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Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Posts: 246
Location: Montreal, Canada
Applying from Quebec- include CEGEP transcript?
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30 Aug 2005, 15:56
Here in Quebec, our school system works a bit differently from the rest of North America. We have:
-High school - grades 7-11
-CEGEP - 2 years for most pre-university programs
-Ugrad - 3 years for most bachelor's degrees.
It comes out to the same number of years of school; it's just broken down a bit differently. Moreover, CEGEP counts as "post-secondary education" (we refer to it as college, and to ugrad as university) and you basically register for courses on a credit system and pick a discipline in much the same way as you would in university. The disciplines tend to be more general than college majors (for example, I did my CEGEP DEC in commerce and got my university degree in marketing). CEGEP is also where you cover most of the "freshman" required courses and get them out of the way, like English, math, humanities, languages, etcetera.
So my question is, should I include my CEGEP transcript in addition to my university one when applying to schools in the U.S.?
The reason I'm asking is twofold:
1) I'm not sure how familiar U.S. schools are with the Quebec school system, or whether they'll realize that our 3-year undergrad is, in fact, equivalent to a 4-year undergrad in the rest of North America.
2) Many of the courses that they would look for as requiremenets (calculus and algebra, stats, macro and microeconomics, for example), I took at the CEGEP and not Ugrad level. If I don't include a CEGEP transcript, won't they think I never took them? This is especially important since a couple of my shortlisted programs offer waivers or exemptions for certain courses taken at the undergraduate level.
I don't really have any problem sending my CEGEP transcript; I had a very high average, and it certainly wouldn't hurt my chances. But it is a bit of a hassle, since CEGEP transcripts are issued by the provincial government and therefore are all in French, so I'd have to get it translated and whatnot. Also, it is a bit remote in time, and my ugrad grades are also very high, so will it look a bit ridiculous including my college grades as well?
Long story short - do I send them or not? Can anyone who's applied from Quebec shed some light?