nugget

I don't think students have any extra incentives per se, but some may not want to say bad things about their program because others could find out about it or it could reflect badly on them. If you are getting generic responses, perhaps your questions need to be more specific to generate more detailed answers.If you are already dong this, I'm not sure what else you could do. Sometimes talking to someone in person can be helpful in getting people to open up to you, but I realize you may not have the ability to visit the school at this point. Perhaps setting up a telephone appointment with some students would generate more responses. You will be able to hear hesitation in their voices, pauses, or enthusiasm, for instance, which would not come across in an email.

At Canadian universities, typically somewhere between 4-10 applicants are selected out of 250 applicants.

Without a doubt, yes. A clinical program prepares you to be a researcher,counselling psychologist and to assess clients. The degree prepares you for a broader range of jobs and fewer spots are typically available in clinical psyc programs than counselling. All these factors, I believe, make it a more competitive program to get into.

This depends (answer to your first question). It does not make you look good to switch mid-program. Instead you may come across as not knowing what you want to do career and research-wise and some people might not be too happy with you. Are you in a PhD or an MA program and which year are you in? Do not expect that you will be able to able to transfer all of your courses over when you changes schools. This might not happen and you might need to take some extra courses in order to meet program requirements. It might also get awkward asking for references. Again, I ask what year you are in because if you are still in your first year, you may still be able to to ask some of the references you used to get into your current program to help you out again. It could get sticky asking your current supervisor for a reference though. Do you have a legitimate reason that you are willing to share when you have that discussion with this person or do you just not like your current program or school?

In response to your comment posted on the duplicate thread.... OP: "I dont know the rankings. I searched US news rankings counseling psychology but only clinical and psychology come up which might be different than counseling." Do some of the profs for the clinical programs teach some of the counselling courses in the counselling program? You may find a lot of cross over. If this is the case, the rankings of the clinical programs may be a pretty good indication of how strong the counselling psych departments are.

How were applicants notified? If done by email or online, I would assume you are on an unofficial waitlist. In that case, I'd wait it out unless you have an urgent deadline coming up to respond to one of your offers. If that's the case, you may want to politely ask when you should expect to hear back and decide what to do. If notifications were mailed out, give it an extra day or two. Your letter might be taking a little longer to mail out, that's all. If you don't receive one by Tuesday, you are likely on a waitlist. Personally, I'd wait it out some more. Some schools would rather keep you waiting and send out a clear acceptance or rejection rather than send out wait list notifications followed acceptances and rejections later on. Perhaps they do this to reduce admin work or maybe they don't want their wait listed applicants to get discouraged and accept an offer somewhere else if they know they are waitlisted. Who knows. April 15 is still far away so try to be patient and wait. It's really hard to know what will happen at this point in time.

Good points mentioned by mathcat. I should also add that that if the school says you must have a double major and you really are failing the course, consider dropping the course and retaking it in the summer, with the help of a private tutor if needed to ensure you get a B or whatever grade you need to meet minimum requirements.

I am not familiar with your field, but I can tell you that McGill in general is an excellent university. Either #1 or 2 in Canada. It is also well regarded and well recognized by Americans and has Ivy league status in the US, I've heard. So if you're concerned about being able to work in the US after graduation I don't think it would be an issue. Of course it is entirely up to you, but if visiting your family is important to you, McGill seems to be the obvious choice.

Do you really believe you'll fail or simply get a low grade? I think it would be worth your while to find out the minimum acceptable grade for your outstanding course requirements. It may not be as high as you think. Often times, I've heard that only a B is required for outstanding courses without the risk of having your offer revoked, but this varies from school to school and it will depend on whether or not you think you will be able to attain that.

What kind of program is it? Professional masters degrees tend to not give funding whereas research based ones often do.

I think it's ridiculous for the author to suggest that a $10,000 or $15,000 salary increase is insignificant, particularly when some of the salaries are in the $40-60,000 range. Multiply this amount by 30 or 40 years and the numbers will add up quickly, even as much as half a million dollars before taxes. This is easily the cost of a house for some. Money also isn't everything. Plenty of wealthy people have been unhappy, depressed, or in some unfortunate situations, even committed suicide. Clearly their wealth did not help them out much. There is no point in pursuing a field of study simply because it pays well if one is miserable doing that line of work or at the expense of ones' dreams, IMO.

hahaha... That's hilarious.

