The McGill Life

Online Lectures

2009-11-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

As most people requested, here's a link to some of the best online lectures ever! I remember using all these lectures during my first year before every midterm/final! To be frank, I actually still use them! I hope you enjoy them - they're in HQ and broken up efficiently into categories and subcategories as well. The best part is that you don't have to sign up for any of it, and it's all completely free- Thank you MIT! I especially loved the math tutorials and found them to be of the greatest help, I'm really bad at math sadly.

So, if there's anything else you guys need - just tell me! Oh yes, and the link for the past papers as well. I'm pretty sure you'll find everything you need on this website - past finals, assessments, assignments and midterms. Thank you again, to everyone supporting the site!

Without further ado, here are the two links :

1. Online Lectures

2. Past Papers

Sudden Boost

2009-11-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

Salut guys!

Just wanted to throw out a quick thank you to all my subscribers and regular visitors! The site is growing tremendously quickly. A few weeks back, I only got about 1 to 2 users a day, now there are on average 20 users. This all thanks to the previous users spreading the message. So, once again - thank you to you all. I'm definitely going to keep expanding the website, keep posting relevant information that can enhance your time at McGill and I'll keep replying to all your mails and comments(if they're questions). If there's anything at all that you want me to post on the site - tell you, and I guarantee I'll make a new page for you!

Someone requested that I post the links to Math 133 and Math 141 online tutorials and post some Comp 208 programs as well. I'll make sure I finish doing that sometime this week. That's really all from me - enjoy life, enjoy McGill - take care!

Ranking

2009-11-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

So McGill got the coveted 18th rank that so many universities were fighting for - top 20! Last year, we were rank #20, so you can imagine how big this is. We beat universities like Berkley and Kings! I really think this is a monumental achievement for McGill - it's already been called the number 1 research university in Canada. Just a few days, McGill received 500 million for outsides companies and sources for research intensive studies - so you can imagine how well the McGill name is recognized.

Anyway, so here is the link to the ranking list:

Ranking 2009

Newspaper report

So, I guess we can say congrats to Heather Munroe Blum - headmistress of McGill University.
If you've seen McGill lately - it's all under construction, and the developments are simply amazing. The amphitheater, the restorations, the new buildings. The fact that McGill can so easily drop 500 million on making the campus better, shows how well established and funded they are. So to prospective McGill students - this should be incentive enough to try and join us here and this amazing institution. And to current students - congrats, go celebrate - haha!

Math 141 and 133 Calculators

2009-10-27T21:14:00.001-07:00

As per requested in previous comments, I decided to post the numerous number of calculators that I've used throughout my math life at McGill. They're all online and extremely powerful. Some can actually integrate complex integrals, while others can find the determinants of 6x6 matrices in 2 seconds. I'm listing these links not so you can speedup your web work, but so you can quickly identify where the problem lies and in some situations - so you can work backwards to find out what method to use for integrals or inverses for example.

Math 141

Integration Calculator

List of every Intergral

Derivative Calculator

List of ever Derivative

Partial fraction Calculator

Factor & Simply Calculator

Math 133

Reduced Row Echelon Calculator

Everything else you could do in Math 133

I hope you like these calculators! Tell me what you think and what else you'd like me to post. Enjoy math!

Halloween

2009-10-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

Hello! It’s Helene again, here to tell you about another exciting day in the life of ...well...me! So my boyfriend and I have been cracking our brains over Halloween costumes and we finally came up with something. There are so many parties all over the place and considering that this might be my last Halloween in Montreal, I wanted it to be amazing!

We first started researching couples costumes online and found a lot! None were particularly interesting – you had Adam and Eve, the Flintstones, lock and key, Hugh and the playboy bunny. But I think for Halloween, you really have to stand out to make a difference and to catch someone’s eye – especially the judges’! – ha-ha. We loved coming as pieces of chess, or r2d2 and c3po, or a twister mat, or a beer pong table! Those were amazing ideas, but ones I felt every couple out there was researching and going to come as.

