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Student satisfaction at 37 schools

The annual CUSC survey focuses on student satisfaction. In 2012, 37 institutions took part, administering an online questionnaire to a sample of graduating students at each school. More than 15,000 students responded to questions about everything from academics to support services.

MOST OF MY PROFESSORS ENCOURAGED STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN CLASS DISCUSSIONS.

MOST OF MY PROFESSORS WERE REASONABLY ACCESSIBLE OUTSIDE OF CLASS TO HELP STUDENTS.

SATISFACTION WITH CONCERN SHOWN BY THE UNIVERSITY FOR YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL

SATISFACTION WITH THE OVERALL QUALITY OF THE EDUCATION RECEIVED AT THIS UNIVERSITY

SATISFACTION WITH OPPORTUNITIES TO ENHANCE EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM (E.G., UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH, SERVICE-LEARNING, STUDENTS EXCHANGE)

Textbooks remain costly in an increasingly electronic age

Studying at the University of Guelph (Jessica Darmanin)

From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

It’s a textbook case in how to annoy students. This year, OCAD University in Toronto required students in its first-year visual culture course to purchase a “custom reader,” comprised of parts from two American text- books plus additional material on Canadian and Aboriginal art. Separately the items retail for over $300. The custom text was priced at $180. But there was a problem—this art book didn’t include any actual art.

Due to unexpected expenses in obtaining copyright, the publisher simply left large white boxes where the pictures were meant to go; students were told they could look at the art online. They got outraged instead—a petition was organized, parents began blogging and local media soon picked up the cause of the artless art book.

Continue reading Still going by the book

Our latest campus fashion photos

Ryerson University in Toronto is known for its performing arts, television and fashion programs, so we weren’t surprised to find a few people with bold styles, from shabby chic (the holes in those jeans!) to the standout studs on Ives Phe’s jacket. After clicking on each photo, why not share your Campus Style? Tweet your photo to @maconcampus or post it on our Facebook wall.

Fall fashion photos from St. Francis Xavier

The girls are layering and the guys are preppy this fall at St. Francis Xavier. Antigonish, N.S. was photographer Jessica Darmanin’s latest stop on her tour of Atlantic Canada where she’s kept one eye out for campus fashion. Click on each photo to make it bigger. And then, why not show us your latest style? Tweet your fall fashion photo to @maconcampus or post it on our Facebook wall.

Moving may boost the odds of medical school admission

Kyla Adams (right) teaching first-aid in Whitehorse. Richard Lam.

From the 2012 Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue, on newsstands and iPad now.

It has been a long road for 33-year-old Kyla Adams from her high school years—when there was no question in her mind that she’d one day become a physician—to today, when the British Columbia native feels she finally has a decent shot at medical school.

In Adams’s second year of university, the academic and social stresses of life at the University of British Columbia caught up with her and she flunked out of school, temporarily shelving her ambition. After several years of selling running shoes, travelling and working as a personal trainer, Adams wrote the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) at the age of 26. She surprised herself with a decent score, which inspired her to enrol at the University of Victoria, where she earned a double degree in biology and earth sciences. She rewrote the MCAT, boosted her score and applied to medical school.

But the rules had changed. She was no longer allowed to drop those crummy decade-old marks from her application as she had thought. She applied to UBC’s medical school and didn’t get in. She applied again, and was rejected again. She applied a third time. No luck.

Continue reading Rx: Get out of town

Comedy work is sporadic, but the pay can get “obscene”

Your Job Makes Me Jealous is a weekly podcast with a young Canadian whose career is so cool that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We talk about the ups, the downs and the pay.

This week, Rebecca Addelman, a 31-year-old comedian from Ottawa, talks about her job writing for the hit show New Girl that airs on Fox/Citytv.

Addelman started with a B.A. in literature at the University of Toronto and then took Comedy: Writing and Performance at Humber College.

After many evenings of stand-up in Toronto and a day job copy-editing, Addelman made the leap to L.A. in 2008. Since she got there, she’s written for half a dozen shows including China Il. She returned to Toronto one summer to write for CBC’s InSecurity and then started at New Girl in June.

