Around this time last year, Sing in Can started an important stage of his journey to come to Canada: Looking for the right school to take my post-secondary qualification.
The process to look for a school to study in Canada is not rocket science, but will take some time for people who are not familiar with the Canadian education system. After setting our needs, the next stop is to go to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website, which is the most authoritative resource for anyone intending to come to Canada for living or studies. Over there, I went through the list of Designated Learning Institutions (DLI), noting and matching the program details to my needs and financial capabilities, before settling on which school I will study in.
As this is a long post, you can use the links below to navigate through the steps I mentioned:
Step 1: Assessing Needs
Step 2: Research on the Schools Using the List of Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) on IRCC website
Step 3: Selecting the School
[Recap] Process to Do Research on Schools
Note: I will be using “universities”, “colleges”, “schools”, “institutions”, “Designated Learning Institutions (DLI) etc. interchangeably. They all refer to post-secondary institutions, since applying for PSIs is what I personally went through and know most about.
Step 1: Assessing Needs
While this may sound cheesy or tired, I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand our own needs, before we embark on any projects.
Some people wanted to study in Canada plainly for upgrading (attaining that degree), or they might be doing it as a step towards obtaining Permanent Residence (PR) and citizenship. Some people wanted to study just to take a break from their work.
For Sing in Can, my needs were simple:
- Get a Post-Graduate Work Permit after my program (the PGWP corresponds to the duration of studies, capped at 3 years)
- Obtain a post-secondary qualification so that I can increase the number of points for me to be eligible for PR application
My needs are quite simple and open-ended; my objective is to be able to stay in Canada for either work or leisure for an indeterminate amount of time. This is unlike being on a tourist visa, which only allows me to stay in the country for 3 months at a time.
For other people, the needs might be:
- Pursue a degree / take courses in a college or University
- Study in a secondary / high school
- Obtain a licensed certification (like pilot or electrician)
- Obtain a trained certification (like hairdresser)
- Learn a new language (most likely English)
- To have an official reason to apply for Exit Permit (this only applies to Singaporean males who have not ROD 😜)
- Earn points for PR application
Ultimately, the needs will lead to consideration pertaining to where to study, what courses to apply and budget. If this is not done well, you might very well end up with a whole, diverse lot of options with no decision in sight.
Step 1.2 Which Province or City to Study in Canada?
Since I want to be able to find work after I graduate (making use of the PGWP), I will need to find a place where it will be easy to find jobs. Additionally, I planned for the worst case scenario where I won’t receive any scholarships or financial aids, so the location where I’ll settle down has to be reasonably cheap.
In the end, I narrowed my search down to 4 places: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa.
They aren’t the cheapest places to stay in Canada, but they have more opportunities for white collars like me. (Seasoned job-finders will know that in places like Canada and New Zealand, the in-demand jobs are technicians like plumbers and electricians – you can even get a job offer without stepping into the country, but the situation is opposite for administrative workers with degrees.)
While it’s good to narrow down our choices, I didn’t specifically narrow down to just 1 city, as at this stage of the process, I have no specific city I want to stay in and I am open to opportunities. This open-ended search yielded some surprise, as I will talk about later.
Step 1.3 What Major / Programme to Study in Canada?
Also related to needs assessment, knowing what programme to take will be important in the information finding stage at IRCC’s DLI web page.
First, each institution offer a variety of courses from Early Childhood to Music. It will be impossible to try and list down the information related to all the majors/certificates they offer.
For me, I was aiming for at most a Diploma and in areas like Data Analytics, Cybersecurity, Business Administration or Adult Education. Even with 4 majors, I already have a tonne of information to sieve through!
Again, like my search for places to study in, I didn’t really narrow down to 1 major. Finding an affordable programme is more important to me, since I have a feeling that Adult Education, which is what I’m strong in, will be the most expensive course to take.
The 2 considerations above are used to build up the list of options we have. After carrying out the research using the list, we will need to use the budget consideration to narrow down the list.
Step 1.4 What is the Budget?
Usually, anyone who has come to this stage would have saved enough (or found enough) money to pay for the trip. However, that does not mean you can spend without consideration. Most importantly, having enough money to support yourself for the whole duration of the studies is one of the criteria by IRCC to issue a study permit.