Honestly, go on google and search for Halloween costumes, you’ll find a lot! Don’t copy them however; just get a roundabout idea from what to wear – in the end – make your design up from scratch. Montreal’s clubs hold like 600 people and at any given time, there are about 2000 people on the street – it would be horrible to see someone wearing exactly the same costume as you are!

So, the idea we settled on, was going as the Simpson! It's not that original, but it's something I doubt anyone will wear. I'm debating whether to paint myself yellow, or buy like foam and paint that yellow, then attach the body parts to ourselves. It's still all a mystery to me! I found some amazing youtube videos with people explaining what to wear and what not to wear to Halloween:

Give them a look-see, they should make your decision much easier!

There are a ton of other amazing costumes - like mario bros, tetris, sperms and an egg, etc. I would definitely suggest going to the dollarama and buying your supplies from there! Though, I wouldn't really recommend putting body paint on yourselves from there - might end up burning your skin! Oh! yesterday I bought food from there - it was terrible - don't make that mistake. Just stick to things your not going to intake - haha!

Anyway, that's all from me. Take care, enjoy Halloween and take a lot of pictures - you'd want to remember your college Halloween - believe me - they're AMAZING!

The Dollarama

2009-10-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

Ah yes! The dollarama! I remember the first time I went to one so clearly. It was almost magical stepping in and seeing 80% of the products sold for a dollar. Don’t get me wrong – this place was amazing! You could get virtually anything, from spoons to glassware to mirrors for a dollar +tax obviously. But the funny thing was that within two months of McGill’s freshmen being in university, most of the students living in New Residence were hooked. And I mean hooked! Buying plants, paper plates, bottles, guns, Christmas decorations from there – Stuff they didn’t even need.

That aside, I’d say the dollarama saved my bank account. I had a single room, so it was horribly lonely in there. With no decorations, few posters and a lot of space, the only things I could fill my room with were accessories from the dollar store. I bought table clothes, TV antennas, pencil holders, slippers, blankets, covers – everything! Within a month, I knew the blue prints of the place – ha-ha. I don’t know why everyone is so against the place to start with – it’s every cheap person’s dream come true. You can be so fancy and “rich” buying from the dollarama – because anyone who came into your room wouldn’t know where the half the things were bought from – yes! The quality is that good.

Anyway this isn’t really an informative blog post – it’s just me venting out my love for the dollar store. I must admit though, I spend a lot of money there – maybe about 10$ a week – NOT on food that too. But hey, I don’t mind, I’ve taken all the stuff from my first year and dumped it in my new apartment here. It all still looks new and is in excellent condition. So don’t fear the place – it really saves you a lot of money if you’re smart about what you buy. Don’t go buying hamster food when you don’t have one, don’t buy super glue if you need to stick paper together, and especially, don’t buy food.

Banking

2009-10-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, been finishing up with midterms. Only have 2 more left in November, so I’m good for this week. I got a lot of mails asking about banking and which banks to choose. So, I decided to write this blog about my favourite bank – RBC!

As you know there are about three main banks in Montreal – RBC, HSBC and TD. They’re all amazing banks with student plans and low monthly charges. What it basically boils down to is proximity, services and their plans.

RBC

I know RBC and HSBC have an awesome student plan where you don’t pay any start up or initialization fees. Plus, you don’t get charges monthly, nor are you swarmed with transaction fees. The only fees you do pay is when money is transferred to your account from another bank’s account. For instance, whenever my parents transferred money from their respective accounts, I got charges $30 - $15 for the transfer fee to RBC and $15 for the bank that sent the money.

It’s kind of stupid paying so much, so what my parents did was send one large sum of money for the year, so I only got charged once. For international students, it’s especially important to watch interest rates on a daily basis, so that when your parents do transfer money, you can save. I know that you can sometimes save about 300$ in exchange rates itself.

RBC has an unseen but important benefit – there are ATMs everywhere. New Residence has one, every mall has about three and the McGill campus has some as well. This basically means that you can deposit and withdraw money wherever you are, without paying any fee. If you’re an HSBC or TD banker, you have to pay a nominal fee to withdraw money from the RBC ATM.

