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Reviewed on Jan 27, 2025(Enrolled 2023)
What Students Say
Likes
- Good campus life.
- Plenty supported by the university especially by the wellness centre,
- Very vibrant international community with tons of events.
Dislikes
- Course selection is bad.
- The department of my program is not that helpful.
- 2-3 courses are online which does not make sense.
Course Curriculum
8
- The program is a little difficult so expect to put around 3 hours per day at least for assignments, and about 2-3 hours for self-study. It was a very practical program and almost all assignments would be implementation of what we have learned.
- The positive aspects were that you would get a very good practical entry-level understand of a ton of subjects like Machine Learning, Android App Development, parallel programming etc. which is very necessary and helps you decide your interest.
- The negative aspect was the fact that everything was taught from scratch which is not good for a master's course
Admission Experience
- I Applied in:
- Northeastern University - Accepted,
- Toronto Metropolitan University - Waitlisted,
- University of Ottawa - Rejected,
- Dalhousie University - Rejected,
- Wilfrid Laurier University - Admitted
- I was waitlisted at Toronto Metropolitan University for the program MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering. I received acceptance from Northeastern University for their Master of Science in Information Systems, and from the Wilfrid Laurier University for their Master of Applied Computing program which I eventually pursued.
- For the universities which rejected me, my CGPA in my Bachelor's degree was the biggest factor which contributed to my rejected as it was 7.22. I had work experience of 2 years but universities mostly focus on education performance in bachelor's degree and due to that I was rejected. For Dalhousie university, I messed up my coding interview so I was rejected due to that reason.
- I chose this university because of it's program primarily. The program was 16 months long, which was what I desired. Other than that, this university is in the city of Waterloo which has many IT companies, and as a student of Wilfrid Laurier University, you can study a couple subjects at University of Waterloo as well and that university is top 3 here in Canada.
- The admission process involved firstly applying through the Ontario Universities portal. In that I had to pay a fee of $160 for application. The application bundle consisted of my transcript, a scanned copy of all 8 semester marksheets from my bachelor's degree, 3 LORs, my english proficiency exam result (IELTS) and 1 SOP.
- The eligibility criteria for my program at the Wilfrid Laurier University was at least 75% in bachelor's degree and a minimum score of 6.5 in IELTS. IELTS is the accepted exam and there is no requirement for SAT, GMAT or GRE for the program which I studied.
- Overall experience was pretty good as the admissions department is very helpful and provide quick responses. There was just a simple challenge which was that I had to send my attested photocopies of all semester marksheets through post or email, and I chose the post option due to which it took about 2 weeks for them to confirm whether I have been finally admitted in the university or not.
- I applied for September 2023 intake. I applied for this specific one because the graduation date would be January 2025 which is a good time to start hunting for job as the job market opens up at this time.
- The admission process took 2 months for me, although I applied in March 2023, 1 week before application deadline. I know batchmates, who applied as early as November 2022, but still received their response in May 2022, which is when everyone receives their response. From application to acceptance there aren't many events, it's just that even if you apply in November when the applications open up, you are not going to get a response before May (which is around 7 months).
Class Schedule
8
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Number of classes depends on how many subjects you take per term.
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The maximum I took were 3 and there was at least 1 class each per week (one subject had 2 classes per week), and the class would be around 1 hour 50 minutes long.
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Online subjects have no classes so you have to study on your own.
- My class had around 90% Indians and the average number of students per class would be 40
Faculty
8
- I am not sure about the faculty-to-student ratio but if I had to guess I would around 140 students had access to 10 professors. A smaller number of class impacts on interactions with professors, but even in a large class, if you ask doubts and interact a lot, the professor would end up knowing you anyways.
- The teaching method was pretty consistent throughout different professors in a way that everyone had presentation slides which they would use, but some professors would have examples of what they are teaching which is pretty useful and I found that to helpful when doing assignments and my own projects. Teaching methodology, personally, I would say does not affect anyone's preparedness for a job because you can understand a concept, but you have to implement it yourself.
- Faculties are always there for providing references, especially if they know you, but they have not recommended any jobs for students. However, for part-time work as a TA, their recommendation goes to the department which the department can use to determine whether you can be a student or not.
- I enjoyed taking classes under prof. Pavel Pomorski. He is primarily a faculty at the University of Waterloo, but is a contract faculty at my university, and I took Advanced Parallel Programming under him. His classes were very interactive and he would show a good amount of programs during the class which helped me with assignments because that would provide helpful as a starter code.
- He also allowed students to get creative with assignments, meaning that if you can come up with your own version of a problem which is similar to the problem he mentioned, then he would accept that. Also, his assignment reviews were helpful and no other professor provided as thorough assignment reviews as him.
Campus Life
10
- My college has 4 locations. They are in Waterloo (where I go), Brantford, Milton, and Kitchener.
