UIUC’s CS + X majors or the BS in Mathematics & Computer Science should be of interest as well.
Should I add MIT to my list? I know that they like people with a lot of math olympiad awards which I don’t have. I was considering Caltech since they have a higher acceptance rate for girls and California weather is nice lol
My son attended Caltech. He didn’t stay there because he actually wanted a balanced social life, along with his career goals.
I constantly repeat this because I think you need to understand that it’s not a typical undergraduate education. Caltech is a research institution. You will be expected to perform independently because the other students are so focused on their projects and future research goals, that everyone is basically doing their own thing. Uber eats is very popular because no one wants to stop what they’re doing. They pick up their meals from the delivery people and go right back to their work.
Going to Caltech is not going to give you US residency except/unless you plan on going to school to get your PhD. That’s a lot of expensive years of your parents’ supporting you to go through a PhD.
Please don’t assume that going to a US school will give you a new address in the US because the laws for immigration continue to change and get stricter.
My son-in-law is from Canada and did attend the University of Waterloo. He met our daughter while she was at the University of Buffalo. They got married two years ago and he still can’t work. He’s waiting on paperwork.
A number of Southern California firms are unfamiliar with the University of Waterloo, so he’s hoping that his projects and strong résumé will eventually lead to a job. He’s made several connections via social networking and number of acquaintances have gotten to know his personality. His green card notice came through recently.
The only reason he’s living here is because he married an American citizen.
So please don’t make assumptions in that getting into a US college will get you residency immigration status in the US.
Edited to add: That’s two years that he hasn’t been able to make income in the US. Living in Southern California, with our cost of living for rentals and mortgages, is tough for him. He doesn’t like living on my daughter’s income, although she makes really good money. He wants to make his own money. I don’t blame him.
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I had the same thought–your Canadian options are so strong, it is hard for me to recommend paying more for a US university that is basically the same sort of thing–a large public university with strong research.
I think people in your position sometimes only apply to really reachy US colleges they actually see as notably better for them than their home options, and that is a perfectly fine strategy under those conditions. I gather for you that includes Cornell. And if that was it, that would be OK! On your list, though, at least Princeton, CMU, and Stanford are a different type of college than your Canadian options.
If you were interested, there are more colleges in the US that are at least different in size and format from the Canadian universities that you listed, some very different.
Like Williams, say, is a small Liberal Arts and Sciences college that actually has a tutorial system, and generally it would be quite different from a large public. It would also potentially be excellent for exploring your academic interests, and in fact it is both a top feeder to finance careers and a top feeder to CS PhD programs when you look at that on a per capita basis (to adjust for its smaller size):
Not at Williams, but at others, you might also get offered merit. Like, St Olaf (a forum favorite) would again provide a very different experience, it has a robust merit program that includes Internationals, and it could also be a good fit academically. Like, you might want to check out their Finance Fast Track if you are interested:
https://wp.stolaf.edu/admissions/students/majors/finance-fast-track/
St Olaf is also good for CS, Math, and so on if you want to go one of those directions instead.
Anyway, you might well think colleges like this are not as attractive as your Canadian options, factoring in costs and such, in which case you might have a very short list of US colleges. But if either or both of these are intriguing options, we could identify more to consider.
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Wow thank you so much for all the information! I will definitely look into Williams and St. Olaf as options to consider. I’m also interested in Harvey Mudd and Cooper Union for CS because we don’t have small class sizes like that in Canada.
That was not my experience, although this was a long time ago. As a Canadian with a degree from MIT, and later as a Canadian with degrees from MIT and Stanford, job hunting in Canada was very bleak. It would have been significantly easier to find a job in Canada with a degree from one of the top Canadian universities, or probably anything in the top 30 if not 50 universities in Canada.
This would be entirely dependent upon how you would feel about going there. You are competitive for MIT, but so are probably 85% of applicants. The acceptance rate is closer to 4%.
MIT is a lot of work. If you are the #1 or #2 student in your high school, and if you found that the math part of the regular SAT test was just too easy, then you might be average at MIT, and will still find it to be quite challenging. This is both a plus and a minus. Some students love it. Some students hate it. Some love it part of the time and hate it part of the time, or even at the same time.
I happened to be a student in California during a drought, which meant that it did not rain one drop for the full time that it took to get a master’s degree. This in turn meant that bicycling to class was very feasible. If you are from Canada, the winters in Cornell might seem snowy but otherwise normal, Michigan might seen normal, and most of the rest of the US is likely to be at least a little bit milder than you are used to, although this might depend upon where in Canada you come from.
Some top universities do not admit by major. As one example at MIT your major is just used to help to assign you to a freshman year advisor, and if you pick a very popular major such as CS you might get a random freshman year advisor.
Math is applicable in a wide range of careers, including finance. CS plus math is IMHO a good combination, but I might be biased since this is pretty close to what I did.
I think that you should apply to the major that you want, then see where you get accepted.
One thing that might be worth adding: Income taxes in the US are insanely complicated. One daughter had to file both US and Canadian taxes for a few years on an exceptionally low and simple income (part time research work while being a full time student). She noticed how huge the difference is between the complexity of filing in both countries. In the exceptionally unlikely case that you take out US citizenship then you are required to file US taxes for life, even if you later return to Canada. If a dual citizen owns their primary home in Canada and sells it, they would not owe taxes to Canada, but would quite likely owe a LOT of tax to the US. The complexity of US tax laws for someone living outside the country with assets both inside and outside the US is one of the three main things that stops me from returning to Canada – the tax forms would just be too complicated for a normal human to figure out how to do it. I am not sure what the situation is for someone who gets permanent residence in the US, but I suspect that it might be the same. There can be in some cases an option for a few students to get a temporary work status in the US after getting a university degree in the US, and I think that the tax implications time out when the visa times out, but this is only for a limited period of time (maybe a year or two).