HSBC

HSBC was my second choice, the only reason I didn’t get an account there was because there was only one ATM and one service center – right opposite the McGill campus on Sherbrook. It was a tad bit too far for me and I preferred going down to the lobby of New Residence to take out money there. HSBC has outstanding customer service, in that whatever problems you have, paying bills, online banking, issuing cheques, paying your mobile phone bill, McGill bill – they’ll do it for you, for free, right there and then. RBC has the same plan and you don’t have to wait for more than 5 minutes! I don’t know, but I think that’s really good.

I’m really sorry, but I sadly don’t know much about TD, they’re not that into the student plan as RBC and HSBC are. They advertize like crazy – especially at frosh events, but I don’t know a lot of people who have TD accounts. All I can say is that they have a sweet plan wherein they pay you $50 to join TD. So, the minute you open an account there, you get $50 credited to your account! It’s that amazing? I would have joined, but the service center and ATMs were really far away – and I mean really far – somewhere on Peel and another one on Crescent. I made a lot of daily or weekly transactions, so TD didn’t work out for me.

How to ace Calc

2009-10-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

For me, my hardest subject was without a doubt Math. Math 140, Math 133, Math 141, Math 263, Math 264, the whole thing seems like one big blur right now. I honestly have no idea how I got an A. Actually I do. I remember failing almost every assignment and quiz at first. But then I found YouTube. I know it seems so stupid, but ask yourself, do you actually get everything the Prof teaches? You have to attend every class and study everyday to get a word he says. At least for me, my Prof only focussed all his attention on the top 5 bright students and no one else. I hated it, it’s like the rest of the class didn’t exist.

Anyway, so ya, YOUTUBE! I searched for everything I didn’t understand there and watched explanations of how to do it. From the fundamental theorem of calculus to advanced integration, you had real geniuses teaching you online. They made things 10 times easier than the textbook can ever. If you’re in Math 133, you probably don’t get anything right now – Wikipedia is your friend. At first, there were these guy who’d shoot the answer in like 2 minutes while you spent three days trying to figure it out. But after Wikipedia, I could shoot the answers 4 times faster than they could. How? Cause wiki makes stuff simple. They don’t teach you the entire formula, only the condensed version of it.

TAs are also the best people to go to. I often got stuck with my COMP assignments and they were so friendly that they`d not only find the problem with my programs but actually correct them as well. Though you sometimes get these horrible TAs that just want to screw you over like their TAs did them. Ha-ha.

Making $20,000 in 2 days

2009-10-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

This was a random study I found in Montreal on the web one day. This company http://www.anapharm.com/ was offering thousands of dollars almost every month for participants to try their experiment drugs. Now, even though that’s a lot of money and they say Health Canada approves it, I would honestly never try it. I remember reading an article about a man who went for a similar test in Toronto for an anti-inflammatory drug test and ended up with his sight impaired. There’s obviously no compensation for your medical expenses, you just get the x thousand dollars. I thought I’d leave the link there INCASE anyone is really desperate for cash. Don’t do it for fun otherwise.

Effects

Here’s another link you should read about how horribly wrong these test go: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2006/08/4840.ars You have to remember that even though they say it’s a 100% safe, each person’s body reacts differently to certain chemicals and drugs. Peanut butter is 200% safe, yet it can close to kill some people. The base point, don’t do it!!! Unless not having the money means death itself. These tests don’t usually fill up too quickly, so you can guarantee yourself a spot there. After you sign a few responsibility papers and contracts, you’re good to go. These tests often include you sleeping over at the lab for tests to be carried out on you, so make sure you have the time.

A Safer Choice

This however, is a site you should visit: http://www.hec.ca/en/current_student/financing_studies/work/index.html, it’s a bit like paid research, but to answer questions and make decisions. It’s mainly for group studies to observe human nature, and all that you disclose is your decisions, so it’s really safe. They even have work-study options to help you make money on and off campus. This site helped me a lot to find small part-time jobs all over the place. They have a lovely international section which I found was considerate, considering almost everything Canadian is for Canadians – a little...close minded I think?

