Summary of Activities

Colleges and Universities A-Z McGill University
1

<p>Hello everyone! </p>

<p>Has Mcgill requested a Summary of Activities from anybody here?</p>

<p>Now I am on my way of transferring from a university in my country to Mcgill. However, the way seems to be really thorny. Actually, I expected for Mcgill to make a final decision on my application on the eve because every transcript they required has been sent to them on time. $400 was spent on DHL only, by the way. </p>

<p>So, when the time came for them to change my status from the "Further Review Required" to a more specific one, they wanted my blood again. To be precise, they need the Summary of Activities I did in a period between graduating from a school and entering the university. </p>

<p>More details about that moment, please!</p>

<p>Look, I allowed a year for travelling, deciding where to study after I had graduated from my school and entered the university in my home country. And that's all. Not really, actually.</p>

<p>Since I have known their bloody bureaucracy, I am afraid to add any odd word. What if I tell them I did carate, and they would want the confirmation of that fact from the sports school I attended in a terry year, or anything else? </p>

<p>I would tell you, a funny little thing, their admission office. Couldn't they request that document earlier? </p>

<p>Although I have been admitted to another Canadian university, I do need the Mcgill's decision!</p>

<p>However, I don't want to spend more money on sending of a paper with a meager list of activities, and neither I want to cancell my application at Mcgill because of their admission policy's whims. </p>

<p>Any assumtions or advises on how to deal with a problem in my case? E-mail them or what?</p>

2

<p>Do you need to spend more money on sending your activities description? Would an email or fax suffice? It does not seem like a big imposition. Spend 10 minutes typing what you did and then spend 5 minutes to email or fax or mail it in. If that is too much time or McGill’s bureaucracy is bothering you too much, then perhaps McGill is not the right place for you.</p>

<p>All major universities have bureaucracies that can be frustrating to deal with. McGill’s is understaffed compared to most other North American universities, so it can be more frustrating at times.</p>

<p>I expect that admissions didn’t request the document earlier because they didn’t know that you had spent a year between high school and university until they reviewed the materials you submitted. They get tens of thousands of documents in a couple of months and can’t review them all instantly. Because McGill has what is probably the highest percentage of international applicants of any major North American university, its reviewing of documents is particularly difficult and time-consuming.</p>

3

<p>If you have attended several universities before applying to Mcgill, you should arrange for EVERY university you have attended to send your transcripts instead of sending transcripts from the last one attended. What if you have taken courses in several universities in different cities? You might go crazy because the requirements make your admission almost impossible. And even if you have managed to fullfil everything, you will additionally need to submit a personal report on each year of your life spent outside classrooms. These are unfathomable mysterious special requirements of Canadian universities, which do not have analogues in the world. ^^</p>

<p>In my case, they added new requirements every time they reviewed my application. It was 3 times. Why did not they request every document at once is a rhetorical question. They might have known about a gap year from the documents after the very first review if they were attentive.</p>

<p>Compared to UBC that has a very developed marketing strategies in attracting of foreign students and has got friendly advisers, Mcgill loses and should spend more on improvement of it’s services.</p>