<p>My daughter's best friend from high school is a senior at McGill now. One of my nieces (and her best friend) went there about 8 years ago, and left, and I have known a few other kids less well who went there. So . . . not really first hand info here, but not so bad second hand.</p>
<p>Before the current student, I used to say negative things about McGill a lot. In addition to my niece and her friend, several other kids I knew transferred out. They all had a common experience -- very impersonal, large lectures, bureaucratic, hard to change directions, no campus life. My niece was not the best test case -- everyone knew she had chosen the wrong program for her, and she had a boyfriend and a pretty lucrative weekend job that were elsewhere -- but her friend was a very intellectual good-student kind of person, and her unhappiness with McGill was very telling for me.</p>
<p>However, I have had to revise my views, because my daughter's intellectual, good-student friend has had nothing but positive experiences there, has just really loved it. She turned down Penn to go there, and has never had second thoughts. She was in a freshman honors program that featured mainly seminars, so she missed the cast-of-thousands lecture-class experience that many have their first year. She has been satisfied with all of her classes, really engaged, headed for a PhD program in archaeology. </p>
<p>Housing: she was perfectly happy to move off campus after first year. On-campus housing was crummy, off-campus housing is not terribly cheap, but is really cool. Montreal is an exciting, somewhat romantic city, with great youth culture. A really good place to go to college for someone who wants a city, not a little college town or a college in a bubble. Most of the students live within fairly easy walking distance of the campus, and student-appropriate apartments are plentiful. Work: Her student visa permits her to get part-time and seasonal work. She has had no trouble earning money.</p>
<p>McGill seems not so unlike a largish American public university. Yes, bureaucratic. Yes, you may have to suffer through huge introductory lecture courses to get to the intimate upper-level courses in your field. Yes, you are responsible for making certain you are on track. Building a social life is left to the student, not the college. </p>
<p>Note: The drinking age in Quebec is 18. Exhibit A for the proposition "Canada really is a different country" was the orientation letter on official university stationery: It noted that one of the goals of freshman orientation was to introduce students to the city of Montreal, and that many official events were being staged in clubs and bars around the city. Therefore, students who were not going to be 18 at the start of orientation were told to call the dean's office, which would make certain they were issued an ID card that said they were 18. I'm not kidding. (Daughter's friend called on day 3 of orientation and said that if she never spoke to another drunk boy, it would be too soon. She was hanging out with the Communists because they seemed to drink a little less than everyone else. But apparently, by the end of the first few weeks, the novelty has worn off, and the amount of drunkenness seems less than at the equivalent U.S. universities.)</p>
<p>Also note: If, like people on a recent thread, you are upset about the liberal political bent on U.S. campuses, don't bother with McGill. The political spectrum is much more European, minus the neo-fascists. A typical knee-jerk American liberal is probably center-right there.</p>
<p>Finally: McGill is an institution of Montreal's Anglophone community. While Montreal is bilingual, and lots of French is spoken, it is more than possible to enjoy McGill and Montreal without more French than a few street phrases you pick up along the way.</p>