I'll try and find some other websites you can visit for paid research. I know it's the quickest way to make LOADS of money, but please remember to be safe. I know a couple of people who've had bad experiences, so I don't want that happening to anyone else. I know that Concordia and McGill have MBAs looking for participants for decision research - those are super safe. But I've posted that on the "making money" link, so make sure to check that out too.

Midterms

2009-10-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Midterms are probably the worst part of university, in the sense that they usually come up in September or October of your fall semester. Students are usually getting acquainted to the wild and upbeat life that is McGill, only to find themselves swarmed with one midterm after another.

So, what recommendations do I have for you?

Courses

Before sitting on the laptop in August, registering for as many courses as possible into that 18 credit limit, figure out whether you can really handle it. Six courses is pushing it, and McGill recommends you take at least five per semester. But it really depends on what the course entails. Most arts, math, and engineering courses don’t have midterms – like FACC 100 and MATH 133. These courses are honestly the best to take because you only have assignments and webwork to finish. You can often check whether the course has a midterm and how the grading is done before you register for the course. What I did was write all the midterm dates down and then choose my courses according to that. By doing that, my midterms were spread out and I wasn’t a bit stressed.

The Unseen Benefit

Some midterms are worth 15% of your final grade, some are worth 5%, and some are worth 30%. It really depends on the course. Most students hate midterms – granted – but you have to realize that midterms are about 70% easier than finals. They cover only 1/3^rd the portion and are set up in a way that you do well. In that sense, you get up to 30% of your final grade in the bag. That isn’t so bad is it?

Unsatisfactory/satisfactory

When registering for courses, if you have the unsatisfactory option selected, you have nothing to worry about. Your midterm GPA doesn’t count towards your final GPA, and your final GPA doesn’t count at all, so your cumulative GPA is safe. Of course, the system works in reverse too. If you GPA is horrible and you ace an unsatisfactory listed course, your GPA doesn’t improve at all. So be careful when choosing this option. Choose it only for hard courses or courses which you’re horrible in. I never chose this option, even for my hardest courses because you lose drive then, you’re not motivated to give it your all and fight for that extra %. Plus, what’s the point, you’re in McGill – STUDY! Haha.

Prepare in advance

The best piece of advice I can give you is to prepare well in advance. I’m taking about studying what you learn every day. I’m sure you’ve heard that almost every day of your high school life, but it’s true. Professors move slowly at first, but suddenly shoot through five concepts in one lecture. Then you’re left in the dust. Preparing in advance gives you that edge in the classroom, because while the Prof is moving forward, you can move too. I didn’t do this my first semester, and I can could never keep up, because every topic is based on the topic before it. Don’t ever trust old midterms! They might seem super easy, but the real midterm is often 10 times harder. Why? Because in the ever changing realm of professor pride, it’s now accepted that a mean, stringent and tough Prof is the “best” – they get talked about more, they get compared to Cornell Profs, and it feels good for them! – Stupid if you ask me....but oh well.

Important Links

2009-10-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys!

Here’s a list of really important links that I’ve collected over a few years for McGill. The McGill site is a bit hard to get around, so I’ve pretty much summarized some of the most important links:

1. myMcgill

2. Books Classified

3. Mechanical Engineering Curriculum

4. Transfer Credits

5. Residence Handbook

6. Summer Send offs

7. On Campus Jobs

8. Smart Minverva

9. Course Registration

10. Minvera

I highly recommend you visit each of these links and check them out. They’re all extremely useful, especially smart Minerva which basically arranges all your courses for you hassle free. It’s sometimes off, but you can check it up. I used it to arrange my schedule and I think I have the perfect timetable now because of it. I’ll keep adding other links that I feel are useful as well. Feel free to shoot me a message as to what links you need or want to add here. Thanks and take care!

Buy my Books!

2009-10-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

What McGill saves you in tuition fees; it rips you off in books and merchandize! Most McGill students are often swopped up into the crazy whirlpool that is first week. Every professor begins telling you to rush to the McGill bookstore and buy all your books as soon as possible, because without them – you’ll fail. Well, let me tell you now, that that’s all rubbish.

