Hi usert123,
How happy are Desautel students with the:
- Faculty (Quality of teachers, their involvement, pedagogy etc)
- Student Advisors
- Career Centre
- General Administration
Thanks.
Just wondering if mediocre French abilities would be much detriment to my experience at McGill (mainly academic). I’m from California, I learned French for 5 years, got A and a B in Advanced Placement French (equivalent to what a French major @ American Univ would take freshman year), but I don’t think I’m that fluent especially with speaking. I’m not interested in jobs or anything off-campus, just wondering about day to day living and on-campus internships, but mainly research.
For day to day living in the McGill area, not knowing French is absolutely not an issue. There’s a McGill bubble in the surrounding McGill area where the predominantly used language is English. And pretty much everyone working in any kind of service position, be it a cashier, server, call center agent, or nightclub bouncer will be at least semi-fluent in both English and French.
For on-campus jobs, some will require some background in French, but many won’t. I can’t imagine why French would we a requirement for research, since McGill is a English language university. For working in Montreal though, French probably will be necessary, but you can always find internships in different cities outside of Quebec.
@papamcgill Having gone through the process myself…I can hopefully help out here.
Yes, the Bcom is much more expensive than the BA. I believe this coming academic year tuition alone will be almost 40k CAD. The premium is due to the fact that the management faculty is entirely deregulated for internationals (i.e. they no longer receive state funding for international students) and thus, the real cost of tuition lies with the student. This is not specific to Desautels as if you look at the international tuition for engineering, science, law and a few other faculties, you’ll find that tuition is close to that level too.
If your daughter enters U1, then yes, she will be assured that she CAN graduate in 3 years…provided of course she follows the requirements accordingly. You need 120 credits to graduate so I believe your daughter is coming in with credits that will transfer so she’d need to complete less at McGill to graduate. I don’t know exactly how many credits she has transferred or needs, but in general, she will have to take at least 5 classes per semester (30 credits) for all semesters if she wants to graduate in 3 years, and this is assuming she has 30 credits transferred from IB coming in. If she has less, then she will have to overload in some semesters. To give you an idea, 5 classes a semester is a relatively heavy load. Many students choose to take less and extend their stay at McGill.
Honours econ and finance is an extremely tough track. The attrition rate is extremely high and you have to be extremely comfortable with math to survive. The classes tend to go through more advanced math such as ODEs and multivariates and the honours econ/finance track in general is known to be a GPA killer. Many people understate the work load and difficulty in the honours track and end up dropping it altogether after the first semester/year.
Class sizes are relatively small in management courses. I think the largest class I’ve had thus for in the faculty had about 60 students. Professors are always free during office hours and I’ve never had to wait and queue in line for too long just to see one.
With regards to job prospects, I can honestly say Desautels provides a good platform for recruiting. There are many perks of being a management student over a BA student and one of them is access to Desautel’s career services and online job search platform. There are jobs that are specific only to the management faculty (other McGill students in other faculties cannot apply for them) and some of these jobs are jobs with the top firms in finance, consulting etc. I can tell you from recent experience (I did recruiting this past year) that top firms in various industries come here to recruit on campus. For finance, you have all the bulge brackets (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan etc) as well as some elite and smaller boutiques and giant buy side firms (Evercore, Fidelity, CPPIB etc). For consulting, we get firms like McKinsey, BCG and a whole host of other consulting firms. The opportunities are definitely there so I wouldn’t be too worried on that front.
Hope this helps.
Any tips about visiting? I’m a US student taking a visit this weekend. I’m arriving Saturday night, having a free day on Sunday, and doing a 1 hour tour on Monday morning. I think i’ve worked out transportation. I’ll be taking a taxi to and from my hotel/airport, which is close to campus, and then using a 1 day pass on the metro for Sunday. Any things at McGill that I should check out that aren’t on the tour (I’m a prospective Faculty of Arts student)? also, what should I do/eat on my day off? I was thinking about checking out the biodome/botanical gardens, old montreal/notre dame chapel, and St. Joseph Chapel. I have no idea where or what to eat or what the process will be at a restaurant or how much meals usually cost in Montreal. Any advice, tips, or recommendations would be appreciated.
I’d also recommend hiking up to the top of Mont Royal, the view is spectacular. In terms of restaurants, La Banquise and Schwartz’s are classics. If you’re over 18 and want to try clubbing, there are a bunch located on St. Laurent.
You are arriving during finals though, so you can probably walk around more freely on campus and peek your head into classrooms since there aren’t any classes taking place.
You have to eat poutine at least once!
Thanks Ed. That was really helpful.
Hi, I got accepted into Rotman Commerce, UTSC Management coop and Desautels faculty of management. Which is better? In terms of tuition, Proffs, international recognition and placements.
(Also, i got accepted into desautels u0, so my year 0 do I pay management tution fee or arts faculty tuition?)