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Help me find a school
[Tycho?]![[Tycho?]](https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/userpics/934/nHG8VEMRTY5QM.gif)
As elusive as doubtRegistered User regular
As elusive as doubtRegistered User regular
Hey guys,
So I see there is already a college thread, but its pretty specific to the thread starter, so here's another.
I am looking for a technical college that I can go to in Canada. As far as location goes I'm focusing on Toronto, Montreal and Halifax because I have family in the East. I've been out of highschool for 4 years now. Right after highschool I took two years of physics at a university. Didn't appeal to me for a variety of reasons, and my motivation and grades started to slide for my second year courses, causing me to take part time courses and finally leave all together.
Now I want to go back to school in September. Electrical engineering is very appealing to me, and for now its what I'm limiting my search to. I'd also be much more interested in a college type course, one that has a larger focus on hands-on work than university engineering programs. My goal is to do something that interests me, and to acquire useful technical skills. I'm not looking to be able to jump into a specific career right after my schooling, its broader skills im more interested in.
Anyway, those are the details. Right now I'm having a hard time getting off the ground. Before anything else I am looking for resources on schools as a whole. How many colleges are there in a given city? Which ones offer electrical engineering (or some variation of it)? My google searches have yielded few useful results, with incomplete directories, tiny colleges or massive universities. A forum is what I really need, where I can talk with people that have been to these schools or have some sort of familiarity with the program(s) I'm interested in.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
So I see there is already a college thread, but its pretty specific to the thread starter, so here's another.
I am looking for a technical college that I can go to in Canada. As far as location goes I'm focusing on Toronto, Montreal and Halifax because I have family in the East. I've been out of highschool for 4 years now. Right after highschool I took two years of physics at a university. Didn't appeal to me for a variety of reasons, and my motivation and grades started to slide for my second year courses, causing me to take part time courses and finally leave all together.
Now I want to go back to school in September. Electrical engineering is very appealing to me, and for now its what I'm limiting my search to. I'd also be much more interested in a college type course, one that has a larger focus on hands-on work than university engineering programs. My goal is to do something that interests me, and to acquire useful technical skills. I'm not looking to be able to jump into a specific career right after my schooling, its broader skills im more interested in.
Anyway, those are the details. Right now I'm having a hard time getting off the ground. Before anything else I am looking for resources on schools as a whole. How many colleges are there in a given city? Which ones offer electrical engineering (or some variation of it)? My google searches have yielded few useful results, with incomplete directories, tiny colleges or massive universities. A forum is what I really need, where I can talk with people that have been to these schools or have some sort of familiarity with the program(s) I'm interested in.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
[Tycho?] on
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It's not much but the more you know...
Well its a start, I'll look into the school, thanks.
Since you're looking at Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax here are the program descriptions for UofT, McGill, and Dal
Most will have some sort of co-op too if you look into it.
I'm aware of the big universities (and studied at one of them, but I'll keep that to myself to maintain some semblance of internet privacy).
Reasons I'm looking for college rather than university courses:
1) Cost. College is cheap. UofT, McGill and Dal are all very not cheap
2) Academic approach. I want a course where hands on skills are taught to me, and classroom stuff is there to allow me to better understand the hands on stuff. Big universities tend to be the other way around, with mostly classroom work, and hands-on stuff thrown in in the form of labs.
3) University "feel". As I have already studied at a university for Physics, I can say I have no great desire to jump back into something like that. I'm looking at college stuff because I feel I'll be more motivated to attend class, study, etc. University was very impersonal for me and (to borrow something Mort said to me) felt more like a collection of individual classes rather than a program. My independent learning ability is not high, and I think a college type class will draw me in closer. Thats the idea anyway.
Now, that being said, I might have to go back to a university. I looked at most of the Electrical Engineering Technology courses (so far seems to be the closest to what I'm looking for) in that half of the country and discovered there wern't too many. There is a very good one in Kingston, a less comprehensive one in Halifax and something close to what I'm looking for at Humber in Toronto.
I will have to examine University programs just to give myself some diversity, but am really looking not for an engineering program, but for a college type program with a large emphasis on hands-on work. I'm sure some unis focus on this more than others, so I guess I will go check out university rankings too.