The University of Toronto (Canada)

I am a bright indian student whose parents invested a lot of money for this uni. 4 years later i return to india with an average gpa, no job or any work ex(only 5 students get it), a lotta debt and crippling depression. If youre a international student canada is a great country and my happiest days were when i visited differnet cities and traveeled to victoria in BC. i wish i went to a smaller uni where people really cared.

4th Year Female -- Class 2018

Surrounding City: A+, Collaboration/Competitive: F

The only reason I chose the University of Toronto was because it was in the heart of downtown Toronto. It provided me with the opportunity to pursue connections with businesses in the city and network with future corporate contacts. Although that wasn't specifically my goal when I chose the university. However, the actual experience of taking courses was very disappointing. First year was over-crowded classes, the homework and assignments had little relation to the exam material. I simply learned to survive at UofT by never purchasing the textbooks (which are a ploy) and instead spent all my time in Robarts Library finding the most current journal articles published on the subjects so I was ahead of the curve. In this way, I excelled beyond the class who were 'following the textbooks'. This has served me well in the corporate world however where I 'think outside the box' and have been able to outsmart others by my sheer ability to find solutions to problems and ask questions that no one else would consider. The most positive outcome of UofT was learning survival skills, learning to rely on myself 100% with no help from faculty, and most importantly, meeting my husband who did his PhD at UofT and had a most disappointing experience with faculty as well. We've been together 25 years and for that reason alone, I am glad I chose UofT. Everything happens for a reason. Try to find the positives in life and be careful how you choose your university town as you may just end up settling down in that region so make sure you can live with that. Toronto is a great city to start a life and career in the corporate world and arts/entertainment.

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000

I've seen students struggle, and I've seen students succeed phenomenally. I think the experience you get definitely depends on how you handle the workload, interact with professors and TAs, and at least a small part on your own psychology.

Don't slack off, keep up with the work, start all assignments well in advance of the deadline, ask for help as soon as you realize you're struggling, and you should be fine. Hard work has pay offs, but you just have to be diligent - cramming in the last week just doesn't work well enough. If you come into the university with the understanding that it will be the hardest educational experience of your life thus far, you'll do as well as you would expect.

I believe I found my experience extremely rewarding due to this mindset. Focusing on schoolwork early (I worked the hardest in first and second year) gave me a lot of opportunities later on and allowed me to get involved in extracurriculars without worrying about my grades. In first year in a science program, I would say I spent 2 nights per week socializing in first year, but otherwise was keeping up with all readings, reviewing lecture notes, doing recommended problems/readings, preparing for labs etc (including all weekends). I did a lot that wasn't strictly marked or required, so it would have been easy to forgo doing many problems/readings, but that's not enough to do well at U of T. I don't consider myself super smart - I spent a lot of time practicing problems, working on the material, and thinking about the problems. I also used memorization techniques doing the readings to maximize the efficiency of my studying.

In the Chemistry department, faculty are generally very approachable and willing to help (especially the teaching staff), especially if you go to office hours. Most of their office hours go unused for some reason, and then students complain about the difficulty of the material which to me only seems to be the case if they put in less effort than they thought was necessary, and got a less than stellar result. I think students need to redefine their definition of hard work here - there's no hand-holding. I was able to balance my desired extracurriculars with regular fitness and schoolwork. I had less social life than some of my peers, but that's fine for me since I didn't expect to come to a top university to party. If you're looking to party all the nights of the week and scrape a decent grade, look elsewhere.

The "weeding out" happens in first year because students believe they are more talented than they are. It is perfectly normal to feel confused during a lecture and thus overwhelmed. The key is to go back to the textbook, lecture notes, past notes, and read/learn as much as you can to understand. You can't put it off hoping you'll understand the next lecture - it will snowball until you feel you have to drop the course. I found that students did not adequately review material in the beginning of courses to build a solid foundation for later lectures - trust me they make more sense and you retain much more information (increasing your memory and understanding) just by listening to the lecturer having the background information.TL;DR: Work hard to get results. Hard. Professors are in general not out to get you - don't attribute most of your failures to them, attribute it to not enough work. The level is higher, so if you step up, you grow.

4th Year Female -- Class 2015

Education Quality: A+, Individual Value: C-