- My campus has a library, a wellness centre, around 4-5 study areas (from large halls to medium sized rooms), 2 fields, and a gym which has swimming pools, basketball and volleyball courts, and a badminton court.
- Homecoming football game is the most popular event at my university, but there are multiple other events that keep happening over the time.
- They are all shared on different instagram accounts managed by the university and also through a newsletter.
Part Time Jobs
- TAs are usually 4-5 including undergraduate TAs. RA positions depend on if a professor is doing a research within the university itself because some professors prefer to do it with other universities. From my knowledge, there are around 7 graduate paid RAs, with myself being an unpaid RA (unpaid RAs are around 3-4). There are no DAs whom I know about. Other than these, there are instructional assistants or IAs and markers. I knew 3 people who worked in these positions.
- TAs usually received somewhere between $35-$40 per hour with their hours being limited to 130 hours per term. IAs receive the same pay but their hours are very less (usually 25-30 per term).
- Other on-campus jobs are library assistants, international student outreach student positions, campus tech support, gym front-desk, cafeterias and restaurants, and the student union. Most of these receive minimum wage, with the exception of library assistant who receive around $18 per hour and receive about 6-12 hours per week
- There are no hourly restrictions in on campus work but maximum off-campus hours are 24 hours per week.
- It is quite difficult to get an on campus job but at the same time it depends on the type of job which you might be applying for. If it's a competitive job, then it will be extremely difficult to get it however, there are some jobs which have almost 0 competition and students get hired very easily for them
- Mostly Indian students work outside the campus. It is quite difficult to get part-time employment unless you have a good network, or you know someone who is a good friend and who works, then it becomes kind of easy to get a part-time job.
- Most part-time jobs include working in fast food, or grocery stores but as said before, it is very difficult to get one unless you are very good friends with someone who works there.
- Mostly people search and apply through job boards like indeed, and the resume should include a short summary of you and the hours of week you are available to work. Interviews are very straightforward and you should be as communicative as you can to get a job
Placement
10
- Out of the 20 people who graduated in the last intake, all of them ended up getting a job within 6 months after they completed their course.
- The average salary range can be $70000 per year in the IT field
- Students usually network around, but apply for jobs through linkedin. The biggest help in getting a job are internships as they demonstrate Canadian experience which is very essential for some employers as a lot of Indians have a history of faking their previous work experience. Other than linkedin, there's indeed, monster, dice and wellfound for finding jobs, but the best way would be to network with people especially in events like hackathons
- A batchmate of mine got a job in Nasdaq but his previous experience as an intern helped out in getting an interview. But most of my batchmates converted their intern jobs to full-time jobs. Most of the past graduates work in banks like TD, CIBC, Scotiabank etc.
- The university is very helpful when it comes to helping students to find internships as almost everyone in my batch who had an internship was because of the university's career center
Accommodation
Off Campus
10
- I found accommodation through facebook marketplace. My rent was $700 which included laundry and utilities (electricity and water).
- I did not really face any challenges while finding accommodation, but when securing it, I had to make a decision within 2 days after viewing because of it's high demand.
- For future students, I would recommend to get a private room if possible because then you can focus a lot on your studies.
- There's Facebook marketplace, Kijiji and real estate agencies which rent out and if you find real estate agency which specializes in student housing (WCRI in my city, Waterloo), then you can find pretty cheap rooms near university campuses.
- My accommodation is around 4 KM away from the campus. Most of the Indian students live in the city of Kitchener, but some groups did live near the university but they had to share their rooms with at least 3-4 other people to afford those places.
Exams
- I only gave IELTS as that is the only requirements for MS in Canadian universities.
- The documents which were necessary were completion letter(or temporary graduation letter from my bachelor's university), scanned copies of all 8 semesters of my bachelor's degree, my bachelor's degree(not required if you have a provisional degree), 3 LORs, 1 resume, and 1 SOP. If someone is applying for thesis based, then they would need to show some research work as well.
Events
10
- There are too many events which happen here and there, but the one which I like the most are the intramural sports which the university has.
- Intramural sports consists off sports competitions like football, volleyball, badminton, basketball, table tennis, frisbee etc.
- I participated in 7 man football event and badminton doubles. These intramural sport events start at the start of every term so it goes on throughout the year.
Fees
- Per term tuition fee was $8700 when I started (it is $9300 now). Other than tuition fee there are incidental fees which include dental insurance, student insurance, bus pass fee, gym fee, and other misc. fees.
- The fee is charged semester (or term) wise. One term is 4 months long.
- The monthly expense is somewhere between $700 - $1000 depending on how much I eat out and from this, my rent was 700, 200 for groceries, 48 for phone plan, and around 50-100 for eating out.
Scholarship
- I did not myself receive any scholarships for this course but I know 3 of my batchmates who did received it, but they received it because they chose to pursue the thesis based program of the Master's degree whereas I chose the coursework option.
- From my knowledge, 1 of those students had his whole tuition fee paid, and the other two received somewhere between $4000-$6000 CAD per term.
