varunnarayan said:
Concordia is way better than UWindsor. Windsor's motive is to make money off international students and not give them proper education. I used to have a buddy there who moved to Carleton right after his first month.
I agree on most terms. Well to me, Concordia is little better than uWindsor; but Carleton is way better than both of them. I was a straight A student all my life (94% in HSC/Grade 12 and 92% in SSC/Grade 10) and so post-secondary was important to me. Anyone who is looking for a quality education and a reputable degree will notice that uWindsor doesn't meet them at all right after joining the school. Like your buddy, my friend and I wanted to transfer after 1 sem. We both got admission to uWaterloo but Waterloo didn't want any of our 1st sem credit transferred. That's equivalent to 6 courses ($9,000) at that time. Coming from a background where money isn't abundant, we decided not to go.
I studied Electrical Engineering at UoW. During my time (2005 - 2010), I was mostly disappointed by the faculty, course load/curriculum, specialization opportunities, its overall reputation and so on. Only thing that really mattered was our staff at Career Centre. For such bad reputation, UoW students always struggled to get co-op placements. But our career office tried their best not to leave any engineering student (qualified for co-op) without any placement. The way we were prepped was even more thorough than uWaterloo although uWaterloo has the best co-op program in the country (not only province).
uWindsor Features (from an engineering grad perspective):
1. Too many foreign educated faculties. Most of them did their PhD somewhere in Canada (universities that are even worse than Windsor). They have little practical knowledge and experience in Canada and thus don't know much about Canadian industries. Only Mech. Eng. can be an exception as it used to be renowned as the city of Windsor was the motor city of Canada (GM, Ford, Chrysler).
2. Some professors still cannot speak in English properly. Their graduate students make the powerpoint lecture slides for them. Through years, they memorized it. Sometimes you would feel in the class: WTH are they saying and WTH you're supposed to do?
3. The international professors run a politics inside the school. For example, Electrical & Computer Eng department is run by Persian profs. They are biased to hire lot of Persian students for Masters/PhD. They are also biased to focus on what they only know. For example, we didn't have the option to specialize in Power Engineering during our 4th year; but could specialize in VLSI Design. Canada doesn't have a job market for VLSI rather has great opportunities in Power field. But most profs specialized in VLSI from wherever they studied.
4. Too many average students and too many internationals among them.
5. The labs were outdated. We didn't have High Voltage labs. For my capstone project, we had to go to uToronto for some testing. Also, the labs are not open for all until you reach 4th year. How an engineering mind would become creative if the school doesn't assist?
6. We had to fight hard with our peers from uWaterloo, McMaster, uToronto etc. even for a co-op placement for our bad reputation among potential employers. The struggle continues even after you graduate.
7. It doesn't have Medical School and so it will never come close to all big universities.
8. As uWindsor makes money out of Int'l students, it has a very good Int'l Student Centre which helps students with SP, WP, TRV, PGWP applications.
9. We have 1 general library and 1 law library. uToronto has at least 3 libraries and even the smallest one is way bigger than ours.
10. Lastly, as the automobile industries collapsed in 2008, uWindsor lost its main sponsors for research, infrastructure and potential employers with it. Each school in Ontario is good at something based on the companies it has in nearby places. For example, uWaterloo is good in Computer Science as Waterloo has Blackberry and other software companies, McMaster is good in Mechanical Engineering as Hamilton is full of heavy manufacturing industries, Western is good in Medical as London is the leading city in health care and uToronto is good in lot of things as Toronto/GTA has everything. Same way uWindsor was good at Mechanical (automobile) Engineering as it had most Canadian HQ and plants of GM, Ford, Chrysler, not anymore.
I've never been to the new engineering building of uWindsor; but it may have lot of newer facilities that we missed out.
But most times, it won't matter once you start working full-time. After having 4 co-op terms in 4 different companies; I secured a permanent job in a crown corp of Ontario (lot of graduates from Waterloo, Toronto, McMaster, Ryerson didn't get it). It will matter getting your first job and pursuing an academic career.
Can you share your profile please? As my opinion, I prefer University of Windsor