I remember not buying a single book for any of my classes for the first two weeks. As you know, the first two weeks are the add/drop period. You get to attend any class and choose whether you want to keep it or drop it. It’s honestly pointless to buy your books during this time, because you might end up dropping the course. Instead, buy your books after the second week, when your sure of your classes and when some sellers are really desperate to sell.

McGill Classifieds

This site was really the best place to buy books from. Sellers are extremely desperate to get rid of their books and the best part is that you can bargain. You basically go through the list with your CTRL+F on and search for you book. You’re bound to find at least three to four McGill students selling the same book. You can then choose which price/buyer/edition you like the best, arrange a meeting with the student and then go ahead and buy it. The best part is that the whole transaction is very casual and informal. http://www.mcgill.ca/classified/books/ that’s the link. There are tonnes of other stuff as well, like bikes, laptops, cars, etc. You’ll get the prices here.

Editions

Where most professors especially get you, is the edition of the book you have to buy. I remember for Math 141, our professor kept telling us to buy edition 6 of the calculus 2 book, which went out for 180$. The funny thing was that all the previous five editions were exactly the same, different page numbers, but the exact same sums. Edition 5 was about 130$; Edition 3 was about 50$ and Edition 2 was 10$! Can you imagine the rip off? So check carefully whether you really need the latest edition, because you can save hundreds of dollars with the aggregate sum of your total book purchase.

Amazon

Remember that Amazon is your friend and with eBay, you can get amazing prices. I didn’t use either site for my books, but what a couple of my friends did was order in bulk and split shipping charge. They sent about 20$ a book plus 6$ shipping. Not much, considering the original price of the book was some 140$. Though the only drawback is that if it’s second hand, you don’t really know the quality or state of the book. Talk to the seller online and make sure the book is in decent condition.

eBooks

This is what I did all through my 3 years at McGill. I downloaded my books! Mostly every book is online and you can download it or buy the eBook. They’re much cheaper and what you can do is split the price of the book between your friends and then distribute the copies. It’s completely legal and it’s amazing! Why? Because you can walk into six classes with one laptop and have all your six books on it. You can search for keywords or sums in seconds rather than scouring the entire book, reading line by line for a phrase or definition. The only problem – don’t do this for art courses or management courses where there’s a lot of reading, because your eyes burn out of their sockets reading online. You can print it out if you want, providing you can print really cheap.

Scanning

Another good idea is to scan your friend’s book. What I found is that your courses never require the entire book as part of the curriculum. Usually, just a few chapters are covered. For some of my math courses, we only covered 4 chapters from a book with 53 chapters. So you’re wasting your money buying the whole book. Instead, just scan the parts you need and print them if you want. It’s a bit tedious but provided there are only a few pages, you save a lot and it’s a one time job to scan and print. You have plenty of time during September, so you can do that then.

The Word

Lastly, there’s a shop called the word. It’s near the McGill campus and it’s on the way from New Residence. You get second hand books there and you can even sell your old books at decent prices. Prices at this place are a bit higher than the ones above, but definitely lower than the McGill Bookshop. You get almost every book you’ll need at McGill here, but not all. I won’t talk about the McGill Bookstore here, because I honestly think they rip you off tremendously.

Copy EUS

If you’re lucky, most of your books can be bought from Copy EUS, the Engineering McConnell shop. It’s right next to the front door and books are about 20$ to buy here. Being an engineering student, I luckily had to buy most of my books from here. 20$ is amazing for such big books, plus they were bound and had hard covers, so it wasn’t just a stack of lose pages. I know MIME 310 and Mech 201 have books at Copy EUS, as well as some other courses like Natural Disasters.

I hope this helps, just remember that you’re in Montreal, where you can get anything, so shop around before getting scammed! Also, remember that worse comes to worse you can always go to the McGill bookstore and get your book there! Happy Book Buying!

