Musing about master's degrees...

[electricland]

OK, so should I head for a master's in planning, I have once again missed the deadline for most schools (York being the happy exception... although my dad, who once taught there, has been making negative muttering noises about their faculty for some time now. But their program looks v. self-guided and cool. OTOH, do I need something self-guided? I know very little about this field).

Cities I'd quite like to be in, left to right:

Vancouver - UBC
Toronto - U of T, York
Kingston (maybe... well, it's closer to Toronto than I am now anyway) - Queen's
Montreal - McGill (quite miss McGill) -- plus U de M has one if I were feeling adventurous enough to start a degree in another language, which I'm not especially
Halifax - Dal

There are others near Toronto, such as Waterloo. But I dunno. There's one in Calgary too, but I've been to Calgary.

Ponder, ponder.

On the whole, probably best to focus my efforts on those that claim they only care about your final year GPA, since my GPA from the penultimate year really does not bear thinking about.

The thought of digging up academic references is grim and terrifying... still, as I was saying to crankygrrl, I can't have alienated all my profs, can I?

Comments

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

I say apply to York for this year and see what happens but expect to get rejected and treat it as a dry-run. In the meantime, work on really good applications for UofT, Waterloo, and Vancouver, if you really want to move even further away from me *whine*.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

I'm heavily in favouring of you doing your masters in TO, even though it is a more expensive city to live in than Montreal, but you'll have more resources to draw on visa vi places to live and parental support than in Montreal, which has its advantages.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Good point.

Don't think I'd want to live at home though. Love my parents and all, but... ya know...

Not looking for excuses NOT to be there mind you. I miss you guys.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

Well, you could always move in with me...would require a larger apartment, though.

[bryghtboy.livejournal.com]

York has a couple major disadvantages, for starters the strikes that seem to forever be hanging over my school... then there is the fact its out in the ass end of nowhere. Add to this the fact it has quite possibly the ugliest campus that I've ever been to... it was originally designed to be built in California, then there was that crazy sonnva bitch in Texas who killed a whole lot of people from a belltower and they decided to re-think the whole wide open spaces idea around universities back in the early 60's. So it is really not designed to be a winter campus at all, the winds are just horrific up there some days and the between the snow and grey buildings its hard to be excited about showing up. That leaves you with only the teaching staff as being a draw for the place. Thus if you have no idea about how the prof's are in the faulty you are applying to, York doesn't have a whole lot of drawing power to it.

The two main reasons I'm still up there are: They haven't figured out how big a fraud I am (I keep expecting to get a letter saying something like.. "Wow, yer dumb get the fuck out" or something) and secondly they are very open to letting you take all sorts of very odd-ball electives ... like science-fiction films from 1982-2002... or appocalyptic Science fiction literature... or comics and cartooning from 1900-1950. If either of those thoughts seems attractive to you, York might not be the worst place for you... hope that helps some :P

[(Anonymous)]

AVOID QUEENS. AT ALL COSTS. But then, as many of you know, I have unequivocal feelings on the matter. *SHUDDER* My year at Queens. . . .

Vancouver is nice . . . . . hint. hint. *G* Does UVic have a planning program? But then again, you like big cities, so Vic may be a tad small for your tastes. though it more than makes up for its size, IMNSHO.

ON another note: one lamb on the ground. It's twin died though :(. Too cold out, we guess. I haven't seen it yet -- my cold meant I didn't know about anything till it was long over with. :( gonna go out and see it soon though. Apparently a tiny little ewe. very cute.

Anyhow, best of luck with the planning (hee, hee. I love double entendre!).

TTYS,

P.

Living at home

[(Anonymous)]

Oh yes, this too: to be avoided, if at all possible!

P.

space is good!

hi

[ipanicked.livejournal.com]

I noticed that you friended me, but I don't think I know you. That's cool, because I like getting to know people. I was just wondering how you found me.

ipanicked

Re: hi

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Hi!

I tend to randomly friend people. Hope this isn't too unnerving a habit. As I recall, I found you through a random search (back when that was working). You sounded interesting, you know how to punctuate, and (bonus!) you live in Montreal. Voila.

Anyway, welcome. It hasn't been especially thrilling around here lately, but hey.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Hm. All very good points... thanks. I've been hearing horror stories about the York campus my entire life, but I don't believe I've ever actually been there!

I'd definitely need to find out more about the teaching staff. However, Anonymous down there assures me that they will most likely be thrilled to talk about themselves, should I enquire! And the oddball electives are a plus... in fact to my knowledge there IS only one required course for the MES, the rest is all electives.

A further possible drawback to York is the slightly creepy following-in-your-father's-footsteps aspect of the whole thing... McGill is one thing, but the same grad degree at the same university might be a little... weird.

Or maybe it's just me. Who can say?

Re: Living at home

[electricland.livejournal.com]

We like space.

UVic isn't mentioned on the Canadian Institute of Planners site (http://www.cip-icu.ca/English/home.htm), so I'm guessing no, or at least if they do it's not accredited by CIP. A shame, because it sounds really nice. Mind you, accreditation is presumably not the be-all and end-all. And I'd quite like to be at a SMALLER university just for a change...

Hm. Pesky B average in final 2 years of undergrad required. Wonder if they average them together? -- I might be OK there...

...but it doesn't look like they have any programs that really call out to me unfortunately.