Concordia University (Canada)

Date: Nov 12 2009
Major: Design Arts - Industrial Design/Graphic Design/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
To be clear, my program at Concordia is Computation Arts in the Fine Art department, not Design Art. I applied to Concordia almost on a whim as a back-up school and found myself attending after I was rejected by my first choice. I planned to stay for a semester or two and transfer back to a small liberal arts school in the States, which, I thought, offered the sort of education that I was looking for. To my surprise, after a few months I found myself getting a far superior education than anything I could find anywhere else. Concordia is rather heterogeneous ??I do believe that it should not be ranked highly as a university, but for certain types of people in certain programs, coupled with Montreal it can offer an education like no other. In a word, Concordia is all about flexibility. In my case, I found a highly rewarding job at a lab in my field within a month of arriving. This was not a matter of luck ??my program is highly funded and there is a lot of room for exceptional undergraduates in the labs. As I became comfortable with the city and my school, I found myself in a wonderfully enriching pattern where, thanks to the flexibility of my program, I was able to combine my school projects with my research projects. The net effect was that all of my projects were highly funded and to complete them I not only received help from my professor, but mentorship from my lab director and colleagues. I felt almost as if I were in more of a Renaissance workshop model of education than the typical individualist fine art education. Such a situation would not have been possible at a university with a more structured and rigorous curriculum. On top of this, the facilities for my program are over the top. We have access to state of the art wood and metal shops as well as a maquette and prototyping lab, a large cache of equipment, and some of the best professors and researchers in the field. Friends of mine have found similar niches. Stand-out philosophy student friends receive a lot of personal attention from the excellent professors. Students at a relatively little known program called the Liberal Arts College receive a "great books" education on par with, if not superior to Columbia University's Columbia College or Saint John's College. Science Students have a vaguely similar institution called the Science College (which goes nicely with the world-class psychology program). I'm sure there are more exceptions. Concordia is not a great all-around university, but in particular programs it attracts cutting-edge professors. Couple this with interesting research opportunities and the advantages of living Montreal and you have a great school for ambitious students who want flexibility in their education. Want to do pre-med, pre-law, political science? There are much better schools for this. Also, in general Concordia is recognized for its fine art program. Some refer to it as the 'best in Canada'. Great professors, great facilities, vibrant atmosphere (for instance, Art Matters, the largest student festival in Canada is run by Concordia fine art students).