actuallyatree

Well, if you're getting support from your parents, step back and compare the two programs. Who would you be working with? Are there differences in what you would be working on? What is your opinion of brutalist architecture? Do you prefer commuting primarily by train or by bus? Which academic culture fits best with your own beliefs and values? (UBC is more traditional and surprisingly conservative, SFU has a strong history of radicalism, though it has moved away from that of late, for anyone who was wondering.) Think about which school you would pick if they both offered you the same amount of money. The fact that you're considering this makes me think you're leaning towards UBC, because if it really was a toss up between the two, you'd just follow the money. Have you spoken to any professors or current MA students in either program? Is all the SFU money in TA-ships? 17k is a lot of money for a masters student in the social sciences, so if part of it is in the form of some fellowship or award, that could be a potential CV booster.

It's just a matter of you getting used to the stiffer set up of a fixed gear bike. Eventually your ass will become immune to the pain, and you'll be all set. Spend a few months on a road bike and pretty soon mountain bikes will feel like they're made out pool noodles. I would be wary of riding on the sidewalk, I don't know the rules in Seattle but in a lot of places you get fined for doing so.

Wow, that's pretty quick getting all the college stuff sorted out. Nicely done. I still haven't heard anything yet, hoping I'll find out sometime this week.

No, it isn't stupid. Why should the prof or the TA do more work because you screwed up an earlier test? Unless you have unusual circumstances (death in the family, severe illness or injury) there is no reason for the professor to go out of his or her way to help you go to graduate school. If the school puts conditions on you, and you can't meet them, that's on you, not your professor. Sucks, but that is what it is.

Yep, I've had the same thing. I attended a graduate student fair that they were at, but I didn't speak to anyone from the school, or give them any information, but yet they started emailing me very frequently, and phoned me at least once. I think they've adopted a carpet bombing strategy for student recruitment, contacting anyone they can who seems interested in any sort of graduate program. I can't imagine it is particularly effective.

MSC Comparative Social Policy

I find this claim to be highly dubious. NBA players, for example, tend to come from two parent households with slightly above average income. At the 2012 Olympics, 37% of British medalists attended private schools (the bastions of the upper and upper-middle classes), compared to 7% of the general population. Elite athletics is, and always has been, dominated by people from middle or high income backgrounds.

I'd have loved to have attended Quest, and I think it would be pretty cool to teach at, but the alternative schools tend to also be very expensive. Quest is something like $25000 a year, compared to the $3000-$6000 it costs to attend most universities in Canada. Quest is the first, and I think still the only school like this in Canada, and it gets a fair amount of attention as a result. I worry as well that these alternative universities will lack many of the resources that are essential to a university education. I attended a rather small school for the bulk of my undergrad, and the library was beyond useless for resources, and the school didn't have access to many of the databases I needed to get articles from, so I was forced to convince my friends at bigger schools to give me their login information. The mentoring of students and personal curriculum design is something I saw at my traditional, small undergrad school. I think that is more a matter of size than of structure.

Absolutely this. ADHD is really hard to recognize, and can also be mis-diagnosed pretty easily. I was diagnosed after multiple doctors, therapists and even a psychiatrist thought I had Bipolar Disorder or some sort of personality disorder. It's also pretty common for more high achieving people to be diagnosed later in life, one of the more notable ADHD researchers around today wasn't diagnosed until partway through medical school, for example. Plus, it is pretty easy to think that everyone struggles to read more then a page at a time, and doesn't start writing papers until the night before they are due.

I don't know how the legacy thing works. We do have different last names, so that might impede things.

I understand hating How I Met Your Mother (I hate myself for having previously liked it), but what's so awful about ice cream? Jeans suck. I will never understand people who wear them day in, day out.

My sister is angry at me for deciding to attend a school that she claims she has always dreamed about going to (the first I've heard of this dream). Apparently she thinks I only applied so I could spite her, and my having attended there will forever taint the place, and make it impossible for her to go in the future.

Many of the University of London schools do rolling admissions, and will be open until June, though there will probably be very few spots available by then.

I'm going tree planting. One last season, only two months (thank god), and my wallet likes it.

Geneva certainly looks the better option for work prospects after graduation. Plus, full scholarship, and you've got what, five months to work on your French? Geneva, to me, looks like your best option.

Rooms available starting September 1st typically start being advertised in July and August, though I have found landlords who will start looking even earlier, particularly if they know that the current lease is up at the end of the summer and the occupants are moving on.

I agree with TheGirlWhoLived. If your choice was between Harvard and a school no one had heard of somewhere in rural Arkansas, I would say Harvard is potentially worth the debt, but NYU is a big, well regarded school in one of two Alpha++ cities on earth, and they've offered you a full ride, which is sweet. I don't think being in New York is going to hurt your career prospects at all. I can't really think of a situation where being in New York could ever hurt your career potential in most fields. There are lots of government agencies, NGOs and private companies in New York, and you would be well placed to get a job with one of them upon completion. Given that Harvard and GT haven't given you information on funding by now, I would hazard a guess that even if they do give you money, it won't cover the costs of both the program and living in Boston or Washington.

