metaxa13

I often hear people saying that when you go to a Canadian university, you have to be more independent whereas in USA they "hold your hand".

Generally, I wanna get an idea of the differences of the higher educational systems
among the 2 countries.
What's a standard USA college life/experience like? and what's a canadian like?
thanks in advance

dollarbill

LOL
That line is the biggest BS I've ever heard. To an extent, you sink or swim at both US and Canadian Unis. No professor/TA is going to come after you if you are failing. They are equally hard.

In Canada, all of your classes will be HUGE (50-400) people until 4th year. With some exceptional cases(like aerospace eng), there will be 10-20 people. In the US, classes can range anywhere from 10-400 but it is way more common to have a small class. I go to a Public State Uni with 25k people and out of the 15 classes I have had, 8 of them had 20 or less people.

I have friends at both US and Canada universities. They are both challenging. In the US, you will have a more holistic education (you will sample everything since you have general education req.) whereas in Canada, you will stick mostly to your major.

Its much harder to get A's in Canada whereas the average grade in the US given out is a B+/A-.

In the US, you will get a much more traditional college lifestyle whereas in Canada, it is much more of you go to school to get an education and you get out, not a place to figure yourself out.

They are vastly different. It would help if you would provide more info like Liberal Art Uni, big public uni or private university, since there are so many types of schools in the US.

beneli

I tend to agree with dollarbill. I attended an Ivy, which is supposed to have the LAC feel with the resources of a big research university. Profs and TAs did actually reach out to kids who seemed to not be getting the material and offered to see them in office hours or to get them tutoring. I would say that small LACs probably can do that more easily as profs don't have grad students or big research projects, so they have the time to focus on teaching. I would also say it is true to a lesser extent of all private schools which don't want to see kids fail out (particularly when they are paying full tuition). At many big public schools you tend to be a number and profs really are doing a lot outside of the classroom, so they may not have as much time to help struggling students. Since basically all Canadian schools are public (with the exception of a place like Quest), you only see the "no handholding" model, whereas in the US, there really is a variety of types of schools.