Some kids just want to go out of the country because they want to. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. We visited 3 UK uni’s and 10 or so US and she liked what she liked.
One HS classmate from my graduating year went to McGill because she found it appealing academically and the fact it was in Canada was a bonus. Another went to National Taiwan University.
Not sure of his reasons to attend NTU beyond the possibility of attending a university with great perceived prestige within his family and some Chinese communities here and abroad. .
It must have been compelling considering he had to complete 2 years of mandatory military service when he graduated because by virtue of attending a university in the ROC(Taiwan) for 4 years as an overseas dual US/ROC citizen, he exceeded the maximum amount of time he could stay in the ROC and be exempted from that obligation*.
- Can't stay for more than several consecutive months in a 2 year period max without triggering the draft. .
It will be interesting to see the yield rates for US and overseas applicants at top Canadian universities this year. McGill had a 22% increase in applications from the US and 28% from overseas.
We are Canadian and will be travelling to the east coast for vacation this summer. While there we will be checking out a few universities with our high schooler. In researching one of the schools, I noticed that this year the enrollment percentage of international students was up 34%, and this isn’t even one of the big 3 schools (though it is the largest university in the maritime region). According to multiple reports, many universities in Canada have seen an increase in applications from international students this year for a number of reasons including economic, but also in part due to the political climate in many places in of the world.
@DadTwoGirls wrote
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Just as CC seems to attract a certain type of student, the Canadian equivalent Yconic.com attracts a similar subset of Canadian university bound students. To them prestige is of high importance, both in terms of the school they attend and their future careers. If they were to be taken as representative of Canadian university students in general, one would come to the conclusion that the only programs worth pursuing are Computer Science, Engineering, Commerce, or any degree that will lead to medical or law school (or perhaps dentistry, pharmacy, and accounting), and that there are only a handful of schools worth attending in order to obtain these degrees (UBC, McGill, Toronto, Queens, Western, & McMaster). The only criteria for determining which of these schools one should attend is the reputation of the specific program the student is pursuing. Any schools/programs not in this selective list are looked down upon with great derision. These students are not concerned with fit, only the best path to commanding 6 figure salaries upon graduation.
Personally I lean towards the LAC model of post secondary education. The schools in Canada that fit that model are not on the radar of the majority of university bound students here though they tend to be popular with international students. As a result they are not as selective in terms of entering statistics which then perpetuates the cycle of them not being well known despite providing an excellent alternative to the large research based universities. I’m personally hoping that DS19 will seriously consider one of these small schools as I believe they would be a great fit for him (as he most likely will not be pursuing one of the above mentioned career paths).
I should add that in Canada “prestigious” = “academically challenging”.
If you want a truly different view of the world, you might need to go somewhere other than Canada. Outside of Quebec, Canada doesn’t differ much from the US. For international business, I see China as the future.
^The language is the same. The religious mix isn’t that different between Ontario and Massachusetts. The food is the same(okay you have poutine). Culturally, people listen to the same music, watch the same tv shows and movies. Sports wise, hockey might be a bigger deal in Canada, but hockey’s very popular in some US states. Militarily, the Canadian military is integrated with the US military to an extent that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Both countries pursue similar and tightly aligned foreign policies.
@roethlisburger So you have the casual tourist’s knowledge of Canada. And your comment about military integration is simply wrong.
@alwaysamom Would you care to comment on this?
I would argue the differences betweens between Alabama and Massachusetts are at least as large as the differences between Massachusetts and Ontario.
@gwnorth: I would expect, if CS is mentioned, for Waterloo to be listed as well.
@infinityprep1234: “Kid, whose parent’s sent their kids abroad for education, can not get admission in ultra selective US Colleges, therefore choose university like Oxford, Cambridge etc.”
Maybe that’s your own personal stance, but there are reasons to choose Oxbridge over American Ivies/equivalents (which, prestige-wise, Oxbridge is) besides price. They may want to concentrate on a particular field (or fields), which may be hard to do at top US schools (how many elite US schools offer a major in land economy, for instance). They may prefer the tutorial method. They may prefer more independent study and a few big tests at the end rather than continuous assessment and the GPA system. They may simply prefer the UK (or some other country).
@PurpleTitan oops, not sure how I let that one slip by. Waterloo is the holy grail for Engineering and CS. Not for Business, Med Sci, or Pre-Law though which just goes to show that certain schools are more highly prized for certain majors. Waterloo does offer a double degree in Math and Business with Wilfred Laurier U down the road which is popular and fairly selective, but it’s not nearly as prized as Toronto, Queens, or Western’s business schools, at least for students in Ontario.
McGill seems like a popular choice at my D’s school, and I notice St. Andrew’s in Scotland is popular with kids from my city, but not necessarily at my D’s school. My concern with these schools is that the class sizes are huge.
@VickiSoCal what are the class sizes like at St. Andrews?
To expand on @PurpleTitan above, the student concerned may not only be 100% certain of what s/he wants to study, but also feels s/he’s ready for something more comparable to a Master’s level experience academically where s/he concentrates one one field rather than conform to the US undergraduate model.
Another possible reason is the student’s desire to pursue fields which would require 4 years of undergrad studying something else before pursuing it at the graduate level(i.e. Medicine). This was one key reason why one acquaintance I knew a decade ago opted to attend Trinity College Dublin as a medical student straight out from high school in the US. He knew he wanted to study medicine and didn’t want to be stuck doing 4 years undergrad + 4 years med or 6-7 year BA-MD in the US when he can complete his medical training and get his credentials in 5 years. He also checked to see whether he’d have issues getting internships/residencies back in the US and there weren’t any for the few students who desired them.
Agree with @cobrat & @PurpleTitan. Tippy tops in the US want all-rounders, tippy tops in the UK want specialists.
Factually, provably false. Know at least 3 kids who are right now at Harvard or Yale who are there b/c they were rejected by Oxbridge. Know at least 2 kids who are at Oxbridge right now who turned down an Ivy to go there. Also know a grad student who was turned down by Oxford for undergrad, finished Summa at Yale and went to Cambridge for Masters b/c she was determined to get to Oxbridge (and chose Cam b/c she was nursing a grudge at Ox for turning her down).
It’s really horses for courses. The systems are very, very different and imo it’s a wonderful world where students have the option to choose what works best for them. Saying this as a parent whose kids have made choices on both sides.
@cobrat: “He also checked to see whether he’d have issues getting internships/residencies back in the US and there weren’t any for the few students who desired them.”
Just want to point out to readers that while that may have been true in the past, it isn’t these days. These days, anyone considering practicing medicine in the US really shouldn’t consider leaving the US/Canada for undergrad.
@citymama9 70-80 kids per class year major in chemistry and take pretty much the same classes together for 2 years with more variation in electives in the third year and even more in the fourth. So I would guess most of her lecture classes will have those same 70-80 people and labs broken in to smaller sections and tutorials.
When she toured the chem department she felt like it was small enough that you do get to know most of the professors well.
One huge difference from a large US school is none of the chemistry faculty and staff is tied up providing huge lab and lecture programs for non-chemistry majors taking general and organic chemistry. As someone who was a grad student at a UC in the chem department I appreciate that more than she does, possibly.