<p>Tom of Boston… just relaying what the student reported. Maybe he preferred the city vibe of London, ON to that of Montreal, PQ? I’ve never visited either campus…so I am not sure where he was coming from.</p>
<p>D will be graduating in May. She’s a 4.0 student with a 30 ACT. One of the schools she is looking at gives good NMS scholarships but she didn’t take the PSAT because she didn’t know about it. Nobody at her HS knew to take it. Shame because we could use the merit money.</p>
<p>I was depending too much on the GC but now have decided I need to be responsible for everything. That decision was my first step, finding this group was my second!</p>
<p>CIA, most schools re-calculate your GPA so in a sense, that would be the same as saying they look at weighted GPA. I guess you want a better idea of what your chances are of getting into a college? I mean, you already have your list, right?</p>
<p>CIA - I understand your urge, but schools are too variable on how they look at GPA. Some weight one way, or another, some not at all, some remove certain classes, some remove certain years. Unfortunately that’s not a convenient way to build a list, although it seems like it might be.</p>
<p>You’re doing a good job so far. Keep asking questions!</p>
<p>Hi- checking in. My D, who has been in the wilderness backcountry for the last two weeks working on trails with the youth conservation corps, was finally able to phone home en route to another remote destination for the final two weeks. She is giving her experience a thumbs up! I am grateful for the other posters here who were supportive when I expressed my anxiety about her. Then there occured more unusual tornado activity in Montana. Then again there was the news about the grizzly maulings outside of Cooke City! But they haven’t seen any bears, moose, or snakes. The blisters are healing. The multiple nighttime rains weren’t too bad. They’re even going to pack in a cake for her birthday! I felt bad reminding her about the Common App coming out and that it’s time to think about those essays! She’s been reading but not journaling; I asked her to at least write down her observations of the mountains and of the people in her group to get into the groove.</p>
<p>The GPA- D’s is 4.0 UW so far and D’s school doesn’t weight. The school has FAR fewer APs than others on CC- D’s taken everything available. Now to hear that the way schools treat GPA may hurt her… forget it! We’re going to stuff that away back in the unfathomable box.</p>
<p>stillwater - don’t forget that they look at grades within the context of the school. If she’s taken as much rigor as she can, they will appreciate that and treat her accordingly. They don’t compare kids at small town HS’s directly to kids at fancy prep schools; they take context into account.</p>
<p>We are on our Canadian college tour this week. We’ll look at McGill in a couple of weeks when we are up at our house in the Laurentians, but looked once before with my son and almost all of our bright Canadian nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles etc. went or go to McGill. Tom is an alumnus and is thus more knowledgeable than my hearsay, but here’s what I hear. All of the kids who apply themselves have done very well later on (grad schools including Oxford, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, McGill). One did not apply herself for a while because she is stunningly good looking and always had the world come to her. That didn’t happen at McGill, though partway through she actually started to work. Freshman classes (lectures of 800) can be large if you don’t have some advance placement. This thins out as you get to more advanced subjects, as a) fewer people have interest; and b) kids get kicked out (more of a pyramid than a rectangular policy). Sections of the smaller glasses with grad student TAs. The first year sounded somewhat indifferent from an academic perspective, but the students have a great time socially. As things thin out, students concentrate more than they might in a US college and thus my science major nephews say that they had basically completed their first year of graduate coursework (relative to kids at US schools). The upper level courses and opportunities to do research in professors’ labs was rewarding. The science majors report great satisfaction with their education. The econ major didn’t feel that there were very many bright kids (especially among the kids in the Commerce program) but he is an exceptionally bright kid who subsequently placed a the top of his program at Oxford. In retrospect, he would have liked to have attended HYP but he was told that you could go anywhere as an undergrad but that you head to the States for grad school. </p>
<p>The kids live off campus after the first year, but McGill takes over big swaths of Montreal (which is a great city). Socially they have fun. The drinking age is 18, which means that there is no problem with binge drinking. </p>
