lookingaround

If you really want to practice in Vancouver, Victoria beats Calgary - you'd learn local law, and you're closer to the offices, you can do it as a day trip (you wouldn't want to on a daily basis, but). Calgary isn't bad, but Victoria's better for that. As you mention, cost of living might be slightly lower in Calgary, but as I recall tuition is slightly lower in Victoria, so those two might balance. That essentially means you're choosing between your partner's promotion, and the advantages to you of studying in a local school. To be honest, I doubt you can make a truly bad decision in this case. Personally I'd go Victoria, for the career advantages and the weather, but I have no idea about your partner, their job, etc.

Whether or not ECs matter at all depends on where you're applying - some schools are pure numbers, some schools pay a personal statement lip service, some schools focus in detail on exactly what you've done with your life. Your GPA is great, and the scholarships also speak to that. Your LSAT could be better. Those are the two components that will certainly be considered by every school. Your extra curricular activities in undergrad sound.... fine? Bearing in mind that some schools won't care about them at all, a typical admitted year in a law school will contain many people who have been researchers for MLAs/MPs (not just tour guides) or even been elected themselves (particularly at Municipal level), set up and run their own businesses, achieved great grades while applying for refugee status, been national or olympic level athletes, so on and so forth. Some, but not all of those, would be considered to have 'strong' ECs. There's nothing wrong with what you've done, nobody's going to say "3.9 but didn't win a Nobel? Nahh" - but people often seem to underestimate how accomplished their classmates are. You likely want to focus more on the numbers - particularly as with that GPA, your LSAT is likely the only thing holding you back from the school of your choice (and even with a 157 you should have multiple options).

Your first two years will hinder you getting into schools that use cGPA. They won't hinder you getting into schools that use L2. I mean... that's a bit of stating the obvious, but as you said, you know some use different criteria, so it depends on the school. Each one says what they consider, and for you with quite a disparate set of grades, whether they drop worst-classes-wherever, or none-at-all, or use most-recent-two-years-whether-good-or-bad makes a difference. You can look that up and calculate the way each school will interpret your grades, which will probably vary substantially based on their individual formula/attitude.

I agree with AJD19 - if you want to practice in Ontario, I can't see any reason why you would pick TRU over Lakehead. Every 'downside' that you might worry about Lakehead also exists at TRU (eg newer schools, smaller alumni network), and the two have nearly identical tuition (TRU is actually about $1k more expensive, $19,443 over BL's $18,593). Even the cities are similar sizes. Unless you think three years in the mountains would be worth it as against all the career advantages of going to school where you want to work, this is a more cut and dry comparison than most...

This may be true in Australia. It isn't true in Canada. I would wager that of the Canadian lawyers who have heard of either, Bond is known only for being attended by Canadians who can't get into Canadian law school, and Griffith is not known about. To work in Canada? Neither, for better outcomes you would work to attend a Canadian law school. If you want to work in Australia, there are better places to ask, as this forum knows about Canadian attitudes, schools, etc. It is certainly possible that certain individuals have had positive outcomes after going to either one of those schools. But if you want to know about those particular cases, you'd need to ask those particular people. In aggregate, they're not good options if you want to work in Canada, and this isn't the right place to ask if you don't want to work in Canada.

https://law.uwo.ca/future_students/jd_academic_programs/first_year_curriculum.html Orientation To Law And The Legal System, a first year course at Western

I'm not sure how deep this is, but there's a simple population/economy thing - Greater Toronto has about a million more residents than British Columbia, and contains more Canada-wide headquarters than anywhere else in Canada. It's the commercial capital of the country. More jobs, and more people chasing them, coming out of more law schools with larger classes. They're not especially 'comparable' in the sense that Vancouver is 1/3 the size of Toronto and doesn't occupy the same kind of position - for the US in some ways New York and Los Angeles are close in size (both have greater populations around 20m) and both play powerful roles in the economy. That's not the case in Canada, Toronto is bigger than anything else, and Vancouver isn't second (I think the last stat I saw, Calgary had more vacant office space than Vancouver has in total). The most comparable thing I can think of job-to-job is Public Prosecution Service salaries, since that's same employer doing the same job - Vancouver pays slightly better than Calgary, not as well as Toronto (https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/abt-apd/recru/sb-pa.html) (I suspect that means after cost of living, Calgarian and Montrealais Federal Crowns are better off than their Vancouver counterparts at any given level). Although government offices may either have to (Prosecution) or feel they have to (I actually don't know - some example of civil service work being spread across the country for equality) have jobs in every Province, you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be more in either Toronto (size) or Ottawa (capital) than Vancouver (smaller city half a continent away). So yeah... overall, smaller Province (around 1/3 the size in total) with smaller main city (ditto) which is less economically important. Vancouver has biglaw firms and options, it has companies and rich people who need local service, but demographic reality is that it has less than other cities, and at least the stereotype is of earning less (in exchange for being able to see the mountains, and wear a tshirt in February).