If you could provide us with a little more information if would be helpful to provide us with more context. Why do you want to change schools? If your research or field of study will be different, you could easily say your research interests have changed. If you hope to live and eventually begin a career in North America then this is a valid reason as well as grad school is the perfect opportunity to make connections in your field that may lead to employment.

When is the deadline of your second school? If it hasn't passed and you have enough time to submit all of the documents, including LORs, then you should be fine. Not sure about the school with rolling admissions, though. Consider asking the school how many spots have been filled and how many remain. If there is still room then I think you should apply and see what happens. Good luck!

Have you thought of asking them by email? It's a legitimate question and can greatly impact your decision.

If you check on page 4 you will see a thread on Montreal and McGill with lots of comments. After reading it, if you have any more questions feel free to send me a PM. I used to live there for many years.

A lot of students have their reading week in the 3rd week of February, and some have it this week. So some students will be on vacation or taking the week off. Hopefully you'll start to hear back from them soon.

I see you're from Toronto. Ottawa is cheaper than Toronto.

I would go to McGill personally because of the reputation of the school, lower cost of living, and it's also a much safer city than NYC. Montreal is definitely cold though. I'd recommend living walking distance to campus and a metro station if you do not drive and getting a Canada Goose winter coat. They're pricey but will keep you toasty warm.

McGill has an excellent reputation in Canada. It is one of the top 2 universities. In the US, McGill is considered an ivy league school by some. Why are you hesitant to go there?

Your case sounds very unusual and there are a lot of missing details from your original post. But based on what you've written, it sounds like the Dean may be willing to help you out, if you are in the right. If you do not cooperate, I think it would look like you are hiding something. If you go along with it, if there is anything to redeem you in the email correspondence, they will see it, which is a good thing. I don't think it makes sense to hide the emails as the prof in question also has the same emails and could forward them to the Dean's office if he so chooses (which is likely if he is collecting info to be used against you). But if the Dean finds something to redeem you in the emails he may bring it to light, whereas the prof will bury it. If you were much earlier into your program, you might have been able to transfer to another lab. I think your best bet now is to try to establish a working relationship with this person (which means temporarily burying the venom when you interact with this person, in spite of all the anger you have) otherwise you will have wasted most of the last 6 years of your life academically, burned a bridge in the field, possibly tarnished your reputation (you do not know if this professor will spread negative info about you to others in the field), and lost money in the 6 figure range due to loss of income if you had been working at a fulltime job for the past 6 years instead. Even if you sue the prof and are allowed to continue in the program, you will never be able to use this person as a reference so you would still end up losing in the end. It's not looking good for you at this point. I suggest that you do whatever you can to salvage this relationship and make it semi-functional. The Dean may be able to help if this person is on good terms with the Dean and respects his opinion. The Dean can only help if he has more information about the situation, which means sharing the email history. That's my 2 cents. Good luck.

What a tough spot to be in. Is deferring an option for you? Maybe you'd get better offers next year or secure external funding if you tried again next year. If I was in this spot, I know I'd try to defer the higher ranked school's offer by a year. My reasons are as follows...If you go to the lower ranked school to avoid debt but don't gain the employment prospects you desire then it's a loss for you. A loss of your time and income as you'd be earning much more money if you had a full time job during all of those years. Going to the better ranked school may open up some doors for you in the future, but you could be in debt for years afterwards if you cannot secure the external funding you require.

You are still waiting from one more school that's your top choice? I'd say, it's not over til it's over. You still might get accepted. Otherwise, I'd be inclined to ranking the four offers and asking your top choice to defer for one year and reapply to your favourite 5 again next year. If you don't get in two years in a row then it might be time to move on.

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Dawnzii, Laurier students can get practicums in Toronto. This generally isn't a problem. Something to be aware of is that UofT has exclusivity contracts with some of their practicum sites (not sure how many) which prohibit them from accepting MSW interns from other schools. So to a certain degree, practicum options for non-UofT students in Toronto are somewhat limited.