McGill University: The Cons
Student Support
The school provides a poor support network for its students in terms of academics and health. The university largely leaves students to fend for themselves. It can be a jarring change coming from high school and students are forced to adapt quickly, or otherwise fail their courses.
Academic Focused
McGill is a research focused school and as a result, less of a focus is placed on the undergraduate students. The University places heavy emphasis on academic rigour and math heavy courses generally have low averages. This isn't all bad as it breeds discipline and knowledge, however, certain infamous Computer Science courses tested my existence as a human being.
Language Barrier
While McGill is an English speaking university, the rest of Montreal is not, and it can be frustrating for anglophone students to deal with. The majority of Montreal the population speaks English, but it's on varying degrees of proficiency and some people are rude when you only speak English.
Once my Canada Post mailman started arguing with me because I couldn't understand what he was saying, and demanded me to learn French. These moments are uncommon, but not rare.
It is also difficult to find jobs as an anglophone and I was pretty much restrained to jobs on campus. Most campus jobs still require or prefer you to be bilingual, so your job opportunities are limited.
Recruiting
Not a lot of emphasis being placed on onsite campus recruiting from large firms. Don't expect the school to offer great assistance in helping undergraduate students find internships or jobs outside of the semi-annual job fair. Networking and speaking events take place around the year, but are not emphasized by the school.
Management and Engineering faculties are better in this respect, however, other faculties do not have access to those opportunities. This is one of the downsides of attending a research oriented school.
The Weather
While Montreal is a beautiful city when it's warm out, the city is infamous for its long and cold winters. It starts getting cold near the end of October to November, and starts warming back-up around late April or May. That means 5 months of tempatures ranging from 0 C to -30 C. The city is covered in snow and ice for a seemingly never ending winter.
This was never a huge con to me as I weirdly like the colder tempatures, but on some days in January/Febraury it gets really bad. Do not get a room facing the street because you will be constantly woken up by trucks clearing the snow. The upside is that Montreal has a White Christmas every year, so that's nice.
There is also great mountains for skiing and chalets one to two hours away from downtown that one can take advantage of.
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