<p>Others including Tom can feel free to comment.</p>
<p>Do Canadian cities have "bad areas"and safety problems similar to US cities? Not that I am saying US cities are unsafe, just that people are more weary in US cities compared to the suburbs and villages.</p>
<p>Thanks all. We have a lot of family in Montreal so we are very familiar wiith it. It is quite safe but it is a big city, so you need the usual street smarts. We decided to cross Mgill off the list as we want more of a classic American college experience for our son and he claims it is too cold. Visited UPenn and Swarthmore. Son liked UPenn a lot but didn’t like Swarthmore, felt it was too small and insular and all work and no play. Also prefers more research orientation for science. Are visiting Amherst and if he doesn’t like it will prob take LACs off the list which will then become much more manageable. Am trying to plan visit to a more safetyish school, but those are all further off. Is anyone considering UVA oos?</p>
<p>Montreal is certainly cold and snowy in the winter. Personally, I enjoyed it! I never had to drive in the snow or shovel it. Personally, I much prefer Montreal in January to say New Orleans in August. Montrealers do not hibernate in winter but embrace it. But that is a personal preference. If you are considering schools in upstate New York or New England away from the coast, the weather is not that much milder than Montreal.</p>
<p>McGill certainly does not provide the “traditional college experence”: a fully residential campus in a secluded defined area, Even at many American schools that guarantee four years of on campus housing half the students move off campus by junior year. To fully enjoy and succeed at McGill, a student needs to be a self starter and capable of dealing with life issues early on. A student also has to like the hustle, bustle and hassles of cities. </p>
<p>What passes for “high crime” areas in Montreal (Montreal-Nord and parts of Cote-des-Neiges) are far removed from downtown and would be the envy of any big American city if they were their worst neighborhoods. Normal urban precautions should be taken in Montreal but it is extremely safe by American standards.</p>
<p>Aniger, I don’t know if this will help, but I’ve just looked at the college counselor’s list for ShawSon, which was made before he took SATs or ACTs. [It turned out that he did surprisingly well on both, which might have moved some of the probables to safeties.] Safeties were UMass-Amherst, Bates, Sarah Lawrence and Tufts (not normally a safety but one of their profs wrote one of his recs and the President is a close friend, though he doesn’t intervene in admissions). Also on the safety list that he didn’t apply to UVM, U of Arizona, McGill, American and Hampshire. Probables that he applied to were Rochester, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Vassar, and that he didn’t apply to were Connecticut College, Lehigh, Bucknell, Hamilton.</p>
<p>I just visited Rochester this week with ShawD and it strikes me as a terrific school whose quality is in many ways higher than its public reputation.</p>
<p>Son got a SLICK expensive brochure – more like a folder really, with pages inside – from Duke today. Had a fold-out page with a sky-view shot of the campus. Holy cow, what a gorgeous place! He once said he’d love to go to Duke, but he doesn’t have the grades for it and it’s really too far from home for what he realistically wants. But wow, what a beautiful spread in the brochure!</p>
<p>The AP issue will be a problem for my S as well. His school offers very few-he will only have the opportunity to take 1 (Spanish 5) and then only if he gets that class on his schedule this fall.</p>
<p>His school offers EEP classes-Early Enrollment Program- which means he is taking college level classes in HS and getting college credits for them-without having to take an AP test. He is listed as a non-matriculating student at RI College and if the college he applies to accepts them he can transfer those credits over.</p>
<p>I have found this to be a very good program but if he leaves RI which in a likelihood he will he is going to have a problem with out of state colleges accepting them or even knowing what they are. As the poster said though these things are beyond his control-he has taken the hardest classes he has been able to and in the end that’s all he can do.</p>
<p>When we visited Villanova last week someone asked a question about this topic. Villanova will not give college credit for college level classes unless those classes are AP classes and the student scores a 4 or 5 or the class is taken on a college campus with college students.</p>
<p>The rep also said nova does not recalc GPA. They do note which schools give bumps for AP and honors classes though.</p>