And that PhD in the US can be obtained after getting a bachelor’s degree in Canada.
Those would definitely be very different options from your Canadian schools for CS! I note I believe the CS program is relatively new at Cooper Union, but they are so good at what they do I would not doubt it is going to be a good program.
If you are interested in more small college options that sort of straddle CS and quantitative finance stuff, Swarthmore and Amherst would also be worth checking out.
I’d also mention WashU (in St Louis), which is more a medium-sized research university, but still quite different from a large public. They are very big on combining different disciplines, having multiple diverse majors and minors, and so on. They have been investing a lot (it is a very wealthy university) in both CS and Finance/Business stuff, and in fact they have a Joint Degree Program in Business and CS you might find interesting:
Off hand it looks to me like you might be most interested in their Business Analytics cluster.
Another medium-sized private research university with a program like that is Lehigh:
They have a variety of optional tracks you can consider depending on how your interests develop:
These are not the only US universities to be doing things like that, but again I am trying to think of US colleges which would also be quite different experiences from your Canadian options. Both have merit programs that include Internationals, although they are very competitive.
If you would like to preserve your options, then consider at least some schools with notably flexible curricula. At schools of this type, as well as at schools with moderately flexible curricula, your major(s) can be determined in the second semester of your sophomore year, and your area(s) of emphasis (or emphases) even after that.
For another excellent school along these lines, look into Hamilton, which will be constructing a computer science center with “best-in-class technologies and resources”:
Moreover, somewhat uncommonly for an LAC, Hamilton’s national-level economics department offers several finance-specific courses.
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Just to clarify for others, a work permit is available to spouses of U.S. citizens who are living in the U.S. while their application for a green card is pending. (In technical terms, the I-130, I-485, and I-765 can and should be filed concurrently.) The work permit (EAD) will be approved generally within 6-9 months, but the green card (LPR) may indeed take years to be adjudicated. It is unclear why your son-in-law has been living in the U.S. for two years without being able to work.
The how do you know and you should not claim this as it can’t be verified.
You list a lot of activities. Make sure they are legit and not embellished. You want to show tenure and growth. I’m not saying they aren’t legit but it did pop in my mind.
You certainly have the ability to get in anywhere. But these are hard schools.
You might add a few underneath - a Purdue, UMD, Wisconsin type. For these you will need to decide on major up front. A U Florida doesn’t admit by major so might be a good one as back up too - also a top school.
Ps - there’s no reason to ED or ED2 unless those are your clear top 2 schools.
On the other hand, if it’s Waterloo if not Cornell, why any other schools ?
Good luck.
Sorry to be off topic to the OP. From what I understand his paperwork was “lost” several times. At that time they had a fiancé visa. I don’t know if they’re still doing that.
He applied to enter the states in 2021, during the middle of Covid. There was a halt of admissions into the US. He was one of those whose entry was delayed.
Original paperwork that he filed in 2021 had to be refiled. I know that he worked with an attorney’s office and a paralegal. This process was not streamlined. He entered the US in October 2022 on a fiancé visa.
What makes you think it will be different here?
Most intern here in summer and few get as first years. Even second year, while possible, is tough.
Sounds like a mess. Still unclear why he has not been issued a work permit since entering the country in 2022 (he would have been immediately eligible for a short-term work permit on the finance visa and then later a new work permit could have been issued after he married and applied for a green card). Anyway, congratulations on him finally receiving residency. That’s terrific!
These are good suggestions but given that the poster may have to return to Canada, I have to wonder what job prospects for a recent graduate from what may well be an unknown college might be? Canadian universities would be very well known as the industries would be hiring lots of graduates from schools such as U Toronto and U Waterloo so these schools have a given track record for these fields. Even highly ranked LACs such as Williams, Amherst, Harvey Mudd would not be known by many in Canada. It’s possible the companies in these fields may not be as familiar with these schools or their students and don’t know how they compare with the graduates of the schools with whom they are familiar. Note this wouldn’t be the case with Cornell, Stanford, Princeton etc so I can understand why Canadians often end up only applying to these types of highly rejective schools as you previously pointed out since cost but also reputation in the home country may play a role. The Canadian universities would likely be familiar with these schools so grad school admissions would probably not be a concern.
I definitely am in no position to comment on the relative utility of US undergrad degrees when seeking employment in Canada. As a general rule, though, I would suggest it is potentially dicey to do any undergrad degree program outside of your target employment country if you intend for that to be your terminal degree. I think if that is the goal, the usual best advice is to either plan to go to your target employment country for a postgrad degree, or just start there.
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I think the goal of the poster is to get a job in the US. The problem is that this may not be an easily obtainable goal in which case finding a job in Canada may be the only recourse. I know that schools such as Yale, Princeton and Stanford are known but so are schools with research output such as Washington University in St. Louis, Carnegie Mellon, New York University etc. This isn’t true of LACs even if they are highly rated in the US. I know some internationals including some from Canada who have never heard of a Williams or a Swarthmore.
So I know a decent number of Canadians attend Williams, and other prominent LACs:
So probably the best thing for the OP to do would be to see if she could actually be put into contact with a Canadian student at any LACs of interest, and see if they could help sort through these issues.
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