As a rule of thumb, the amount of savings you have should cover the international tuition fees, miscellaneous fees as charged by the school (the school will consolidate these charges in the Letter of Acceptance), and living costs (guideline recommended by IRCC is CAD$10,000 per year. However, we will usually spend more in reality). As you will notice in the link from IRCC, there needs to be proof of financial support and the easiest way is to have a bank statement, dating at least 3 months back, that shows you have that said amount for all those 3 months.
Other than meeting IRCC’s requirements, the budget is used to help us make our final selection. If we have to choose between 2 universities that meet all our other criteria, then it will make more sense to choose one which will cost the least (remember to include living expenses!).
After giving some serious thoughts on our needs and some considerations that will shape our needs, it’s time to move on to Step 2.
Use the links below to navigate to other parts of this post, or scroll down for the next part of the post.
Step 1: Assessing Needs
Step 2: Research on the Schools Using the List of Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) on IRCC website
Step 3: Selecting the School
[Recap] Process to Do Research on Schools
Step 2: Research on the Schools Using the List of Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) on IRCC website
Going onto the IRCC website, I went to the list of Designated Learning Institutions (DLI). These are post-secondary institutions that are approved by a provincial or territorial government to host international students . By narrowing down my choices to these DLIs, I get assured of the following:
- Getting enrolled into a school that I know isn’t a shady business
- DLIs are monitored by the government, so we get immediate and authoritative updates of these schools
- The list of DLI contains schools that offer programs eligible for PGWP (not all DLIs offer programs for PGWP, but those not on DLIs are definitely not offering PGWP-eligible programs)
Why Is The List of DLIs Important?
The first point is still important even if you are not looking to get a PGWP. For example, some of you may just want to get trained as health sciences practitioners, which may not lead to a PGWP – looking for schools offering health sciences courses under DLI gives more assurance that your money will be well invested for a future career in health sciences. This is also one of the reasons why being clear about needs is important.
Step 2.2 Sort the List of DLIs
Here, we are working with the limitations of the website – let’s just say looking through the list isn’t going to be as easy as sorting through Microsoft Excel.
The first step, which is rather straightforward, is to select the province of the schools you are researching on.
For me, because my need is related to getting a PGWP, my priority is to find DLIs that offer PGWP eligible programs. Therefore, the next step I did was to sort the column for “Offers PGWP-eligible programs” in descending order, so that institutions with “Yes” come up near the top of the list.
After sorting by “Offers PGWP-eligible programs”, the list is sorted according to the name of institutions in ascending alphabetical order. i.e. The schools are not sorted according to cities. Therefore, if you already have a target list of cities you intend to go to, you have to manually go down the list to match the schools that are in the preferred cities.
Step 2.3 Research on the Institution
This is the tedious and manual part. I literally went down the list, one by one, to research them using Google.
For the uninitiated, I copied and pasted the name of the school into Google’s search bar. Usually, the official website of the school will come up at the top. If it doesn’t, the URL (which is above or below the site title of the searches, depending on your browser) should contain the full name of the school, followed by “.ca”.
Tip: By copying and pasting of the official name found on the DLIs list, you minimise the risk of finding the wrong institutions. There may be scammers who created fake pages of schools to solicit private information of prospective students, so using the official name of the institutions minimises the risk of finding the scam pages, since the “right” websites with official names will appear at the top of the Google search page.
Usually, the school’s sub pages will show up directly on Google’s search results, in the form of a boxed up search result. In other words, instead of having to go to the school’s main webpage and then searching for their program offerings, I can click directly onto link and go to their course offering right from Google’s search results. This saves about 10 seconds (depending on how user friendly the school’s website is) per school, but when you are running research on up to 100 schools, that time saving really adds up.
To expedite the information gathering process, I clicked on the subpage for “International Students” instead of “Programs”/”Course Offering” etc.
Tip: I specifically mentioned the “look and feel” of the search result of a school’s official website, because it is also a reflection of how the school manages its branding/systems/processes etc. If a school invests proper resources in its official website, the websites will appear in Google’s search results with a special boxed up area listing their sub pages. Conversely, a school without such a “treatment” from Google’s search is a red flag – would you want to study in a school that does not even bother managing their official websites properly?
Why Focus on The Sub Page for International Students?
Like I mentioned in the tip above, having such a sub page show up in Google is an indication of how serious the institution is towards maintaining their online reputation. Extrapolating from that reasoning, a school that devotes a sub page for International Students shows the attitude of the school when it comes to having international students in their schools. (I have come across a school with an International Students sub page so difficult to find on its website, and with such scant information on that page, that I was convinced they are not really eager to have International Students on board.)