Elevator Tricks

2009-10-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing *besides the crazy rent* that I hated about New Residence, it was definitely the fact that elevators took forever and it really pissed me off – especially when I had a class I was late for. So here are a few tricks I used to make the elevator...a little...more convenient for me *I’ll say that for now – haha*

No Stops

Suppose you live on a high floor, like the 15^th or 16^th floor and you want to get down to RC really quick, avoiding all the other 13 floors below you? Simple. Press the close button and the floor you want to go to *eg. Close + 2* will take you directly to the second floor. However, keep in mind that you have to press both at the same time and keep it pressed for five seconds. Only then will it work. For me at least, it worked 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time, I accidently pressed RC, then close and RC. I hope New Residence hasn’t changed their systems; but otherwise I guarantee it’ll work.

Reset Floors

This trick is less important and I think a whole lot of people know it. It’s also not that useful since your screwing over the people in the lift with you – so it’s not such a good idea. However, suppose a lift stops on the 5^th floor and there’s no one in it, or someone just got out; and it’s going down – however, you want it to go up. Just press the lever on the top of the sliding doors of the elevator and voila, you can press any number and it’ll go to that floor. So in the above example, you can press 16, instead of waiting for another lift. You can also do this if you accidently pressed a floor and want to reset it. I loved this trick at first when I was one of the few people who knew it – now sadly, everyone knows it...blah!

Making Money

2009-10-08T13:38:00.001-07:00

What’s on everyone’s mind besides partying and studying? The answer is definitely Money. We’re all students with tight budgets and parents looking over our shoulders to see how much we’re really spending. Well spending your own money is hard – at least it was for me. So here are a few ways I made a tonne of money and spent it all on myself.

Caps

The first place you should look is the caps office. The career office has about a thousand jobs including part times ones and you can select any time, date, place, type of job. All you have to do is register online and send in your CV. The best part, at least for me is that the Caps office actually helped me make my CV, and when I submitted it, I actually was accepted for over 10 jobs. Obviously, I couldn’t work them all, but I chose three and made 10$ an hour working 5 hours every three days a week. I made a total of 150$ every week which was decent. Most of the jobs were monotonous like guarding the parking area or opening the door for the cars at the Milton gates, so it was perfect for me, in the sense that I could study and I didn’t lose that precious time. Off campus jobs are harder to get because they need a really good CV and you’re always asked if you can speak French. It was okay for me, because I speak French, so during my second and third year I worked at HSBC, second cup, Tim Horton’s and the McGill library. What I found a bit weird is that they require Quebec French as the customers feel “more at home.” But I think that’s a load of crap. If you know French, you can get by.

Printing

This, I actually discovered by accident. I bought a printer at the beginning of the year, and it was really cheap – about 49$ with the cartridge and it printed 2000 copies per cartridge. So anyway, one day my friend asked me if she could print her report and that she would pay me a dollar. I think McGill charges 7 cents a copy, so you can make about 12 copies for a dollar. She had 15 sheets to print, so we obviously made a profit printing it at my place. But if you do the math, my cartridge was only 20$, so for me, each copy was only 0.01 cents. So, I made 7 times the profit. In short, I made a killing printing people’s reports, case studies and even books! That’s something you should definitely think about – but make sure you do the math perfectly before starting this business, you could get screwed over if you miss calculated.

Research and Development

Sorry about the title, it’s just that in all my classes they keep saying “research and development,” so it’s engrained in my mind. So, what is this? Basically, McGill and neighbouring Concordia are medicinal schools so they do a lot of research. Which means one thing- they need volunteers. Flyers are all over campus and you just have to spot them. The sessions are like 30 minutes to one hour and you get paid between 15$ to 50$. In a year, I probably went for about 10 tests and made 350$. Good isn’t it? You don’t even have to do anything – look at few pictures, tell them what you think; take an MRI; sing a song; taste some food; listen to music while sensors record your emotions. It’s easy money and takes barely any time. I HIGHLY recommend you do that. And don’t worry, there’s no experimental testing that’ll kill you there.

Saving Money

2009-09-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Being a finance major, my main concern while living in Montreal was cutting costs. Most students wasted a lot of money in not planning well before coming here, and I want to ensure you don't make the same mistakes as well.

