lookingaround

If you plan on practicing in Canada, TRU (or any Canadian school) beats a third tier private US school. Coming back you'd have to go through the NCA process to even be eligible to practice in Canada. The cost of attendance would be enormous (https://law.seattleu.edu/office-and-administration/student-financial-services/tuition-and-fees) - US$72,000/year from their own figures ($93k Canadian) - each year there is going to cost about the same as an entire degree at many Canadian schools. The name isn't going to impress people (the coming-back sequence and cost of attendance is arguable for world class universities like Yale or Oxford. BTW even some fantastic university names don't travel that well - I met a Judge this year who went to Pantheon-Assas. Clearly it didn't do them any harm (they're a Judge) but when I remarked on my being impressed by that, they said "Yeah, one of the best universities in the world and nobody here's heard of it". On the one hand, 'went to a barely ranked school' is less important in Canada which doesn't rank schools and treats most US schools interchangeably as 'foreign', on the other hand you'd be diving into the bottom half of one of the most stratified legal markets in the world, where they really do care about it, and there's a much better ranked one (like, 100 places higher) in the same city. If you're just starting to think about this, you have time to think, but that looks like a whole lot of downside.

More than anything, that looks like a ranking of who needs to borrow the most money to go to law school. Toronto and Osgoode have highest tuition, UBC has Vancouver cost of living, McGill has extra year of not working.

I was recently talking with an acquaintance and loved just how quickly the conversation moved from Them: "You got into law school, that's fantastic, that's amazing... what are you going to do, like what kind of law are you going to work in?" Me: "Well, I've enjoyed going to court and watching the criminal cases, and I found the classes in that really interesting." Them: "Oh wow. I couldn't work for criminals. Would you really be ok with that?" Me: "[sigh]"

I don't think any Canadian school publishes that - there's definitely not a central point that lists every school. It's not like the US where transferring (and ranking generally) is a bigger deal, & each school publishes an annual report on it.

It is both worth it and unnecessary. You can do just fine on the LSAT practicing on tests in the 50s - basic logic and reasoning hasn't changed in the last few years. I can't remember when the new style RC appeared (compare two passages) so you might not be getting to practice on that, and the newer LRs tend to be more subtle, so the newer tests certainly contain more directly relevant things to practice on - but you won't encounter a whole different section type or something if you've practiced on older ones.

Whatever the reason, a decision has been made by Robson that students self-enroll. With that decision made, it has to be done within the general enrollment system - which means selecting the individual courses. There's no ability in the system to just select 'section1' or 'section2' - you choose that yourself, then type in the numbers that relate to that section. Systems and Methods are taught/split differently (Systems is lectures with everyone, Methods is... different - combination of your section/everyone/French), so everyone has the same numbers for those. For the others (Const, Torts, Property, Contracts, Crim), you select eg 1,2,3,4,5 for section 1, 6,7,8,9,10, for section 2, 11,12,13,14,15 for section 3. Think of it as a really straightforward LSAT game: if Amy and John want section 1 and Matt wants not to be in the same section as Amy, A+J have to select 1-5, M can select either 6-10 or 11-15. Nobody can select anything else. (In reality the numbers are longer - but the point is you pick a block and stick to it, except for the two classes everyone does as a year group).

Yes, but beyond "I want to be in Canada long-term", do you have a plan for that? Do you have a plan for how to pay international tuition fees (to qualify for a study permit)? Do you have a plan for how to become a Permanent Resident? This may be tied to if/where you decide you want to go to school - some Provinces might sponsor graduates of their universities, whereas others wouldn't. There's little point in doing a law degree somewhere if you do not know starting it if and how you can qualify to stay there (with some exceptions - even if a person couldn't stay in eg England or the US, it's often a good idea to go to Yale, or Oxford if the chance arises). Canada doesn't really have "regional prestigious schools" in the same way the US does. Several Provinces only have a single school (some have none). As a general rule, it's less difficult to find work where you went to school, where you can more easily meet local practitioners, where your professors have connections and their names are known. Before you get excited about the idea of "maybe there are jobs in places people don't want to go", try sitting in a domestic freezer for a few hours, then remember much of Canada is twice as cold as that for half the year.

I'd be surprised if they go up by much - international fees at McGill are already comparable to the rest of Canada (compare to their v low tuition for especially Quebec residents). 2015, total fees for international were $37,000 a year, by 2018 this was up to $42,300. OK, they're 9k below Toronto (but who isn't) but they're in no way a cheap outlier on foreign student fees. *shrug* we'll see.

