Debord

Congratulations! I think you'll like the program, especially if you enjoy independent research (for studying, I'm partial to the Graham Library connected to Trinity College, the Pratt Library, and for its collections of French Feminist theory, the Ivey Library at New College). Good luck with apartment hunting, I think you're going to have a marvellous time in the city. Caveat emptor: Queen West, Queen East, and King St. East are very dangerous axes of food and independent cafes. Oh, and if you're into things like the symphony, ballet, and opera, major arts organizations like the Toronto Symphony Orchestra offer substantial discounts for folks 35 or 29 and under, which I availed of until I could not : P

@alszd It might be worth reaching out to the department and Professor Akbari about supervision. At the time Professor Akbari took up her post stateside, my friend (a Medievalist) was just starting to put together her examinations committee and Professor Akbari is her supervisor. Toronto is not the endless metropolis that New York is, but has a vibrancy that flows from being a city that is idiosyncratic and diverse without having to gesture at its variety as a novelty or object of wonder. When you're on public transit, it's not unusual to hear Urdu, Cantonese, Dutch, Amharic, Rioplatense Castilian etc. on the same train. Anne Michaels describes Toronto as, "[A city where] almost everyone has come from elsewhere ...bringing with them their different ways of dying and marrying, their kitchens and songs. A city of forsaken worlds; language a kind of farewell." She's not wrong; a lot of that variety is expressed in food and there's probably a paper in there about nostalgia and appetite, waiting to be written. It's also a city that likes its festivals, especially in the warmer months, from Anime North, the Toronto Fringe, Taste of the Danforth, Jazz festival(s), to TIFF at the end of summer. Living arrangements: Prior to the pandemic, I'd say living in your own apartment in the downtown core would be almost impossible on the stipend UofT offers and you are still realistically looking at a roommate, or more likely, a rooming house situation i.e. 1 room in a converted house with shared common spaces. That said, there has been a mass exodus out of the city in the last year, with folks furloughed or laid off moving into surrounding conurbations or suburbs, and the rental market reflects that. if you don't mind taking the subway, I think you'll find workable options on the city's West (High Park, Runnymeade) and East (Danforth, Main Street) end. The St. George campus is on the subway line at St. George, Spadina, and Museum stations. About TAships: UofT has three campuses. You'll be taking your classes in the Jackman Humanities Building at St. George, but you might be TAing at the Scarborough or Mississauga campuses. There's a free shuttle to both that runs out of Hart House and though it seems like a small thing to grouse about, it is worth considering how your own schedule jives with a nighttime 6-9PM class that you have to lead 29.5 km from home. So ask about the TAship assignments in your second year. Again, the best of luck with decisions! @Kaharim With respect to graduate funding, SSHRC is the primary source of external funding opportunity for domestic students. The CGS-M (for Master's students) is a one-off $17 500 CAD with an internal, one-time top-up of $5,000 CAD. The CGS-D (doctoral scholarships and fellowships) are worth $20,000 - $35,000 CAD a year, tenable up to 36 months. It might be worth getting in touch with funding entities like SSHRC and EduCanada about scholarships for International Students. My friends in the English Department have generally been supported through the base funding and OGS (that's the provincial funding body) scholarships, which is adjudicated by UofT itself. Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hi @alszd Speaking anecdotally (I did my undergrad at the University of Toronto), so take anything I write with a grain of salt. I can’t speak to what your experience might be as a graduate student, but UofT is a big public research school with roughly the population of a satellite city—almost 63,000 students on the St. George campus, the last time I checked. Though the campus is sprawling and grand, St. George itself dissolves into the larger fabric of Toronto. It is easy to disappear in a place like that. The anonymity suited me (because I am a GRUMP), but it is not for everyone. I would characterize departmental culture as polite, but indifferent—it is simply too big an entity to pay close attention to all its constituent parts. That said. U of T has departments for everything, which is good if your work is interdisciplinary. Diaspora & Transnational Studies? Slavic Literatures? Renaissance Culture? Literature and Critical Theory? Book History? Cinema Studies? UofT has a department for that. The University has a GLORIOUS library system. 42 libraries, over 12 million print books, and an absolute knock-out of a library for incunabula: The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. The Department has terrific faculty, raided regularly by other schools—I think Deirdre Lynch is now at Harvard, Suzanne Akbari splits her time between Princeton and UofT’s Medieval Departments, and Andy Orchard left to assume a post as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. I think you have to consider carefully what you want out of the program and the timeline to completion of the PhD. In general, the normal funding window in Canada is 4 years (with a halved stipend for the 5th year) and is considerably less than what you will receive from American schools where tuition remission seems to be the norm and funding is guaranteed for 5 years. Again, your experience of the department *might* be radically different from mine as an undergrad. For me, UofT is an amazing place to learn so long as you understand that the environment is for self-starters. Intangibles: Toronto is a fantastic city. It’s got something for everybody, whether that’s baseball, opera, a thriving comic books scene (don’t skip the annual TCAF at the Reference Library), absurdly good Thai food (skip the crowds at PAI on Duncan St. and go to its less hectic sister, Sabai Sabai on Bloor), thoughtfully-curated bookshops like TYPE Books, and independent movie theatres like the TIFF Lightbox (where they have talks and retrospectives on turgidly obscure directors like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and also play films people might actually enjoy). Anyway, I hope that helps. Good luck with decisions! All of your potential schools sound terrific, so I think it's more about finding that balance between the kind of work you want to do and how a program might support that AND where you can imagine yourself living for the next 5-6 years.

Hi @cassidyaxx , I just sent a message : )

Hi folks, Not really one for public forums but wanted to notify wait listed applicants of some potential movement: I was accepted off the wait list at my reach school and will be declining my PhD offers at Boston College and McGill. Hope that is welcome news to somebody.