I’ve seen that before! I’ll definitely be doing it if I go to UBC
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Thank you! I’ve been trying to lean towards a hook in systems and mainly wrote about that in my essays so hoping for good outcomes!
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Disagree. Northwestern University may accept this student, but the odds are not in her favor.
Partially intended to be humorous: Hopefully your parents have considered the exchange rate when assessing affordability.
Yes they have 
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I see why they said it though - it’s need aware for international - so full pay is a boon. Doesn’t mean they get in - but I understand why the statement was made.
Not to Northwestern University and to many other elite universities ( 17 in total) which were defendants in a recent price fixing lawsuit and in light of a recently filed price fixing lawsuit against 40 schools (which includes 14 of the 17 members sued as part of the 568 Cartel).
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Wait sorry could you expand on this please? Are you talking about the lawsuit against schools like MIT that weren’t actually need blind?
I wish you the best of luck! I think it’s kind of a chance situation at MOST of those schools. They all have very low admission rates (as discussed above). You’re obviously are very well qualified -but the entire admitted class is equally well qualified. Still you have a big list and full pay helps. Hope you land someplace awesome.
I’ve got to say though - some of us here in the US wonder why you want to head this way for the next four years! Haha!! 
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Thank you! I hope we get some good results this admissions season 
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I have a lot of family in the US which is why I want to go! My brother lives in San Francisco and I have some cousins on the East Coast that I’d like to be closer to
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Google “568 Presidents Group lawsuit” and “Higher Ed’s (Anti) trust Problem”.
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Yes I understand. I’m not set on going to the US unless it’s with one of these schools. I would go to Waterloo or UBC instead
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I think that you are competitive for every university on your list. For the top schools (Cornell, MIT, Stanford, Princeton) so are something like 80% of the other applicants. Also admissions is significantly more difficult (and therefore less likely) for international students.
UBC and Western are of course very good. Quite a few of my relatives got a degree (or two) at UBC, and most of them have been very successful with it. I think that your chances at U of T are very good.
I was originally Canadian but now have dual citizenship and live in the US, and got my master’s degree in Operations Research at Stanford. I liked OR a lot, and have described it as “its great fun and then they pay you”. What more would you want in a major? My understanding is that Stanford no longer has a straight Operations Research master’s degree, but has combined it with Management Science.
In my experience the other students in the same master’s program had gotten their bachelor’s degree at a huge range of universities. I do not think that getting a bachelor’s at UBC or Toronto or Western would hurt your chances at all for getting a master’s at a top university in the US. (and a bachelor’s in Canada plus a masters in the US is very likely to cost less than just a bachelor’s in the US).
I am pretty sure that Berkeley admits by major, as does Michigan and Washington and Carnegie Mellon. You are applying for a very popular major. These are reaches. I would put your chances somewhere in the mid to high single digit percentages.
Princeton and Stanford and Harvard and Yale I am pretty sure do not admit by major (nor does MIT). However, these are reaches for nearly everyone, and particularly for an international student. I would put your chances in the low single digit percentages. You are academically a very strong student and very well qualified to do well at any of these schools. It is just that hard to get into the most famous universities in the US as an international student.
When I was getting a master’s in OR, I think that most of the other students in the same program had gotten a bachelor’s degree in either CS or mathematics, with some courses and/or work experience in the other one of these subjects. Either math or CS is a reasonable potential major for someone interested in OR. I had a bachelor’s degree in math, quite a few courses in CS, and some work experience that drew heavily on both math and CS at a research facility.
I do not understand applying to some schools for CS, some for OR, some for Environmental Engineering, and some for Economics. These are different subjects and will result in different careers.
You have applied to a lot of schools. I think that you will get into a few in the US, and probably most if not all of the Canadian universities that you have applied to.
The Canadian university system is really very good. I know multiple people who got their bachelor’s degree in Canada and then either got or are getting one or more graduate degrees in the US. This includes a couple of people who got a bachelor’s in Canada and a master’s at Stanford, and another person who got their bachelor’s in Canada and then a master’s and a PhD at Princeton. Even the top universities in the US know how strong the Canadian universities are. I have a daughter who got a bachelor’s at a small “primarily undergraduate” university in eastern Canada and is currently getting a PhD in a very good program in the US (for PhD’s you should look at the fit and the strength of the specific program rather than the overall university).