You may (or may not) be eligible for scholarships. You also may find that bursaries (fee-reductions) have requirements like "Must have applied for student aid from home province" - you won't have one, and so might not be eligible to apply. In addition, international fees can be incredibly expensive. As an example of a cheaper city (for cost of living), Robson Hall in Winnipeg charge $10,300 a year for domestic students, but $25,300 for international students. That's nearly three times the price. Saskatchewan is $13,600/year for domestic students, but $37,200/year for international. Toronto is one of the most expensive to both live in, and pay tuition - $36,700 for domestic students, $51,400/annually for international students. They claim that as a consequence of that expense, they have the most generous student aid program of Canadian law schools, but the most relevant line for you (and indicative of why just 'the most generous law school' is at best a problematic question) is "Students who are not Canadian citizens or do not hold Canadian permanent residency status, and who enroll in the J.D. Program are not eligible to apply for the Faculty’s Financial Aid Program" (https://www.law.utoronto.ca/utfl_file/count/media/front_end_booklet_2018-2019_version2.0.pdf). The frivolous answers to your questions are (1) Maybe (2) One that says you can't use their generosity (3) Cities that people don't want to live in. But they're not really fair. It looks like what you're trying to get at is 'Where's the most financially viable place to do a 3 year degree?'. And that's a harder one all told. The unfortunate reality is that cheaper cities are typically cheaper because they're less desirable. Whether it's due to climate, or job potential, or location, there isn't unmatched demand pushing up prices. You'd need to think about whether you want to spend three years (and potentially the rest of your life) in eg Winnipeg, or Saskatoon, or Fredericton, or whether the increased cost of eg Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto would be worth it for the quality of life/job potential/access to other things. As an international student, any Canadian law school is likely to be horrifically expensive (McGill: $9,600 for non-Quebecois Canadians, $4,400 for Quebecois, and $42,300 for international), and you'd need to be able to prove you could pay your fees and living costs at the time you apply for a study permit (even if you do then qualify for a reduction in the fees on merit or need somehow). The study permit brings up another issue: Would you have a plan for how to stay long-term, and use that very expensive degree?

The general advice around here is 'go to school where you want to practice'. Toronto has two law schools - one in downtown, one further out. It also has a huge amount of national and international business, and pays very good wages for the people working in it. If you want to work in that environment, and subscribe to the 'go to school where you want to practice', there are advantages to going to school in Toronto. (Greater) Toronto also contains nearly 20% of the entire Canadian population, which means if you want to work in any of criminal, wills, family, etc etc, a large amount of it will happen there, and a large number of lawyers will work there to service the demand. Again, if you want to go to school where you want to work... If you want to work in rural Saskatchewan, then going to the little law school on the prairie, which will teach you local law and help you build connections with prairie practices is probably better, whatever name brand you think you'd get from UoT. However, most people going to law school, in common with most Canadians, are not desperately trying to find ways to move to rural Saskatchewan, so don't need to go to school there for that benefit.

No Canadian law school emphasizes LSAT over GPA the way some American schools do. Generally 50% is the highest you can expect (ie it's equal with GPA, whereas other schools actively prefer GPA). No Canadian school has an "exceptionally low" GPA requirement. What you can do is 'game' the requirements to an extent - eg if your GPA is weak due to a disastrous first year, UoA's last 2 years calculation is your friend. If you were generally fine across the board but have specific courses that dragged you down every year, UoM's dropping individual courses might be better. UoS place weight on Saskatchewan connections as well as grades & LSAT, so that could help or hurt you depending. Windsor apparently pride themselves on being holistic (and also, make sure you know if you're looking at the numbers for the JD or JD/JD, as they could be quite different). Talking about numbers and chances without firm figures for GPA and LSAT is always somewhat unproductive.

Last/this cycle (ie the one we're near the end of) 76s were getting accepted in January, and 74.9 was #4 on the Waitlist - I suspect the 72.something posted in Dec was a miscalculation (someone said at the time it was likely their GPA was out of 4.0 not 4.5). You can see stats on the class of 2020 at http://law.robsonhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web-stats-201790-1.pdf. If your index is accurately calculated at 72.28 then your index score chances are not good (but not completely impossible, depending as always on the competition in any given year). If you have reasons to apply in eg Individual Consideration or Indigenous categories, then numbers aren't the only thing that matters (but the whole thing is harder to predict, it doesn't mean 'better chances').

This will be because last year (the first of self-registration), students looked up the assigned professors (online reviews, comments, their syllabuses etc) and tried to pick 'ooh, I like that one for Torts, that one for Constitutional, want to avoid that one for Property', and wound up trying to pick from a range of courses across A01, 2 and 3. This year they seem to be keeping self-registration (so eg friends can try to get into the same section together) but avoiding giving the profs will hopefully mean students stick to a single section instead of ignoring the instructions.

There may be rare cases of people being accepted with high 140s, but that would presumably be paired with an exceptional GPA, or else very unusual circumstances, and a mature/access category. As a general rule, that LSAT score is not competitive for Canadian law schools. I'm not sure many schools publish their data in this much detail, but you can certainly see the admitted student (for regular category) grids for UoA (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-u9luOkViBOYVM2bWFMcmJNcUpOZVBZY0lsTVpyOGRIaGFR/view) and UoM (http://law.robsonhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web-stats-201790-1.pdf). In both cases, 151 is the bottom of the lowest LSAT category (UoM only made offers to people with a 4.0 or above for 151-154, UoA admitted 1 person with a 3.9/151-2 and 1 with a 4.0). If you're assuming that "a decent CGPA" is 3.9 or above, low 150s has a possibility of admission. The lower "decent" means, the higher the LSAT required. It's true that western schools tend to be more numbers focused (eg UoM don't even accept a personal statement, and as I recall people have reported admission to some other schools in some years before their statement was submitted), but even eastern schools don't typically weigh non-numbers factors heavier than numbers, they just allow them into the mix at all. If I were you, I'd focus on getting an LSAT in at least the mid-150s instead of spending time trying to add volunteering and other things to a resume. People with genuinely "impressive" ECs don't have them suddenly appear shortly before admissions - they've typically been done at a high level for a long time. This does of course depend on other factors, like what your GPA is, and which schools you're considering.

If you don't want to be in either MB or BC, go with your girlfriend. UVic would have advantages if you wanted to move together to BC later. Without that, you're contemplating spending the next 3 years half a continent apart from each other, to get a degree from somewhere you don't want to work in.