Save Space

Firstly, when coming to Montreal - DON'T BRING A TRUCK LOAD of stuff. Remember, that around campus, you get pretty much everything you need for perhaps a much cheaper price. If your living in New Residence, like I did, you'll save a lot of money! Contrary to beliefs that it's the most expensive residence. You have to keep in mind that you don't pay for electricity, water, food *it's included*, table tennis, events, parties, and there's a huge rez budget as well.

Posters

If your looking to brighten up your room with posters, there are three options. I chose the last one cause I was late and it seemed to be the best. Firstly, in the opening two weeks of university, there's a huge poster sale in the SSMU building where you practically get any and every type of poster. They're about 10$ each with the really nice and big ones being $18 or so. Unfortunately, the good ones go quick and you only have two days to buy the posters - not ideal for a girl who can't make up her mind = me!

Secondly, there are amazing shops down st. Catherine's and one really good one down St. Laurent. They're again about 15$ each but the selection isn't as good.

Thirdly, and my favorite option - amazon.com!! don't use amazon.ca, seriously - worst posters I've ever seen. so yes, amazon. com, it's about 0.49$ to 4.99$ per poster. The posters are huge, amazing quality, and to date I can't find a single poster that isn't there. They have every size, type, genre, band, movie, book, building, city you could think of and it's dirt cheap - 49 cents! However, there's obviously shipping, which works out to about 25$. So what I did was split the shipping between 10 people who wanted to buy HDMI cables, posters, towels, bags, anything. It was amazing, I ended up spending 2 dollars on shipping and 5 dollars on 7 posters. Isn't that amazing? Just find someone with a debit card with an expiration date and visa/mastercard stamp - only then can you use amazon.com. RBC debit cards don't work just by the way.

Groceries

The next topic, is going to be daily grocery shopping. I found that a lot of students just went to expensive shops everyday and bought food whenever they needed it - bad idea. Shops like the metro and provigo are amazing for groceries, but they’re also horribly expensive. So again, what I did was bring two to three friends of mine and go for the Monday student super saver sale. It was basically, spend over 50$ and get 10% off. Which is essentially no tax, or very little tax if you want to get accurate. So yes, I spend about 20$ and with my friends, we more than crossed the 50$ mark and got our 10% off. It’s only on Mondays, so we basically shopped for the next two weeks without overspending. When you go alone, you tend to buy stupid stuff just to cross the 50$ mark.

Oh! And make note of this – NEVER BUY FOOD FROM THE DOLLARAMA. Firstly, no good food which won’t poison/impair/kill is worth a dollar. Even if it’s just chips, don’t do it – you’ll end up spending more at the doctors. But in all honesty, I loved the dollarama, you save so much money going there, whether it’s for decorations for your room *I spent a bomb on that* or cutlery/toiletry- it’s the absolute best place.

Be Smart, you’re in McGill

Lastly, all I can say is be smart. This is Montreal, where everyone from around the world is, so your bound to find a cheap place somewhere. Oh! I almost forgot McGill classifieds! Type it in, on the McGill website and you’ll find students from McGill selling practically anything school related – books, computers, bikes, etc. And for your calculator, the financial one you’ll need for economics and business – buy it online – it’s like 15$. They charge you about 45$ at McGill – RIP OFF! I hopes this eases your budget and saves you a few bucks. I saved a lot of money cutting corners and it worked. I met this hygienic girl in first year and we shared the laundry machine so we only paid half price each time. It was great, but if you’re doing this –make sure the girl/guy is REALLY clean, otherwise your clothes will get...well...dirty!

Clubbing

By the way, you may not realize this, but you lose a lot of money clubbing, buying alcohol, parties, nights out – so keep that to a minimum as well, or find cheap places around Montreal. I found great clubs like ying and yang where there was no cover, mckibbins, where there was ladies night – stuff like that. Anyway, that’s all from me, take care, have fun!