I'm actually in poli sci, so I can speak more to that element, but U of Calgary is rather notorious for being the home of the Calgary School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_School), which has produced many people, mostly out of the history, political science and economics departments, who have played important roles in various right of centre parties in Canada. Most notable is Tom Flanagan, former federal Conservative Party adviser, who has done things like call for the assassination of Julian Assange, and who is currently on leave from the school after publicly commenting that viewing child pornography is harmless. That's not to say that everyone at UofC is like that, but the popular conception of the school is that it is one of the most right wing in Canada. SFU and the University of Victoria tend to be fighting it out for #1 and #2 on the Macleans rankings for "comprehensive schools" the past few years (schools with extensive undergraduate and graduate programs, but no medical school). SFU is one of many large number of Canadian universities founded in the postwar era, which are notable for their brutalist architecture and a history of radical politics. Though SFU is not as left wing as it once was, it still has a notable left of centre element, including a number of people associated with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left wing thinktank. Its campus culture is certainly much more liberal than UBCs, which is a shockingly conservative school, compared to most other Canadian schools I have seen. Personally, I would rank SFU ahead of Calgary, though I am influenced by an admiration for some of their faculty, who are, within public policy, some of the more notable in the country. Or at the very least the people who wrote several of the textbooks I used in my undergrad. Though overall I think SFU is generally regarded as a better school than Calgary, and it is in a much nicer city. The campus is rather ugly, but the views are spectacular, and Vancouver is where people in the rest of Canada want to live. If you do pick SFU, try to find a place around Commercial and Broadway, which is cheap (by Vancouver standards), and has lots of students, relatively cheap eateries, and is a pretty easy commute to get to campus. Calgary winters can be cold, so if you aren't prepared for them, and have never been through a properly cold winter it can be a bit of a shock. Though a decent coat, hat, gloves and scarf solves that problem quite nicely. Permanent residency in Canada is typically done through the federal government, not the provincial government. A job offer makes obtaining a work visa or permanent residency a lot easier, so check out placement and employment stats from the two departments, if they are available. Also look at who would be supervising your research. Well regarded supervisor at a smaller school trumps lesser known supervisor at a bigger school.

As I see it, there are a few advantages you get going to a "big" school. Firstly, you're more likely to work with and potentially get references from bigger names in your field, which can make a difference when applying to doctorate programs. Secondly, bigger, more renown institutions often have a broader variety of students, so you're more likely to be exposed to people and ideas from around the world, which can enhance your education and your experience while at school. Thirdly, if you decide to work for a little while before pursuing a PhD, having a big well known school at the top of your resume can help you find jobs. As bsharpe269 said, opportunities matter more than rank, but you're more likely to have more, and better, opportunities at a bigger school. As an anecdote, I'm in a similar situation to you with regards to school choices, and of the half dozen professors I've spoken to, they have all been unequivocally in favour of going to the bigger school. They all felt that going to a world renowned school for a masters makes it much easier to get into a world renowned PhD program (and secure better funding for that program), and that the advantages that would afford you is even worth a sizable financial outlay on your part. Not that you should put a $30 000 tuition bill on a credit card or something like that. Just thought I'd offer up an alternative view of the "funding and fit above all else" idea. Ranking, sadly, seems to matter a lot.

An additional thing to consider, the University of Calgary is generally associated with generally conservative ideas, whereas SFU is usually regarded as one of the more progressive schools in Canada. I'm not sure how much this would impact your studies, or how pervasive particular ideologies are within the economics departments at the two schools, but it is something to consider.

Because you have a three year degree, and UBC (along with pretty much any other grad program in Canada) requires a four year degree. So they have to make an exception for you, which in this case consists of filling out a form on your behalf and having the school administration approve it, which is typically just a case of rubber stamping. It's one more hoop to jump through, but if the department wants you, the school will almost certainly approve it.

What are your other options?

Xanax is very fast acting, so it's used more for acute treatment of panic attacks and whatnot. Things like Zoloft and Prozac are much better for anxiety treatment in the longterm. And my Zoloft dose is perfect, thank you very much.

Automatic transmissions. Sculpture. Lorde. The British Museum. Automatic transmissions are for people too lazy to learn to drive properly. Sculpture just really annoys me. It isn't interesting or exciting or capable of producing an emotional response. Lorde is a cartoon hedonist. The British Museum is way too crowded, with tourists taking selfies in front of the Rosetta Stone preventing you from getting more any more than a brief glimpse at the thing, and the rest of the museum is simply loads of stuff looted by British noblemen from the four corners of the globe.

Be reading whenever you can. Transit, lunch breaks, any time you can get a couple minutes to read. Figure out what are the books you really need to know through and through, and which are the ones where you just have to have a general sense of what they're about, so you can focus on the ones you really have to know, and read much quicker through what you don't need to know so much. I can't imagine you'll have to be an expert on all 16 volumes, nor that you would have to have them all finished by the start of the term. Judging from your username I assume you have kids, so if you can distribute some of the responsibility for looking after them to your partner/family/friends, that could also free up some time to read.