<p>Recently, my daughter received some information from a Canadian University--The University of Guelph.
Should I encourage her to look at Canadian Universities or should I just tell her to stay home?
How is the financial aid for American students who want to study in Canada?</p>
<p>Any American parent who has children attending Canadian Universities? Any advice?</p>
<p>jenrik</p>
<p>Have a look at some relatively rigorous rankings of universities in the world- from various sources (none are Canadian)- and you'll see several Canadian universities way up there on the list such as U of Toronto and University of British Columbia:</p>
<p>World</a> Universities' ranking on the Web: Top USA & Canada</p>
<p>QS</a> Top Universities: University rankings in the Arts & Humanities</p>
<p>I have Canadian nieces who attended Canadian universities (after exploring the possibility of college in the US), and I know several US kids who have gone to McGill or Toronto, including the best high school friend of each of my children. My sister-in-law is a department chair at Toronto.</p>
<p>Quality: I would regard both McGill and Toronto as equivalent to good US public universities . . . say Wisconsin. Both offer plenty of opportunities for motivated kids to get a world-class education; both also offer plenty of opportunities for kids to get a little lost and fritter away their time. The introductory classes in popular majors can be massive lecture classes, but, as with any large university, the more you progress in a subject the more intimate the classes get. I know several kids who have had bad experiences at McGill, but my daughter's best friend is loving it. She was in McGill's nascent honors program in the humanities, which assured her of small, seminar-style classes for most of her first- and second-year courses. My sense is that the advising function is not so great, and that it is perfectly possiblle to graduate with an unimpressive education if the student isn't self-motivated and demanding. (Just as at the equivalent US universities.)</p>
<p>I know nothing about Guelph, though. Well, it wasn't on my nieces' radar screens. I think they looked at McGill, Toronto, UBC, Western Ontario, Queens, Dalhousie.</p>
<p>Cost: The Canadian universities have a separate, comparatively high price for international students (i.e., US students), which last time I checked was nominally about equivalent to out-of-state tuition at many flagship state universities here. When the Canadian dollar was US $.80, that represented a meaningful discount. With the Canadian dollar above par (as it is today), obviously there's no cost advantage, and lots of things take it the other way. Toronto is a very expensive city. Montreal a little less so.</p>
<p>Need-based financial aid for US students is nonexistent, as far as I know. There is some merit aid. The universities' web sites discuss it.</p>
<p>The US kids I know at Toronto and McGill have not had trouble finding legal part-time and summer jobs. Transportation can be expensive, since there are not a lot of discount flights to Canadian cities.</p>
<p>Intangibles: Montreal -- beautiful, exotic, culturally hot-hot-hot, temperature cold-cold-cold. Toronto -- very vibrant, happening city, the university is right in the middle of it. Both schools guarantee housing only to freshmen. Some of the residential colleges at Toronto have four-year dorms. But the bulk of students live off campus, and the city, not the campus, is the focus of social life and activity. (Vancouver is obviously a cool city, too, but I think UBC is somewhat isolated in it, and a considerable distance from the city center.)</p>
<p>Lots of US students (and other international students) at both Toronto and McGill. I don't know about other universities.</p>
<p>Politically, I think the Canadian students register waaay left on the US scale. The "conservatives" are probably the equivalent of Clinton Democrats, and the mainstream is probably to the left of anything you would find at Wesleyan.</p>
<p>The only thing I know is that if your daughter is considering a compsci major the University of Guelph is very highly regarded. Whether it receives high name recognition w/i the industry in the USA I do not know. I am sure the likes of Google, Microsoft, intel et al know about UG.</p>
<p>DS is finishing up at Toronto for masters, computer science. He has enjoyed his stay. Big city life, lots of activities. Guelph is close to Toronto and probably enjoys the glow from Toronto. Transportation can be either from Toronto or from Buffalo which is only 70 miles from Toronto. He has made many trips to Buffalo to pickup former classmates.</p>
<p>Can't tell you about costs because DS was on scholarship and he really didn't buy anything other than food while he was there. There is a steep sales tax in Ontario and another surcharge for Toronto. We live in OR without sales tax so nothing is bought out-of-state.</p>
<p>There may be a mandatory medical insurance premium for everyone. There was no waiver for graduate students, even if they had US insurance that would pay in Canada.</p>
<p>Is the University of Windsor a good school?</p>
<p>University of Guelph was famous for Zoology and Veterinary, I believe. Guelph is a very small city, but Kitchener and Waterloo are very close. There is a big U in Waterloo, very good in CS.
