Let’s get some terminology straight. In the US, a college is any 4 year bachelor’s degree institution that may or may not also offer a master’s. They might also offer an occasional PhD. Two year, associate degree granting institutions are called junior colleges. In Canada, a college is virtually identical to a US junior college and we certainly have them. In Quebec, they are known as CEGEPs (college d’education general et professional) and the “professional” (really vocational) programs are three years, while the general ones are required to get into university. A university in Canada may well be just like a US college but is probably more commonly like a US university.
When my daughter went to Williams College in Massachusetts, it was hard to convince people here that she was in a four year program and getting a bachelor’s. When she applied to graduate schools, she got into Michigan, Indiana, and UCal Berkeley (all with generous support), but not to McGill. I assume McGill just didn’t understand where Williams ranks in the US context. It seems odd because when I chaired a graduate school admissions committee, we went to considerable effort to find out about the undergraduate institution, if we were in any doubt.
That is strange. Williams is in the highest ranks of U.S. colleges and is at least as prestigious as some of the universities in the Ivy League sports conference. The focus is different and it is much smaller but anybody that cares about that sort of thing in the U.S., especially on the East Coast, knows that. I am surprised that Canadians in academia don’t know what a liberal arts college in the U.S. really is. There are hundreds of them and they aren’t junior colleges.
I’m sure McGill could figure it out. They would have had her transcript, so it’s not like they couldn’t tell she was at a four year school, and that just because it was called a “college” didn’t mean it was automatically a two-year program.
You just aren’t necessarily going to get into every school you apply to, you know? I don’t know why you assume that the school made a mistake. It’s not like where you went to undergrad is the be all and end all to getting into grad school. FWIW, I’m a grad student at Michigan and I have classmates that went to Ivy League schools and classmates that went to state commuter schools for their undergrads.
He’s just saying that you fancy book-learnin’ types from places like UofC spent a whole bunch of money for nothing!
Disclaimer: UofC was the school I dropped out of.
