Details

• Canada
• MAMark-21
• Graduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 4 months

1. Preparation

I did not need extensive preparation, only the Canadian eTA which you can get online. I would plan ahead how much you want to travel during your semester and consider arriving early before school starts, I went a month earlier to use the summer to travel around the western side of the continent (Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Whistler, Calgary and Banff) and would recommend doing the same. The eastern side (Montreal, Kingston, Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Quebec City, Prince Edward Island etc. + US. New York, Boston or Chicago) is more easily reachable during the semester when you only have prolonged weekends for your travels.

2. Accommodation

It was really quite difficult to find something affordable yet qualitative, even when looking early on. Student housing (not just York's but other university's or independent student housing) gets booked out really fast, and isn't of great quality, nor cheap... So I would recommend starting to look asap. Living with room-mates is going to make your options quite a bit cheaper if you are looking on Airbnb for example. I ended up living with two other WU students in an Airbnb (Kerri was the host) in the ICE Towers Condos, we paid around 800€ each per month, which is the cheapest price I have heard from any exchange student. It was downtown, quite close to the union station which I can recommend as that makes you really well connected to public transport, airports and trains. The building also had a gym, pool, sauna and parking included which was really nice to have. HOWEVER, be aware that the ICE towers have a bit of a dodgy reputation (I never saw or felt anything weird though), and there are a lot of false fire-alarms... (like 3-4 per month). You might also have to wait for the elevators quite a bit sometimes (5-10min was the worst I witnessed) because there is almost always one that's out of service and there are "rush hours". The close to union station location, did however make University about an hour metro ride away... which was a bit annoying but 100% better than living on campus as all social life happens downtown. As an exchange student, I would really recommend living downtown. I have also heard that Hoem housing is quite good, although it is very expensive.

3. Academic life at host university

The campus is really large and offers a variety of restaurants, cafés (Starbucks, Tim Horton's, Aroma Coffee, ...) and libraries. My business classes were all in the Schulich School of Business where it can be quite hard to secure a spot in the building's library but there are tables with chairs throughout the building, just not always near plugs. You can however rent rooms if you have four emails to sign up with online (just ask friends for their emails for this). There were quite a few events going on but I honestly barely attended any of them as I preferred to be downtown instead of the campus (1 hour away so it often does not feel worth it to go if you're not already on campus). The teaching style is very discussion-based and teachers really want students to participate (Participation was a part of the grade for every class except one). A lot of the tasks we were assigned were also more practice-based and seemed real-life / job applicable which was a welcome change from the often a bit too academic WU classes.

5. Every day life in the host country

Given my living location near union station, which is kind of smack in the middle of downtown, I could walk to a lot of places instead of taking public transport. Nonetheless I think public transport was quite good. I did also take Ubers when going out and never had any issues. I was almost never worried about safety, the only issue I had was the high amount of homeless people which can be a bit scary because of their erratic or weird behaviour. Nothing ever happened to me or my friends though, so it is not an acute safety problem in my opinion. As a side-note: I did feel like the West-coast had a bigger problem with homelessness compared to the East-coast. There is always something to do in Toronto, a lot of free events or activities, and I would highly recommend following accounts like TodoToronto on Instagram to be up to date. There are also a lot of different places to travel to within Canada and or the surrounding USA - so you'll always have something to do! University does offer sports programs but I didn't look into these as I didn't want to go out to the campus for it and had a gym included in my housing. For pilates enthusiasts I can also recommend the Sweat & Tonic studios. Events wise there is also a lot to look forward to: Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, and big concerts for example. But be aware that these events can get very pricey ...

6. Testimonial

I really enjoyed my time in Canada as I got to explore its beautiful nature, multicultural city life and great practically-applied university courses with teachers that had a lot of corporate experience. I mostly enjoyed the nature, its breathtaking scale and beauty - Banff, Niagara, Vancouver Island and Whistler were all great. The Canadians have been unwaveringly kind and a overall very welcoming and open population.