Toronto is one hour drive from Guelph. Tax is 15% in Ontario (provincial +GST).</p>
<p>As a prof who is a dual citizen and has live in both places and has taught at both US schools (Northwestern, Columbia, visiting at Yale, and now at UBC), and a similar spouse (with close friends and co-authors in both countries), JHS doesn't know what she/he is talking about. </p>
<p>There is virtually no difference. To suggest Canadian schools are on par with Wisconsin is silly. Have a look at the links I posted in the thread before. This just goes to show much of the meaningless on this board with posts from people who have virtually no knowledge but pass around myths with confidence.</p>
<p>As for UBC isolated, try a 15 min bus ride to downtown.</p>
<p>And yes politically more left no doubt. But a more reasonable comparison is that most students are about as left as those found at a typical left leaning US college. And many think that is a good thing :)</p>
<p>My daughter started at McGill this term and she absolutely loves it. She went in from a US high school with a 4.4 GPA and 2250 SAT 35 ACT. I met her dorm mates at orientation and did not find any slackers there either. Many were from the east coast of the US, many were international students. </p>
<p>I also have a difficult time rating Toronto or McGill with Wisconsin--perhaps Berkeley or Michigan? I am not as familiar with US private schools to compare. This ranking and comparing of schools tends to really irritate me at this point. Sometimes I think this whole Ivy frenzy is directly related to the high cost of private schools. If you are paying that much for an undergraduate education you want as much assurance that it is the best. And who can tell what is the best unless it has a well known designer label?</p>
<p>That aside, I have a step-daughter, a high school counselor in western Canada, who claims McGill to be the "dream school" for many of her students. My husband attended Toronto and received an excellent education. My daughter is extremely happy with McGill and Montreal. My son, who is a junior right now, is thinking of University of Victoria. </p>
<p>As for politics...I guess it all depends of where you think the center is. But I do think it is invaluable for students to live outside their own culture and find that the way we do things in the US is not the only way to do things.</p>
<p>My H is U of Toronto grad.
No problems finding good job here, and his technical knowledge is above those who graduated from state flaghsip. He writes PE exams with 2 hour preps.
Here I am, bragging about my H :-)
Back to kids...</p>
<p>Anyone know if the University of Windsor is a good school?</p>
<p>exploringMOM:</p>
<p>I am not certain what upset you so much about what I meant to be a very positive account of the two Canadian universities I think I know something about. I don't know any "myths" about them at all. I stated the basis of my knowledge pretty clearly: knowing a number of current and recent students, and having a sister-in-law whom I see pretty frequently on the faculty of one of them. Comparing them to Wisconsin? That's meant to be pretty high praise in my book. Yes, it means "not quite Berkeley", but it also means a very good reputation, high quality students and faculty, and world-class opportunities. I note that you provided three sets of rankings, two of which had all three Canadian universities you discuss ranked considerably below Wisconsin, and one of which (in its overall ranking, not the arts-and-humanities one) places Toronto right in between Michigan and Wisconsin (with UBC a little higher and McGill considerably higher). All of that is interesting, but the methodologies are awfully suspect, so I don't place much store in any of them. </p>
<p>I was trying to make an honest analogy, and I stand by it. You are free to disagree, and obviously you have a lot more personal knowledge than I do, so your perspective is welcome and valuable. I especially appreciate your comparison of the institutions where you have taught. </p>
<p>I have a little problem with McGill. It is pretty popular around here, but at one point I knew three students there, all with different interests, and all of whom were transferring out because they hated it. One of them was someone I had known for years, and thought was a gifted French literature student. That she felt she couldn't be happy at McGill was a pretty bad mark against it from my standpoint. On the other hand, I have tons of respect for my daughter's friend who is there now, doing Jewish Studies, and liking it a lot.</p>
