune to that just because our drinking age is lower, we had two student die so far this year in one of our local U’s from alcohol induced poisoning or suicide. Dont kid yourself into thinking we dont have the same social problems that you do south of the border, a joke that I grew up with is that whatever happens in the States will happen here only about 7 years later. I believe that over all we have a less competitive environment than some places but again that all depends on your major. My D’s BF graduated from here with his BMus and is now in Manhatten for his Masters and in many ways he feels like he has been thrown to the wolfes. He is not used to the cut throat attitudes there. The U’s that have been mentioned are all top of the line in Canada but there are so many others as well, it all depends on the major. Good Luck and seriously look into many Universities.</p>
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<li><p>The programs the kids I knew at Toronto had, and my daughter’s close friend at McGill, were indistinguishable from American liberal arts programs, except for having fewer gen ed requirements. That wasn’t true of kids in more specialized schools, however.</p></li>
<li><p>Binge drinking. When my daughter’s friend hit freshman orientation at McGill, she called my daughter up three days in to say that if she never saw another drunk boy in her life it would be too soon, and she had decided to hang out with the Communist Youth group because they were the only people she had found who weren’t blotto. But that all calmed down in a few weeks.</p></li>
<li><p>It may be worth mentioning that the American kids I know, all of whom are more or less liberal Democrats politically, found themselves on the right-wing fringe of the Canadian political spectrum.</p></li>
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<p>My D is about to complete her first semester at McGill. She is an American with dual US/Canadian citizenship. Though she has never lived in Canada, we have family there and she has visited Canada often throughout her childhood. </p>
<p>So far, she is loving her university. Though many people say that Canadian universities don’t have the same collegiate atmosphere as American universities, I would say she is having a very ‘typical’ first year college experience. She lives in the dorms, and has a VERY active social life with the friends she has made in her residence, playing intramural sports (which seem to be quite popular at McGill), ultimate frisbee, etc etc. She is definitely having a more stereotypical first year college experience than many of her friends who stayed home and are attending our local Cal State school or some of the more remote UCs.</p>
<p>Academically, I admit we were a bit concerned about the difficulty of first year classes since we had heard the stories about grade deflation, “weeder” classes, etc., at Canadian universities. Our D says she has not found the classes to be overly difficult but does say they are challenging enough and that the workload is considerably more than she expected. But she received very good grades after just finishing all of her midterms, so so far, so good. (Keep in mind she is managing this while maintaining that VERY active social life I mentioned!)</p>
<p>There are definitely differences between Canadian culture and American. I would agree with most of what has been already posted on this thread – politically, Canadians lean much more to the left, and their world view is much more “worldy” than Americans. Whenever I am in Canada, I am pleasantly surprised by the greater amount of coverage of world events in the local newspapers compared to our own local newspaper. I also find the young people to be less competitive academically – perhaps that is because there simply isn’t the college application frenzy in Canada that there is the States. The vast majority of students in Canada seem to go to one of the universities in their own province. Our family is from the Toronto area, and we have quite a few college age kids in the mix at the moment. They are at Uof T, Queens, Waterloo, and our own D at McGill. With the exception of our D, the American who applied to 11 universities in total (!), the other kids - the Canadians – each applied to only a couple of universities. Gotta say I like the Canadian way better!</p>
<p>If any of you are looking for a typical LAC-experience in Canada:
try to stay out of the Vancouver/Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec area. </p>
<p>Macleans’s undergrad college ranking is the best indicator of teaching quality I would say.
The majority of the universities that make the first places there are rather small. </p>
<p>I have a friend who is very happy at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick - Great school, great people, merit entrance scholarships, nice campus.
She is having a great time there - and the college itself is very proud to have produced more Rhodes scholars per capita than any other college in Canada (and most in the US!). </p>
<p>Acadia University in Nova Scotia is also beautiful and has great undergrad teaching. Many of my friends are attending there, all of them have nothing but positive experiences to recount. </p>
<p>King’s College in Halifax (great city!) offers a first year programm that provides a basis in classical literature: Students go through human history, guided by great books, and learn about the development of mankind to this day. Later, students can transfer to Dalhousie University if they wish to pursue a major in a discipline not offered by King’s college. They have an amazing journalism and history of science programm as well.</p>
<p>A few things about Canadian universities:</p>
<ol>
<li>Varsity sports generally get VERY little attention.<br></li>
<li>Undergrads typically take about half of their courses in their major field (a bigger % than American undergrads typically take).</li>
<li>Weather can be pretty brutal.</li>
<li>Some schools have frats, but they aren’t all the rage.</li>
<li>Even the less-famous universities can be really really good academically. Nobody here has mentioned places like Dalhousie, U. of Alberta, Western Ontario, all of which are excellent.</li>
<li>The mood in the classrooms is often more serious and formal than in American classrooms. Most Americans I know who went to Canadian universities found the Canadian students and professors to be less chatty and humorous in classrooms. And they found the students to be a bit shy about asking questions compared to Americans.</li>
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<p>I agree.
Especially larger universities are very academic. Which is not necessarily a bad thing for an ambitious, independent and determined young person.
However, it might not be the right place for a student that goes to college largely for the “social part” of it 
That being said, of course there are many Canadian universities that have a great social scene and a very involved, active and vibrant student body. But generally, it is less about the whole party/frat/sports experience than about diving deep into your selected area of study and excelling there.</p>