S24, a US citizen, was admitted to 20+ schools. After careful consideration, he narrowed his list down to five schools: Purdue (DS), UIUC (IS+DS), Toronto (CS), McGill (CS), and UCL (CS). He is leaning towards studying abroad since the experience will be more interesting and he prefers to live in a big city. I am concerned that studying abroad may make it difficult for him to secure CS jobs in the US after graduation. Are there any other issues to consider?
If he includes the fact that he is a US citizen on his resume / application, then US employers will see that they will not have to deal with getting a work visa for him. It is not like people with non-US degrees are rare in computing jobs in the US.
Attending a university in Canada may be helpful for getting a job and residency in Canada should he want to stay there.
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I agree with ucbalumnus re. job applications
If he wants a typical American college experience (sports, big school spirit, Greek life, etc) he will not get that abroad.
I think the biggest issue is sort of an obvious issue.
If you change your mind about what you want study and then do as your next steps, it is typically far better to be at a US undergrad program. And many people in the US do change their mind during undergrad–including because they can, and also because the typical gen ed/distributional requirements, plus sometimes internships and such, can in fact open their minds to new interests, new talents, and new possibilities they didn’t know about in HS.
That said, if you are truly sure you will not change your mind, then a non-US undergrad program may be a great experience otherwise (assuming you want that sort of experience of course).
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While true in general, the US universities mentioned (Purdue and UIUC) would be very difficult to change into the CS major at. So if CS is the most likely desired major, then they would not be good fits for the student.
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Right, to clarify, they would be better choices if this kid decided they wanted to do something entirely different from CS/DS. If the kid knows for sure they want to do CS then the actual CS courses would likely be better (although off hand I have heard the US employer recruiting at Canadian unis tends to be better than in the UK).
McGill and Toronto are well known in the US. I have certainly heard of UCL on multiple occasions, and I think that it is also relatively well known.
We live in the US. One daughter attended university in Canada at a small school that is very good but that is mostly not known at all in the US. She did not have any trouble finding a job in the US after graduation. She did need to repeat the sentence “I am a US citizen” multiple times when asked, but she got three job offers in her first five weeks of looking in the US. This was in biotech and not CS. She has also done well in terms of applying to graduate programs in the US (she starts her PhD in the US in a few months).
I would not be too concerned about job hunting in the US.
Both Montreal and Toronto are attractive cities. While they are big cities, they should be a bit safer compared to similarly sized cities in the US. While speaking a little French might be helpful in Montreal, it is not needed to attend McGill and the area around McGill (and Concordia which is just up the street) is largely fully bilingual.
London is huge. The roads seem as if they were laid out by the same drunken cows who laid out some of the original roads in Boston (maybe they brought them over on ships in the 1600’s). I tried to drive once when I had a meeting at UCL, and found it quite difficult to navigate. This was however before there was GPS so it should be a lot easier now. London would be a very interesting place to live for four years, but then so would Montreal or Toronto.
The large majority of people who I work with in high tech in the US were born outside the US. They are here with a range of visa statuses, with many being US citizens (often naturalized). I used to have regular meetings every two weeks where there was no one at all in the meetings who was born in the US (a recent hire has changed this). This is at a high tech company in the US. This would seem to make it quite normal for hiring managers in the US in high tech to think to check the immigrant status of any particular potential hire. One line on the resume stating citizenship should be sufficient, I would think.
My understanding is that university in Canada is closer to the US model compared to university in the UK. Changing majors for example is relatively common in Canada. I am pretty sure that a student would have to apply to change majors at Toronto or McGill, but that is likely true at the two US schools that your son is considering. My daughter who got her bachelor’s degree in Canada did change her major, and she did need to apply to be allowed to change her major. In her case this however turned out to be quite easy (good grades overall and in two major-related classes probably helped her quite a bit).
You might want to pay attention to likely travel costs (although for us Montreal would be way closer than most of the US). Otherwise I do not think that I would be concerned about a child studying abroad in either Canada or the UK.
I think this is a good point, especially considering that the CS job market has been pretty tough lately. Studying abroad may open up more opportunities for him, allowing him to apply to companies in the US, and UK/Canada.
From what I understand, it’s not too difficult to change or add a major at Toronto and McGill, pretty similar to US schools. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to change courses in the UK, but he can finish the program in 3 years.
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I note that my understanding is that style of map, credited to Harry Beck in 1932, was designed to be easily grasped, but is not actually geographically accurate.
The accurate map is, well, more in keeping with London’s above-ground chaos:
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But he’ll need to obtain a work permit to work in the UK or Canada. That means finding an employer who is willing to sponsor, wait for the permit to be granted (can take months in the UK), etc.
Thank you for sharing your daughter’s insightful job hunting journey. We haven’t visited UCL yet, but I understand that it is in a good location in London.
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A big part of the decision will be what the student’s most likely desired major is, and how likely that is to change.
If the student is firmly decided for CS, then Purdue and UIUC drop down in desirability, due to difficulty of changing to CS there.
I’m not familiar with the UK work permit policy, but I found the Graduate Route on the UCL website, Graduate Route | Students - UCL – University College London. It seems that this visa allows students to work in the UK after graduation.
That’s good. It looks like they’ve simplified things for UK graduates.
You’re right about the unique US college life experience. I’m also concerned about the lack of opportunity to build a network of friends in the US if he studies abroad.
I think London is exceptionally easy to get around but I would never drive there. The tube is so easy though and the buses are good too as is walking.
Would he be interested in just studying abroad one semester or year? That’s what my D22 ended up deciding to do. We did a deep dive on UK universities during COVID and were this close to planning a trip to visit them but she ended up deciding to stay stateside and do study abroad for a semester. She’s going to London next spring.
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Graduates from UK or Canadian universities automatically get a work visa.
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I think S24 will be interested in studying abroad at some point, but he hasn’t looked too much into it. He was admitted to the Northeastern London Scholars program, where he will spend the first year studying in London, but he ultimately decided against it.
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