University Transfers

2009-09-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Well, the biggest things on most McGill student's minds (besides drinking) is getting as far as possible in the academic world. If your in McGill, your already as far as you can get in Canada. Though most students won't admit it, if they had the money and the brains, some Ivy League college down south would give them better peace of mind. So, why McGill for some of the smartest people in the world? Because it's easier to transfer to some Ivies from McGill than directly applying to an ivy after high school.

How to get in

Why? Lower cost - you don't spend the $60k for the first year or second year (depending on when you transfer.) Furthermore, you don't have to take your SATs or SAT 2s. Obviously, the easiest Ivy would be Cornell, with a high percentage of McGill freshmen students getting accepted. The obvious conditions or requirements are: McGill scholarship, high GPA = 4.0, some activities = clubs, societies.etc. And as a bonus, maybe a VP or presidential position. If you live in residence, that should be fairly easy to become.

The Trinity

Ivies like Yale, Harvard and Princeton are extremely hard to get into on transfers, and I recommend you don't even try. As you probably now, there are two ways of getting into the top four ivies. Do something monumental for your country or university - like build a particle accelerator in your garage *haha* or be extremely unique! And I mean EXTREMELY unique *no ideas - sorry*

Cornell

But there's definitely a good chance of getting into Cornell! So study hard for your first year, join as many clubs, get high positions on council and start planning way in advance! Join for the winter semester if necessary! I know it's easier to get in for winter than it is for fall. Here’s the link for the transfer to Cornell. Furthermore, you here are the requirements and transfer credit criteria. You’ll find that it isn’t that hard to transfer, all you need, it time to set yourself up so your almost guaranteed a transfer.

Keep Rolling

One last thing - if your dream is Harvard. Keep transferring! That's what most students do. From McGill to Cornell to Columbia to Harvard. It is possible!! It has been done. But if your dream is Cornell, keep in mind that every year, more students transfer from Cornell to McGill than the other way around. So, carefully decide about that. That's all the advice I have, if you need any more, or you need some clarification - mail me! I'll be happy to answer ANY questions. I've got plenty of friends at all the Ivies - so =D!

Lockout Cards

2009-09-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

So, I spent my first year living in New Residence, and boy did I love the place. However, when you first arrive at New Rez, you'll realize that everything is horribly priced!!! Lockout cards are $5 each, new cards are $10 and don't get me started on the meal plan. However, not to worry - that's what I'm here for. Once you get the system down - it took me like a week, you should be well on your way to saving 10s of dollars a month.

So, your locked out of your room. Your roommate isn't due to come back anytime soon, or you have a single room and you need something urgently from inside - what do you do? NOT PAY THE $5 fee - that's for sure. Solution?

Step 1: Take your friend's card or some random Joe's card who'll allow you. Take any magnet and stroke the card repeatedly in as many directions as possible and do that for about a minute. If you don't have a magnet, just put the card in the microwave for about 3 seconds or less *NO MORE!* and go down and say your card got demagnetized. They'll re-swipe it with your room number so you can open your door and get your card.

Step 2: Give your neighbour his/her card back and repeat the demagnetizing step and then he/she can go down and get it re-magnetized as well. And voila – no money spent for almost the same effort. The process has zero risk as you can’t get busted.

Note: Make sure you demagnetize it thoroughly because you want your friend’s card to have no room number on that card – or they’ll know it’s not your card. So make sure you thoroughly stroke it with a magnet or microwave it for 3 seconds ONLY!

Have fun with this method, I know I saved like 50$ using this method over and over again

Hello and Welcome

2009-09-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

Bonjour to all you McGill enthusiasts!

I started this blog over the summer, hoping to find some way to give back to McGill for all it’s given me. I truly love this place and have literally enjoyed every minute that I’ve studied/partied here. So, the basic idea behind this blog is to share vital/useless information about McGill, Montreal, Residence, anything really, with the world. This site is not only for McGill students, but also for prospective ones, parents, random folk *okay – less for parents!* I hope you enjoy the site, and feel free to mail me anytime! I’m usually a little too busy to make the site savvy and technical – but I have enough time to answer your questions. Take care all, and enjoy life!