victorydance

Under the table.

This is just conjecture because I have never studied there but I see two competing arguments for this: 1) The way that the program is set up, a course based one year program, it might be hard to quickly get to know professors and therefore harder to get an RA position. 2) There is just a ridiculous amount of profs at U of T (almost 100) so there has got to be some opportunities somewhere.

Well you really need to list exactly the 2 or 3 top goals you want to get out of a MA program to improve your applications and decide which school fits that. Like for example, is GPA your goal? Do you think you could improve the LORs part of your application? Are you really interested in beefing up your methods? This is more in line with university B. Do you need a better writing sample? Do you want some teaching experience on your CV? Do you think you can strengthen your existing letters? This is more of a university A situation... Basically it comes down to what you want to improve in your application during the MA. Also, it's pretty obvious ''university B'' is U of T.

This is nothing inherently unhealthy about Chinese food. It really depends on what you are choosing.

What I did was provided a little list of possible things they could highlight (which were things I honestly thought I excelled in each respective relationship) and they were all highlighting different things. I do think it is important to have three quite different letters.

1) Walk to school everyday. 2) Pack a lunch and don't eat any more than that during the day.

McGill acceptances are out.

How much is rent approximately?

160 really isn't that bad and it probably hits very close or slightly lower than the median quant scores for accepted students at most schools.

^Yeah, I had that thought as well. Start with some Robert Bates.

No, no 'literature' exists on strengths of each program. You have to know your sub-field's best scholars and look at each program individually.

Are you really going to go on the limb and say any program in Canada in engineering is regularly placing its students at universities like Harvard, Princeton, or Berkeley?

I think that it could have an effect, sure. But not sure how much of an effect it could have. That being said you have presented a bit of a false dichotomy here, there is nothing to suggest that getting an academic job in the US won't afford you a similar or higher quality of life, healthcare situation, or proximity to family and friends (Canada is a very large country and much of its population lives close to the US border). I don't care about your anecdotal evidence. And also having a MSc from a Canadian university has nothing to do with your Ph.D. placement so that number is grossly inflated. I didn't pull that number out of my ass, once again, you are being obtuse. It's based on the following reasoning: I looked at 5 to 6 different discipline's placement rates from top 3 universities and out of all the placements you are seeing 0-5% getting placed in the US. This is not counting any programs outside of the top 3, if we included program's from universities such as Concordia, UVic, SFU, ect. there would probably be 0% of its Ph.D. students placing in the US. Furthermore, we aren't counting all the doctoral students who didn't get placed at all, which I assure you is a sizable number. It's not hard to look at that information and come to a less than 1% number. If you really want to prove me wrong, go ahead and pick 5 or 6 evenly ranked program placement records and see if it passes the 1% threshold.

Their placement record is pretty poor, especially for IR.

After looking at it again, there is 8 people who found TT jobs at American schools. I don't have any bias...I am stating information that I have gathered from a number of people employed in academia and my own research. I am Canadian for the record. I made the statement that "Canadian universities rarely, if ever, place Ph.D. students in the USA or at top universities." You have not done anything to disprove this statement. I posted a bunch of websites that point to an approx 0-5% of its placements (and this is top 3, not even considering the other 50 or so universities in Canada) at American schools or top universities. This isn't even counting the plethora of students who don't place anywhere in academia which would skew the data even further towards my direction. When you boil it down, you are probably looking at less than 1% of all Ph.D. students from Canadian schools getting placed in the US. And once again, UIUC is a top 10 engineering program. I am willing to bet any money that they are placing their graduates at much better universities than any university in Canada. Of course, the data isn't available, but if you look at some of their placements from the materials engineering program (http://www.matse.illinois.edu/jobplacement.html ) you can see that they are placing students at universities like Princeton, Harvard, and Berkeley. So bottom line, if you think placing 0-5% of your graduates in American or top universities constitutes a more than "rare" threshold then there is no point continuing this discussion.

You want to hit 160+ in both sections. That's the basic benchmark for jumping through the GRE hoop.

OKC ranks your profile by attraction voted by other people. So in other words, if you are not being ranked as highly attractive by others viewing your profile, you won't have access to seeing the most attractive people's profiles in searches and matches.

Can you stop with the cheeky "talking out of your ass." I counted 6 TT placements in American schools, what is exactly wrong about that? BTW, the Yale placement is a lecturer not TT. Listen, I realize you are attending U of T, but you seem to be a little touchy about this and I suggest that you are looking at this from a very biased point of view.

This is how the academic job market works. If you are looking to work in academia, one of the first things you should look at is the placement rates of its graduates. Because at the end of the day, where your program is placing its Ph.D. students is all the matters not what some random academics say about the prestige of the general university in some survey.

Honestly, you have more than a sufficient math background already, not sure why the discussion has focused mainly on this. I would focus on four things you really can control at this point: 1) Doing well on the GRE. 2) Preparing a strong master SOP and then tailoring them for each program (particularly really nailing down your research interests and potential questions). 3) Doing the proper research on each department and their faculties/fit with your interests. 4) Perfecting your thesis into a good writing sample.

Come on man, 12th place is close enough to top 10, and considering every single other ranking of engineering has it in the top 10; I can conclusively say that it is a top 10 program. Yes, that's correct, even among the top 3 (UBC, U of T, and McGill) placements for TT jobs in the US are incredibly rare; for programs outside of the top 3, its virtually non-existent. In my discipline, political science, I have never seen a Canadian Ph.D. in any well-ranked program. For example, if you look at McGill's placements since 1995 (http://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/grad/news/recentplacements) you will only see 4 TT placements at American schools and this is from a list of ~100 placements. U of T Ph.Ds rarely place in American universities, neither do graduates from UBC. Expanding things...I have googled random placement rates from various disciplines: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/index.php/index/graduate/placement(~4 TT in last 10 years) http://www.mcgill.ca/english/graduate/placement(~6 TT in last 20 years) http://philosophy.ubc.ca/grad/philosophy-placement-program/philosophy-placement-data/(~2 TT placements in last 12 years) http://www.mcgill.ca/sociology/grad/recent-placements(0 TT in last 10 years) Even those who got placed, a lot of them are at tier II or III state schools. None of them are at any top 20 or even decent end R1 schools. The simple fact is I am not talking out of my ass. It is rare for a Ph.D. student from a Canadian university to get placed in an American school, and almost impossible for graduates out of the top 3 programs. Are there exceptions? Certainly, but that doesn't mean what I said was incorrect. If you want a job in academia in the USA, do not do your Ph.D. at a Canadian university it is as simple as that. The job market is already tough enough, no sense making it nearly impossible.

It is ranked in the top 10 or very near it in every available engineering category: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/university-of-illinois-urbana-champaign-02055 It is a top 10 program. Don't be obtuse.

But none of this even matters for doctoral students. University of Illinois is a top 10 program in chemical engineering. Secondly, what matters more is placement records. Canadian universities rarely, if ever, place Ph.D. students in the USA or at top universities.

Go before the first week of July (early-mid June), because the best places will already be taken by that time.

Once again, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. The United Kingdom or its monarchy have absolutely no power over Canada, in fact, the remaining monarchy in Canada is ceremonial at best.