Your problem is that you're choosing between two uncertainties - you might be able to transfer after 1L but you might not. You might get accepted if you apply again next year, but you might not (even at somewhere which accepted you this year, as you'd be competing against different applicants). You decided to apply to Alberta in the first place - was there a possibility that your partner would accompany you then? Did you just want to throw out an application on a prayer? My personal instinct would be to accept the offer that's extended instead of starting over next year with no certainty of getting any, but that does rather depend on why you applied to Alberta if you're now hesitant about accepting the offer they've given you. I also think there's a difference between discovering in/after 1L that you have the grades and inclination to transfer, against attending in the first place intending that - it might be further motivation to study, but hopefully you'd have that anyway, and it could mean failing to integrate, and also suffering more if you don't succeed in the attempt. So that might militate against attending if you really want to put in no more than a year in Edmonton.

I never said it was about 'regional equity' - you were complaining there were no seats 'reserved' for you as a Manitoban. The province has a school, with a predominantly Manitoban class (largely due to being mainly Manitoban applicants), and a specific policy of only offering places to Manitobans after July. (and there is loads of waitlist movement after that point - last year, apparently offers went to at least #23 of Manitoba-only - )

To be fair, UoM explicitly kick every non-Manitoban off the waitlist in July, so that can really help Manitobans who have numbers not good enough to make the first cut, but good enough to not be told 'no'.

If you really are hell-bent on studying in the UK because you can't get into Canadian schools, you should learn simple skills like searching for visa application information. General information on a UK study visa is less than 30 seconds away via Google, and any university you've been accepted to is likely to have an international office whose entire job is to help people with questions like that. Which might sound like 'don't ask us ask someone else', but is really 'don't rely on others who have little reason to know this, and if you really struggle to find easily available information, there are people you've paid for who are there to get it right'.

It's around that time of year when some people are feeling miserable with their first year choice (or only option) of school, but consoling themselves with the thought that midterms went well, and you may get the grades overall to be able to transfer to somewhere you like the idea of more! Typically, transfer threads don't get many public responses or information (obviously, not dissing everyone who's ever said anything in one, but those things rarely run 7 pages. Or even 7 posts). This isn't a huge surprise - most students don't transfer, so the available experience beyond 'here's the school website with the deadline and docs they want' is quite limited, and those who have gone through it are a small group who often had quite personal reasons for making a change that they don't want to share and identify in public spaces. So just looking at the posts can look like people shouting into the dark & that you'd get nothing. This is just to say that if you are thinking of putting in a transfer app, you're not alone, there have been people going through it every year, and if you were thinking of posting about your thoughts and options but have noticed there are rarely responses, don't feel suppressed and let that stop you- more goes on in PMs from people who've read those, and there are people who are prepared to answer some questions in public. Hoping you all are very happy with your first year schools, but aware some might not be

I have about as much idea about this as you do Mainly here to point out that you might want to see if you can research why another program no longer exists: UAlberta and Colorado used to offer a dual JD/JD (LLB when it began). This was available as recently as a couple of years ago when I last looked. Alberta have simply removed all reference to it from their website, Colorado quite tersely note they 'jointly decided to suspend admissions'. This is, of course, nothing to do with the program you're looking at. But, UAlberta and UoC are normally considered pretty equivalent, and CU and Houston law have very close rankings in the US. So in terms of educational outcomes and qualifications gained (and for what it matters, prestige) the two programs are/were extremely similar. So you might find it very informative/useful to find out why one of them no longer exists. It may be that there was some scandal specific to one person that brought the whole thing down and has no bearing - it may be a systemic issue that people weren't interested, they didn't feel the outcomes were worth it. I don't know - but some of the potential reasons could be highly relevant to some of your questions about this program.

Ontario schools share information (and I believe they have options for firm/soft acceptance?). Non-Ontario schools do not share information.

Some people find it useful, I consider it $20 I shouldn't have spent. You'll be taught the title in your first week of class (instead of 'yes' or 'no', seek out and embrace ambiguity for high grades), and the rest is just repeating the same examples over and over without ever saying what would make an answer better.