- Two of my nieces went to Mount A, and loved it. One was a country, one a city girl.
-S1 is in his senior year at McGill, and I have hosts of friends who went there, U of T, UBC, and other(don’t forget Queens) places. In general, they are all big places, so you are always going to have an anecdotal story about something at one of those places. I would say this. All those schools have more in common with a big, elite State school (i.e. Michigan, Wisconsin or Berkeley)than an Ivy. S1 has close friends going to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth. McGill seems to most closely resemble Columbia, albeit with it’s own special flavour.
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don’t forget Queens for just about everything. Very good school that is a little bit less intense, though still very good.
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McMaster for Health Sciences, Biomed. Again, less intense, a bit more suburban.
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Western for Business. Western is sort of like Canada’s version of Wisconsin.
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Waterloo for Math, engineering, Actuarial Science and CS. Smaller city one hour away from Toronto, but I don’t know that I’d call it less intense. As a matter of fact, it might be the craziest of all the schools for rigor. Famed for it’s Co-ops, and placements in Silicon Valley.
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York for business
The odd student goes to one of the big schools and ends up not being able to handle it. Many more mature, learn to handle life on their own(residence is usually assured only for the 1st year), and have the time of their lives. S1 has become philosophical about the grading, but is learning tons, and has made friends from all over the world.