<p>Compared to schools in the U.S. (I am also considering Stanford which doesn't have a Neuroscience undergraduate program, Brown University, UC Berkeley, UCLA). </p>
<p>I want to know the reputation and popularity of specifically the Neuroscience programs (research opportunities, etc... I know the McGill undergrad only takes 50 people each year, so very competitive.). </p>
<p>I am trying to find a balance between overall reputation of the school and the Neuroscience programs when choosing a school...</p>
<p>I’m an undergraduate neuroscience student at McGill, just about to go into my third year. This makes me poorly situated to talk about the reputation of the program from outside, but I can try to answer any questions you have.</p>
<p>There are a lot of opportunities for research at McGill, but they aren’t tied to the neuroscience program. You can get course credit in exchange for research, but opportunities exist almost entirely outside of the curriculum. Your relationship with a lab will often begin with part time volunteering during the school year, which can lead to more responsibilities, paid summer positions, and the like. Neuroscience does have some name recognition at McGill, so being in the program might get you a little bit of a head start - but it’s not a big factor. The flip side is that you can also do plenty of neuroscience research without being a neuroscience major, and nobody will care.</p>
<p>From the perspective of somebody at McGill, it’s hard to imagine choosing it over a school like Stanford or Berkeley - aside from the cost factor, especially if you’re Canadian.</p>
<p>“From the perspective of somebody at McGill, it’s hard to imagine choosing it over a school like Stanford or Berkeley - aside from the cost factor, especially if you’re Canadian.”</p>
<p>So Alteran you definitely think the neuroscience program at Stanford or Berkeley would be a better experience? Of course cost is a factor but I am also looking for some good solid quality education. Can you just tell me all the bad stuff about neuroscience @ McGill? Haha…</p>
<p>I can’t say WHY it would be, but the impression in Canada is that upper-tier American schools are universally superior. This is a vague but persistent idea that we all seem to have.</p>
<p>I can’t think of anything bad about McGill neuroscience specifically, aside from the fact that it’s pointlessly difficult to transfer in from another major. The program is small, and they set aside very few spots for transfer students. On the whole, McGill is a strong large research institution, and its downsides are probably similar to Berkeley’s. Classes can be very large, professor’s time is something you actively have to seek out, and it doesn’t feel that a great deal of resources are dedicated to each student as an individual. McGill also has less money and name recognition than the other two universities, so one might expect that you’d attract weaker professors - although my neuroscience professors so far have been great.</p>
<p>The most common complaints are definitely about the university being large and impersonal, but being in a small program like neuroscience helps mitigate that. I’ve also had quite a bit of success in reaching out to professors and getting involved in a research setting - but McGill is very much an environment that rewards (and requires) your willingness to do the legwork.</p>
<p>I told you in your previous thread on this topic about the pedigree of McGill’s neuroscience department and the big names and research innovations in the field that were and are associated with neuroscience at McGill (Penfield, Hebb, Milner, ect.). There is a wealth of evidence showing the quality of McGill’s research in neuroscience.</p>
<p>If by “upper tier” schools Alteran means the likes of Stanford or Harvard then no McGill is not as prestigious an institution as these super elite schools. It has a strong brand, but I would put it more in a group with the likes of U of Toronto, Michigan Ann Arbour, UNC- Chapel Hill, UCLA or Wisconsin-Madison (Big, well respected publics, that emphasize graduate research with Berkely seeming to be the kingpin of that group). As to the prestige of their specific neuroscience programs of the American universities you listed, I do not know. For information on the neuroscience programs in the US universities it is best to ask on their threads on CC. </p>
<p>It is important to check out the quality of research coming out of that specific department in the university when making a decision, to see how much of an impact the work being done in neuroscience at each university has on the academic field as a whole. So you might want to look at some neuroscience related papers using a a database like PubMed (you will get VERY familiar with searching PubMed anyway once you get into college) and just look at which universities haver researchers publishing in the high impact magazines.</p>
<p>Seeing as I sincerely doubt you will get into all of the schools on your list (unless you have a godly application, especially for Stanford), you probably wont get into the majority of the schools you posted and your actual choice may not be as complicated as what you have posted.</p>
<p>I think this is the best way to put it. Canada doesn’t have universities that are anything like the “top” private universities in the US, but the concept of the large public research university is pretty similar between the two countries. And neuroscience is a particular strength of McGill, something that’s hard to quantify but worth keeping in mind when you compare similar schools.</p>
You don’t see many examples of this type of “inferiority complex” among Canadians, thankfully. If you browse through CC, you will see posters arguing ad nauseum that Columbia should be ranked higher than Princeton; Duke should be higher than Stanford etc. If you are looking for maximum prestige, go to Stanford or Harvard. If you a looking for a great education in a fascinating city, consider McGill.</p>
<p>Hellwalker, you will be successful at any of the institutions you have named - certainly, none of them will hold you back! Your success in your chosen field will have more to do with your happiness in your environment and your ability to go out and seize opportunities for yourself rather than the “reputation” of one university over another. You should also be mindful of cost, particularly when choosing your undergrad.</p>
<p>Incidentally, my D is a 2nd year McGill student who turned down both UCLA and UCBerkeley to attend McGill. She is a psychology major, neuroscience minor and secured a fantastic research internship in a neuroscience lab at a UC here in California for the summer (in fact it was the McGill name on her CV that caught the attention of the person who hired her), and has also secured a research position in a neuroscience lab at McGill for the coming year. You are correct in that the neuroscience major at McGill is a very selective one and accepts a very small number of students. My D has a friend who applied this past year (and was accepted) that said that one should have a minimum GPA of 3.8 from first year to stand a chance of being accepted. (The friend had a 4.0.)</p>