<p>Hey CC</p>
<p>I got into UTSC and UWaterloo as a bio major. I am wondering which school offers the best opportunities in school and after for biology/pre-med.</p>
<p>Can you tell me how Canadians view the two universities?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Honestly, Waterloo is a very studious school. It’s known to be nerd central up here. It also has a reputation for being very hard, especially in math and physics (not too sure about bio). For pre-med, it’s generally agreed upon that MacMaster’s Health Science program is the best in Canada - 75% of the graduating class there got accepted into med school after graduation (and so it’s quite difficult to get into).</p>
<p>Scarborough on the other hand is a smaller campus that’s in more of an urban place. To be honest, U of T is one of those schools where you just cannot go wrong. Even if they aren’t particularly known for a certain program, everyone seems to accept that U of T is a beast at everything. Just know for U of T, even though I say that UTSC is a smaller campus it’s still big enough (but not big like UTSG downtown).</p>
<p>Overall, I’d pick Waterloo over UTSC, but that’s just because the larger the school the less I like it.</p>
<p>^UT curves will kill you. avoid UT at ALL costs if you want to go into Medicine. in canada, GPA is number 1 priority…UT will kill your num. 1 priority.</p>
<p>ViggyRam speaks the truth. U of T is terrible if you care about your grades. It’s a real swim or sink environment, especially in first year. Last year on a class theology retreat I had with school, the retreat leader was actually a U of T philosophy professor for first year. He said out of a class of like 120 or something, 70 failed. Mind you, he also said five of those were expelled for plagiarism, but imagine that 65 people failed - what kind of a nasty grading system is that!</p>
<p>Universities are businesses; UofT pretty much capitalized on that. Accept many (some unqualified for the courseload), let many do extremely poorly but still get money from tuition.</p>
<p>Yes, U of T generally accepts a lot of people because they know that the people will be paying the tuition (and their government funding is on a per student basis). You do not need to worry if you are a good student though - it’s honestly only a scary place if you can’t handle independent study.</p>
<p>Please take HS student rumors about colleges with a big grain of salt. U of T has remarkably good graduation rates, which doesn’t at all suggest they pull them in, take their tuition and fail them out. It would also make absolutely zero sense to do so. (having said that I’m a bigger fan of Waterloo).</p>
<p>I also see a lot of undergraduate transcripts from Canadian schools. For the most part- I believe U of T is one of them- they provide a column that shows a student’s grade for the course, and a column that shows the class average for the course. The context is everything and it can be accounted for. </p>
<p>[Other</a> Useful Information](<a href=“http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mGqbOpeITr8J:www.utoronto.ca/about-uoft/measuring-our-performance/cudo/cudo_2008/other.htm+u+of+toronto+graduation+rate&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca]Other”>http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mGqbOpeITr8J:www.utoronto.ca/about-uoft/measuring-our-performance/cudo/cudo_2008/other.htm+u+of+toronto+graduation+rate&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)</p>
<p>Thanks guys</p>
<p>do you know if UTSC has a lot of Asian people?</p>
<p>probably, I mean UT has a lot of Asians in general, so I would assume that UTSC also has many Asians as well. Probably not to the extreme of St.George, but I would guess that there are a fair share of Asians.</p>
<p>“^UT curves will kill you. avoid UT at ALL costs if you want to go into Medicine. in canada, GPA is number 1 priority…UT will kill your num. 1 priority.”</p>
<p>How is McGill in this regard?</p>
<p>^at above poster: McGill is competitive too, since it attracts a lot of bright Quebec students and they attract only the most attractive Ontario/other province applicants. I mean, UT has the rep. of being cutthroat…heard that from the mouth of a distinguished professor who advised a kid to go to UWaterloo over UT for engineering because Waterloo isn’t that cutthroat. </p>
<p>For science though, UT is the worst if you wanna be premed/go to med school. Unless you are confident that you will ride the bell curve up and you are really smart+hard working, don’t risk it. There’s nothing, in my opinion, too awesome about UT. It has the commuter school attitude, not as much school spirit as like Western and stuff, people just go there for the prestige, and classes are enormous. </p>
<p>I would choose Waterloo.</p>
<p>McGill, though, is probably close to as competitive.
[Admissions</a> Profile](<a href=“http://www.mcgill.ca/es/profile/]Admissions”>http://www.mcgill.ca/es/profile/)</p>
<p>that link says the MEDIAN entering average for Ontario hs. students is 90%, while other provinces have a median of 92%. median SAT scores for US kids are high 600s. (so median SAT score is probably like 2000). So, it’s a smart school, but hard work at either McGill or UT will give you results, but the chances of that happening at UT are way slimmer.</p>