<p>I think Toronto is great, but, again from unsystematic, anecdotal observations, bolstered by years of discussions with my sister-in-law, I know that it is possible to get both a first-rate and a second-rate undergraduate education there, depending on the student. That's true at most large universities. I would have been perfectly happy if my son, who was considering it, had gone to Toronto.</p>
<p>I know virtually nothing about UBC, and didn't pretend to, except that it's very nice looking, and it took me considerably more than 15 minutes to get there on a bus from downtown Vancouver.</p>
<p>Politics: I don't think we disagree much, if at all. Your statement "most students are about as left as those found at a typical left leaning US college" and mine "the mainstream is to the left of anything found at Wesleyan" are only a couple of degrees apart, but mine reflects my sense that students at Wesleyan are somewhat more conservative than is generally imagined. But . . . I was using hyperbole, and you are probably more correct. I don't give a hoot, but there are lots of people on CC who foam at the mouth about political correctness and left-leaning educational cultures, and who would not look at a "typical left leaning US college". I suspect they would not be happy at either Canadian university with which I am somewhat familiar.</p>
<p>jenrik2714,</p>
<p>I highly recommend that you get a copy of MacLean Magazine's annual university edition. The 07 edition came out Nov. 19th and it has just about all the publicly available data you want. I am suggesting this because you seem to be all over the place.</p>
<p>To answer your question, Windsor is not considered a strong university in Canada, not even close.</p>
<p>Macleans may be interesting reading but I wouldn't put much stock in their rankings. Many Canadian universities have stopped providing them with any information because they've been unhappy with the ways in which those at Macleans have used it. </p>
<p>jenrik, as I mentioned before, if your D is interested in Animal Sciences with the intention of eventually going to Veterinary school, then Guelph is where she'll want to be. No other Ontario school has that program.</p>
<p>MacLean's has changed the methodology on ranking this year. The magazine only uses publicly available information and there are a lot of it. After all, these are public universities, right?</p>
<p>A decade or so ago, Canadian universities tried the same tactic with Canadian Business Magazine because they don't want their business schools rated. They did not have any problem with The Times or BusinessWeek's rankings however, making their excuses highly questionable. </p>
<p>It worked so now they are trying the same with MacLean's. The timing is interesting. It happened right after MacLean's published results of the NSSE where a lot of top Canadian schools did not do well...</p>
<p>I am glad MacLean's called their bluff. My only disagreement with MacLean's is the weights it gives to the different measures. For example, why should reputation worth 22% while operating budget is only worth 6% in the total ranking. All in all, it is still a great source of publicly available information. We can easily pick out those areas that are important to us. I know of no other publication that have all that information in one package.</p>
<p>I would like to offer my two cents worth. As a grad of U of Toronto, and one who lived on campus at one of the seven colleges (at the time it was almost exclusively a commuter school) I found it be quite isolating and never experienced a sense of community. It was and still is academically rigorous and very competitive, but the quality of life is so sub-standard to the U.S. schools we have visited (14 in total). For this reason, we opted to send our kids to the states, and are very blessed to be able to manage it.</p>
<p>I have friends who have kids at all of the aforementioned Canadian schools in this thread. The school that seems to be the most in spirit to a U.S. experience is probably Queen's U in Kingston. Mcgill is very urban. They are both very rigorous institutions. Because, most of these schools were designed for locals, or at least inter-province, the dorm (called "residence") space is very limited and most of the kids move out after first year again reducing the "community" feeling.</p>
<p>With respect to Guelph, it is really known for its veterinary school and is not perceived as being in the same academic league as U of Toronto, McGill, Queen's or UBC. While big is not necessarily better, the latter schools are really resting on the laurels of their professional and graduate schools and the research that is conducted in their hallowed halls and labs, particularly Mcgill and even more so U of Toronto.</p>
