Post-graduate Study in North America
Deciding to pursue post-graduation whether it is a Masters or Ph.D., has always been one of the choices for many right after their bachelor studies. To make this academic journey impactful, many students prefer doing their higher education degrees in North America such as in Canada, and the United States.
Here is why?
There are several reasons behind choosing either Canada or USA as students’ targeted countries to pursue post-graduation. I am explaining these below.
1. Quality education
Canadian universities have been known to produce quality graduates for a long time as this part of America has got some top universities that offer top-notch quality education. According to Times Higher Education (THE) world ranking published in 2022, Canada has five universities in total within the top 100 universities in the world.
Another neat assessment is done by QS Top Universities ranking in 2022, where the University of Toronto (U of T) and McGill University have placed 26th and 27th ranks in the world. These two Canadian universities have been on very high academic and employer reputations which are more than 90, moderate faculty/student ratio between 69 and 73, moderate citation per faculty between 58 and 65, and a high ratio of international faculty and international students more than 90 on the scale of 100. This signifies that they are providing state-of-the-art research facilities along with world-class lectures by their well-reputed faculty members. The high bar of employer reputation indicates their graduates go to top companies and universities after completing Masters and/or Ph.D. degrees.
Although the neighbor United States has been dominating Canada in terms of the number of top-ranked universities e.g. within the first 30 universities, however, the overall rating of the Canadian universities does not fall below 80 on the scale of 100. The nearest competitor is Johns Hopkins University which has got an overall score of 85.9, whereas the U of T has an overall of 85.3, which is quite close in rating.
2. Affordable
Canada has always been considered an international student-friendly country around the globe mostly in terms of living costs, and tuition fees. This is proven already according to the survey done by QS Best Student Cities Rankings in 2022. No wonder, Canada has three major student-favored cities i.e. Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver in the top 20’s list. In this survey, one of the metrics is ‘affordability’, which ranks Montreal in 10th place in the world having 58.6 affordability unit that is measured under living cost and tuition fees. This is just 37% less affordable than the world’s top-ranked best student city, London.
As per the statistics done in the year 2021-2022 by Statistics Canada, the average tuition fee international students pay in graduate studies is $20,120 (USD 15,000), whereas, in the universities of the United States, it varies between USD 20,000 and $50,000 per year as per the news from IEFA. In this way, Canadian universities attract more foreign students than US-based universities.
3. Easy admission and onboarding
Historically, most Canadian universities have a simple admission process. By this, I mean that most Canadian schools do not require Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as a mandatory prerequisite for admission. On the other hand, most US-based universities require the GRE for assessing international students as a part of the admission procedure. This puts less burden on the prospective students who can devote their energy and time to taking preparation for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), and they can engage themselves in other required activities such as maintaining a good Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA), doing some research work, and doing co-curricular activities. These activities include learning a different language e.g. French, building up communication skills, learning new coding languages or polishing them, and other hard and soft skills. These are important because, for students who want to pursue their Masters and/or Ph.D. with scholarships and funding, these items can increase the chances to get considered by the faculty members who have allotted funding for the competitive students.
By onboarding process, it means the VISA application process, which is way less cumbersome for getting into Canada than into the US. The Canadian VISA process is mostly based on paper works and documents can be submitted through approved agencies e.g. VFS Global from different countries of the world, while the US has a VISA interview process for outlanders.
4. Settlement
In Canada, universities provide Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) for one, two, or three years long depending on the duration of the program. This has been extremely helpful for international students who want to live on their dream to join the Canadian workforce. This eventually leads them to settle in Canada by getting Permanent residency (PR) and then citizenship. An important point related to job category in Canada, while being on PGWP, one does not have to get a job related to their academic program. In other words, as long as the job categories lie within the National Occupational Classification (NOC), one can easily get PR and get settled in Canada. This is something, which the US immigration system does not follow. Although the US grants H-1B VISA for an extensive period of six years in total, this type of visa requires matching between degree and work experience, and job duties.
Finally, it can be said that irrespective of the quality of education served in both countries, Canadian universities have more flexibility to grab international students because of their easy admission and VISA process, compared to universities in the United States. The latest news from Forbes confirmed that the number of international students enrolled at U.S. universities dropped before the Covid-19 pandemic, but enrollment has risen at Canadian colleges and universities.