Université de Montréal (Canada)

Date: Oct 11 2012
Major: Physics (This Major's Salary over time)
Please take in account that I'm a commuter student so I cannot comment on dorms. First, the academics. I have gotten mostly good professors although, as with any extra-large school (and I do really mean it, since there's 40,000+ students there, not counting Polytechnique and HEC) there are professors who suck at teaching, big classes (although second-year classes get smaller) and, of course, tutorials taught by TAs.

Next, safety. It is actually one of the safer schools you could get into, as there's not nearly as many crimes committed on campus, despite all the nightlife around the city.

And, most of the time, student government is nothing like what you are used to. There are student unions for virtually every department (all students are unionized and the student unions represent students) and they work more like labor unions than a normal SG.

Two downsides I've met during my time: some top-floor bathrooms seemed to be in poor condition and Roger-Gaudry classrooms didn't have power sockets so students that brought laptops to class had to pray their battery didn't fail them during classes. Otherwise, any problems you may encounter there are common to all extra-large schools.

One final piece of advice: if your French isn't at an AP-level (unlike most of the students there), you're going to spend four long years playing catch-up with respect to French even though there are a great number of courses where English-language textbooks are the norm.