<p>I find the comments about Wesleyan quite ironic. Our youngest son is quite conservative (lifestyle, not necessarily politically, but not way out left, either) and he was just accepted ED to Wesleyan. Needless to say, we are thrilled! He would never have had the opportunity to study in such a small university with such a large amount of resources and opportunities anywhere in Canada.</p>
<p>Our older son is a soph at Brown and has been able to obtain research and writing "gigs" from the get go as a freshman. Coupled with the professorial contact, intimate class sizes, and diversity of kids he has met, he is one very happy camper. These aspects of his experience cannot be compared to any of his friends who are studying in Canada.</p>
<p>sherry, I would have to disagree with many of your views. We have had one D at Princeton, one at NYU, and one is currently at U of T. All three have obtained an excellent education, although in very different programs. D3 is in her third year, and I have two nieces and a nephew in fourth year, also at U of T, all still in residence. As long as a student is not on academic probation, they are welcome to remain in residence for all four years. All but one are at Vic and none has ever expressed any notion of feeling isolated. They have found a wonderful community of kids at Vic, in a variety of different programs, from music to English to Aboriginal Studies to Biology to Equity Studies to Linguistics to Poli/Sci to Drama to Applied Math. There is a great comeraderie in the extra-curriculars available, particularly an excellent Drama Society and very involved student government. Vic has many fundraising events throughout the year and a large participation in a city-wide literacy program which involves students tutoring in the TDSB public schools. And, of course, the annual Vic Halloween Party is (in)famous! :) The quality of life is certainly not substandard. Personally, I find that a ridiculous statement.</p>
<p>As I've said in previous discussions here about U of T, it is definitely not a school for everyone. It is academically challenging and sometimes difficult to navigate due to its size. A mature, disciplined, attentive and hard-working student with good work habits will thrive there. The faculty is excellent, the opportunities wonderful, the campus beautiful, and the student population as diverse, if not moreso, than either of the schools her sisters attended. I don't feel that D3 is suffering in the least having chosen to attend U of T, instead of Princeton or NYU like her older sisters. And as an added benefit, the cost is between 1/4 and 1/3 of D1 and D2's schools.</p>
<p>Alwaysamom,</p>
<p>It is nice to hear that your daughter and nieces and nephew are thriving at U of T and they are having a great experience. They are also very lucky to stay in residence for all four years as it is only guaranteed for one year at many of the colleges. My nephew who is in fourth year is a case in point, and no, he is not on probation. </p>
<p>I am certainly not questioning that U of Toronto is not academically, world-class, but it can be very daunting given the size, and the administration can be far less than nurturing, to say the least. In many ways, the campus reminds me of NYU, in that it doesn't have as much as a campus feel or a main quad etc that other schools have and is a series of buildings in downtown Toronto. The quad by University college is to me as close as it gets to a campus feel, and it is small given the large student body.</p>
<p>We recently had the son of a colleague of my husband's (from Montreal) and his American girlfriend (from Maryland) over for dinner when my older son was home for U.S. Thanksgiving. Their comments to us were they were certainly learning and being challenged at U of T but felt they were on their own in terms of community. They are both in third year and are renting a house with other students downtown and have formed their own community. Coincidentally, both of them are part of Vic college. </p>
<p>I believe part of the lack of community stems from the fact that a very large percentage of the undergraduate student body are commuters who go home every night.</p>
<p>I guess, we are all entitled to our opinions and can only draw from our own experiences and comments from people we know when researching collegiate options. To label someone else's view as "ridiculous" may be a tad extreme.</p>
<p>All the best to your daughters and your extended family.</p>