I’m applying for CS at UToronto St. George and I have to list these colleges in order of preference: Innis college, new college, St. Michael’s college, Trinity college, University College, Victoria college, and Woodsworth college. The problem is I have absolutely no knowledge on any of these colleges and I don’t even live in Canada so i’m not familiar with it (canadian citizen living in USA ) So does anyone have any knowledge on these colleges and which ones are good and will help me in my major more than the others?
If you are planning to live in residence, then the choice of a college will decide where you will live. Here is a really good website to help you: http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/futurestudents/colleges/ranking Note the part down the page where it says that Innis, Trinity and Victoria will only accept students who rank them first. So, if you want to have any home of getting into one of those three, put it first on your application. If you do put Trinity or Victoria first on your list, you will get an additional application for that college which consists of a couple of essays.
Also, again, if you are planning to live in residence, pay particular attention to each college’s policy on upper years living in residence. U of T promises residence space for first year students, but not for upper years. Each college sets its own policy on who can remain in residence after first year. For example, Trinity will let students with a GPA of 3.7 or greater stay. Other students have to enter a lottery for a space. Students whose parents live in Toronto and don’t have a 3.7 or greater don’t get to enter the lottery. For any potential first year students at Trinity who may be reading this - don’t do as my son’s roommate did and put down Trinity College as your permanent address - this automatically disqualified him from the lottery since he listed a Toronto address as his permanent address. His parents actually live in Korea. As of August, he still hadn’t found a place to live.
The more selective colleges try to get a mix of students with different majors. None of them will be particularly “helpful” in computer science. New and University College are closer to the buildings where your classes are.
I got interrupted and meant to add: Even though New and University are closest to your buildings, all colleges are within easy walking distance of all buildings, so I wouldn’t let that be a deciding factor. As well, there should be plenty of other computer science students in whatever college you choose.
Trinity and Vic are the two most popular, and difficult to get into, in general. Vic is a wonderful college with a good variety of housing options and the Vic campus is beautiful. I don’t know if this is still the case but Vic had the largest number of merit scholarships available at U of T when my Ds were there.