The money in comedy writing can be “obscene,” she says—$3,600 a week right now—but the work is sporadic at best, with contacts lasting mere months while agents and managers take their cuts.

Click here to listen to Your Job Makes Me Jealous with TV writer Rebecca Addelman (5:05)

Continue reading Rebecca Addelman, 31, is a writer for New Girl

Help us update our Top 10 list

Last year we gave you the 10 Weirdest Campus Clubs in Canada. Our list included the Fetish and Kink Club (guess which school), the Campus Crusade for Cheese (not to be confused with the Campus Crusade for Teas… or Christ) and one Michael Jackson/zombie focused club. Since then, we’ve noticed even more weird and wonderful groups. It’s time to make a new list. Tell us about the unique club on your campus that needs to be on the list. Share your suggestion in the comments section below or on Twitter (hashtag #weirdclubs). Don’t forget to follow us @maconcampus.

Scaachi Koul: it’s more depressing to hear this girl complain

multi-bits/Getty

When I graduated last month, everyone told me that it was the beginning of the rest of my life. This, they told me, was when it would all start becoming really difficult, and it would show what I was made of. I would come into my own.

But why didn’t anyone tell me I wouldn’t get everything I waaaaaaaaaaant?

Taylor Cotter, a 22-year-old American writer and editor, already has a job, an apartment, a 401k and financial autonomy from her parents. But she’s sad. She’s sad because things are working out for her. Cotter, you see, never had to struggle for her success the way others have had to. From her blog post on The Huffington Post:

Continue reading Success at 22 is depressing?!

Is it political pandering for Parti Quebecois leader to stop wearing the symbol of the Quebec student movement?

Photo by Sweet One/Flickr

From Blog Central on Macleans.ca, by Martin Patriquin

There is something very odd going on over at PQ (pre) election headquarters these days. the province is teetering on an election call: The Liberal Party of Quebec put out this video in which Jean Charest, looking like a totally humourless version of the Glad Garbage man, gives us a campaign-style reminder of how great his government is. PQ leader Pauline Marois quickly appeared in a campaign-style rebuke of Charest’s video. Last week, the PQ emblazoned its website with the red square, that small piece of scarlet felt that supporters of the student movement have taken to safety pinning to their lapels.

And then, days later, it was gone. As gone as it was from Marois’s own lapel, where it has been since the beginning of the student strike roughly four months ago. “I won’t wear it anymore,” Marois said recently. “I have chosen to wear the fleur de lis.”

The disappearance is odder still when you consider how much political capital Marois et al. have invested in the student cause. She has repeatedly hammered Charest on the government’s treatment of the students—criticism that only overflowed once the Liberals introduced Bill 178 78 (thx @jocelynlegault.) Marois recently accused Charest of purposefully prolonging the student strike for political ends.

You have to wonder whether Marois herself is guilty of political pandering. Certainly, that’s what some students think. ”It doesn’t surprise me that Pauline Marois decided to stop wearing the red square because it wasn’t real support for the students,” a CEGEP student told the Gazette. “The only reason she was opposing the tuition fee increase was because the Liberals were doing it but a Pequiste government wanted to do it too.”

Perhaps Marois realized (rather late) what has been clear in the polls since the outset of the strike: most Quebecers—nearly 70 per cent, according to a recent CROP takeout on the subject—side with the government’s position, if not the government itself.

I did seven too and I’m not suing anyone (unlike this girl)

A couple of happy interns (Symic on Flickr)

Diana Wang, a university graduate from Ohio, is suing Harper’s Bazaar after her dream internship with the fashion magazine turned into a nightmare.

Wang’s bosses wanted her free labour for at least 10 hours daily. Worse, a mean superior falsely accused her of not sending some hats to a photo shoot in Europe, she told CBC’s The Current.

Since Wang wasn’t in school, wasn’t getting supervised training and wasn’t getting paid, she says the internship was illegal. (That type of internship may technically be illegal here too.)

Needless to say Wang didn’t realize her childhood goal of becoming a fashion writer in New York City. Her other six internships didn’t get her much farther. She went on to work at a call centre far from NYC. Suffice it to say, she’s pissed.

Continue reading Seven internships. No job. So what?