International student needing general directions

DadTwoGirls
Thu, 01 Feb 2024 17:34:29 +0000

First of all, McGill is a very good university and is well known and well respected in the US.

Yes, universities in the US are expensive. Master’s degrees are frequently unfunded. I have heard of some students getting partial funding for a master’s degree, but I think that this is rare and I do not know how to go about getting this.

Immigration to the US is difficult to do and also somewhat difficult to predict. If you get a master’s degree in the US, that does not allow you to stay in the US after graduation. You will be expected to leave the US and return to your home country after graduation (although immigration to Canada seems like it might be possible).

Also, there is a good reason to be cautious about getting either a permanent resident visa or citizenship in the US. The US feels that it has a right to tax Americans regardless of where in the world the American lives and works. Also, US taxes are horribly complicated (I have described our annual tax return as “a small book” – I might need to amend the “small” part). Also, US taxes are even more complicated if you live outside the US. You probably should not want to immigrate to the US unless you are quite confident that you will want to stay here for the rest of your life. Coming here temporarily as a student on a student visa does not carry this risk, as far as I know.

I agree with @aunt_bea that, at the risk of an understatement, the US not lacking in students or recent graduates with political science degrees. You need to think about what you would do with this degree before you spend the time and money and effort to come to the US to earn it.

The US is obviously full of people who are going to understand US history better or at least in more detail compared to those of us who grew up outside the US (I was reminded of this while watching a TV quiz show called Jeopardy recently). However, having grown up outside the US will give you (and me) a different perspective from what a US-born citizen might have.

If your long term plan were to teach US history and politics at a university in Europe, then I could see how getting a graduate degree from a university in the US might be compatible with this plan. How to fund it would be a different issue. A master’s degree from McGill plus a PhD in the US might be one option, and PhD’s are usually funded in the US, although admissions is very competitive in general and probably even more competitive for an international student, and PhD’s take a lot of time and effort.