Do not expect that getting a bachelor’s degree in the US will help you stay in the US after graduation. International students are normally required to return home after graduation. Also, do not expect that getting a bachelor’s degree in the US will help your chances to get a job in Canada after graduation. In my experience Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire graduates from the excellent Canadian universities.
And you are already accepted to a couple of very good Canadian universities and I expect are about to get accepted to some more.
And to me it looks likely that you are likely to do well wherever you go for university.
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Wow so much insight thank you! My parents also agree that an alternative path would be to do my undergrad in Canada then try for a US school for my masters if this doesn’t work out. CMU admits by the school; I applied for the business school which had an AR of around 20% when they last published it in 2020 (suspected to drop to 15% by now).
What would you say your favourite part of OR is? How are the job opportunities in your field of work?
OOps, I missed this. CMU is of course very good for CS also. Acceptance rates will be lower for international students, and most applicants will be well qualified, but business rather than CS might (or might not) just put you into a double digit chance of admissions.
One thing about both mathematics and OR is that they potentially prepare you for quite a range of careers. As one example related to math, I knew someone who graduated from MIT with a degree in math, then went to Harvard Law School. I knew someone else who got a degree in math from MIT, and then got a master’s degree in acoustics. I ran into him years later and got to see what he did on a “day to day” basis. There is apparently a lot of mathematics in making sure that a concert hall will have good sound quality in a wide range of seats (or to fix it if it doesn’t), and in keeping your car quiet on the inside for the passengers and driver. Other people with a degree in OR might go into finance, or into modelling the operations of a business (possibly including things like shipping ore from one location to another, turning it into metal plus waste, then shipping them elsewhere, and so on).
Similarly the companies who deliver packages (FEDEX, UPS, and so on) are very, very good at optimizing their routes. They employ a few very good mathematicians. I can remember a couple of times that I was expecting a package, went on line to see where it was, and discovered that it was within a couple of miles of my house and the driver had six or eight more deliveries to go before it would arrive. Then on one occasion I watched online as the driver delivered other packages to homes and businesses all within a mile of my home. This of course saves on driving time and fuel, but there can be quite a bit of math involved in saving driving time and fuel. A mathematician might call this an “NP-hard” problem, which is a class of problems which are very difficult or impossible to solve optimally, but for which there are some good approximations available.
More recently a friend gave me a tour of a radio telescope. Apparently there is a lot of math in analyzing the data collected by a radio telescope. Also apparently the most accurate possible way to determine the distance between a radio telescope in Massachusetts and a radio telescope in Germany involves analyzing signals received from some of the most distant objects in the universe, and comparing the very precise time that the signals arrive at both locations. They can measure the northeast of the US moving away from Europe at rather slow speeds by this method (my recollection is that it was something like a cm or two or three per year of drift, but I might be mistaken on the exact rate).
My favourite part of OR might be: The mathematics in general, and dynamic nature of some solutions. As examples, stochastic processes (where I took multiple graduate courses) involve processes that evolve over time. You get to mathematically analyze how this evolves. Similarly networking algorithms in some cases evolve over time. There is also quite a bit in economics and politics which largely involves arguing about opinions. In contrast OR and econometrics (quantitative economics) gives quantitative answers and solutions, so you have something solid to base your opinions on.
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Thank you so much! You’ve given so much info to learn off of and fuel my love for OR
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And that is perfectly fine! You have a sure thing or two for admission, so it’s fine to try the others.
As I mentioned earlier, your major doesn’t necessarily need to match your career goal (engineering is an exception but you don’t sound like that’s something you want to do anyway).
You can get a fine education, and learn a LOT at all of the colleges on your list.
Please do keep us posted on your successes!
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Thank you I will!
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Update: Accepted to USC!
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Question: Is not getting a yale or harvard interview a bad sign? I read that not getting a yale interview or likely basically means thet you’re rejected and harvard prescreens… can anyone confirm?