<p>Hi,everybody. I am going to study my undergraduate programs in University of Toronto, Canada. If my academic performances there are good, how great will be my chance of entering a US top graduate school?</p>
<p>If you have high grades, research, great recommendations and GREs, your chances are just like everyone else's--low (how low depends on the field).</p>
<p>I disagree. Your chances of getting admission are pretty good, much better than other international applicants, but your chances of getting financial aid are low.</p>
<p>Obviously, it completely depends on what program you go into, what you mean by 'graduate' school (I'm assuming PhD, but you could mean a number of things). The University of Toronto is a great university, and I know at least one person who went there for undergrad here (Princeton). I would say that your chances are just as good as anyone who went to school in the US.</p>
<p>If you have excellent grades and an excellent all-round application, then you could get in anywhere, in theory. The hard part is getting excellent grades at U of T.</p>
<p>But what can explain low percentage of non-US students at top US schools? Do admission committees at these schools tend to evaluate non-US applicants harder than they do US applicants (in terms of GPA, research, SOP, GRE, etc.)? Or, is it just that non-US students generally have worse GPA, research experience, SOP, etc. than US students? When I apply to these schools as a Canadian, will I be judged equally as other US applicants? I go to Simon Fraser by the way.</p>
<p>There is a quota, either soft or hard on # of international people that can be accepted so as Canadians we are competing against the top candidates from the rest of the world. Domestic candidates don't need to be quite as impressive.</p>
<p>It's all relative and depends on the individual... I received an AA degree from a community college and then a BA from an unknown school and still I got into Johns Hopkins SAIS (kick ass school for IR/LAS/Development)... </p>
<p>Advice:
Work hard but also show some committments outside the classroom :) and good luck! :)</p>
<p>ysk1 and SlantNGo, </p>
<p>The admissions committees with which I am most familiar (most of these are in humanities programs in both private and public universities) most emphatically do NOT hold international applicants to a higher standard than US applicants. </p>
<p>While there are some departments (particularly in the hard sciences) that (because of government grants) must FUND (as opposed to ADMIT) US applicants before others, there are MANY others that have no such strictures.</p>
<p>Getting a degree from U of T will not hinder you in any way from going to grad school in the US. So it's all up to you to complete your degree with the kind of performance required for the grad school of your choice.</p>
<p>I agree that international applicants aren't held to a higher standard by choice. However, from what I've heard, most schools have a certain limit (either hard or soft) on the number of international applicants they can admit, which results in international applicants often needing to be more impressive due to the limited capacity.</p>
<p>As a disclaimer, I know absolutely nothing about humanities so things may be completed different as you noted. Pretty much everything I know pertains to the math and engineering areas.</p>
<p>
[quote]
...most schools have a certain limit (either hard or soft) on the number of international applicants they can admit, which results in international applicants often needing to be more impressive due to the limited capacity.
[/quote]
That sucks.</p>
<p>does the admission depend at all on which school in Canada you went to though?</p>
<p>For example, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and McGill University are probably top 3 in terms of pure math. Would that matter at all?</p>
<p>It doesn't directly matter. But being in a well-regarded undergraduate program increases the probability that your profs (and thus recommendation writers) will be well regarded by the admissions committees of the graduate programs you apply to. </p>
<p>So indirectly, going to a very good undergraduate program can help a lot. A glowing recommendation from a professor who is known and respected by the people reading your application is a huge boost. From what I can tell, it would give you the edge over someone with a considerably higher GPA who doesn't have that "very credible endorsement" as it were.</p>
<p>The university name itself doesn't matter much, and I'd say not at all if you're coming from Canada. All the Canadian universities are roughly equal, not like in the US where some schools are fantastic whilst others are absolutely terrible.</p>
<p>My son did it the other way. CMU, ME undergrad and Toronto in CS for MS.
His roommate is Berkeley CS -> Toronto MS-CS. Toronto is well thought of, and is maybe a global university. CMU is also very much international. Son and roommate are on nice scholarships with a small TA-RA component.</p>