Secondly, not all courses/programs are available for international students. Therefore, they will usually list down the course offering for international students under this sub page.
Lastly, this will also be the place where the school will indicate which programmes are eligible for PGWP (if they bother to indicate). Do note that no schools will declare that “PGWP is guaranteed after you completed Program X”. Whether a student gets a PGWP depends on IRCC; completing a PGWP-eligible programme will only mean you are eligible to apply for PGWP. Some schools will be proud to declare that they offer such programmes, while many don’t. I take the confidence of the former as a reflection of how successful their graduates were in getting PGWP (if not, they would not dare to announce that). It factors in my final decision making process, but is not a critical one.
After I confirm that the school offers my intended subjects to international students and that the programme is PGWP-eligible, I will proceed to find out about the cost of the programme, exact location of the institution (is it in downtown or city fringe?) and culture of the school.
Step 2.4 Record the Information
Nothing beats proper documentation when it comes to decision making. For me, I created an excel to record the information I found, so that at the end of the day, I can have an overview of the information and calibrate my expectations, if necessary.
The columns of my excel sheet included: Name of Institution, Location, Program Name, Duration (in years), Cost (CAD and SGD), Start Date of Program (especially if the program only starts once a year), Application Start and End Dates. Of course, you can also add in columns like ratio of International Students, neighbourhood (this might affect your commute) or national ranking.
After noting down the relevant information in the excel sheet, I repeated the whole research process for the rest of the institutions on the DLI list.
Some institutions are repeated on the list, because they have campuses in different cities. This is where narrowing down the choice of cities right from the start helps – you can easily ignore the listings that are not in the cities you want to go to.
Note: Some schools consolidate the course information offered in all their campuses under one directory, while some schools park the programs offered by each campus under the campus’ sub-website. It can get confusing especially as the research drags on and wears you down. However, by copying and pasting the official name as listed on the DLIs into your excel sheet, you can minimise a lot of the confusion.
[Recap] Process to Do Research on Schools
Step 2 was a rather lengthy process, so here is a TL:DR of the process:
- Go to “List of Designated Learning Institutions” page on IRCC’s website
- Filter the search according to the province of your choice
- Sort the list using the column “Offers PGWP-eligible Programs” so that “Yes” is listed at the top
- Go down the list and research on every institution by:
- Copy and Paste the official name of institution into Google search
- Go directly to the “International Students” sub page (if the school does not have one, skip the school)
- Under “International Students” page, confirm that the school offers the program you want
- Check if the selected program is eligible for PGWP
- Only search for cost if the school meets the 2 criteria mentioned in 4.3 and 4.4
- Stop the search when you reach the first school that returns “No” for “Offers PGWP-eligible Programs”
Use the links below to navigate to other parts of this post, or scroll down for the next part of the post.
Step 1: Assessing Needs
Step 2: Research on the Schools Using the List of Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) on IRCC website
Step 3: Selecting the School
[Recap] Process to Do Research on Schools
Step 3: Select the Institution
With the list of institutions and their information, I referred to my needs to determine which program / school I would go for.
In terms of average cost, the Graduate Diploma in Business Administration was most value-for-money, but it required the most extensive (and tedious) application process. Moreover, while I will have saved on the tuition fees, the living expenses will double, compared to the other 1-year programs.
Also, since I was gunning for PGWP, the Business Administration Certificate from Capilano University became my best choice. Additionally, a Business Administration program is more generic and, according to online reviews, provides the best employment opportunities for non-licensed jobs.
That, was also how Sing in Can eventually enrolled himself into Capilano University.
Learning Points
Using the divergence and convergence processes, I opened up the list of opportunities for me to study in Canada through the research on Google, and then narrowed my choices down with the needs that I had listed beforehand. To avoid anchoring bias, the needs should be done right at the start of the whole process.
What struck me most from my research was that the cheapest programs are not found in the city with the lowest cost of living.
Although Calgary is supposed to be cheaper compared to Vancouver and Ontario, in terms of cost of living, the difference isn’t drastic – assuming a difference of $500 a month, the total savings for a year comes up to about $6000. However, the tuition fees for a year of program exceeded that cost savings.
Additionally, Calgary (or Alberta, in general) had few institutions offering courses that I was looking for (perhaps due to the nature of the economy on the prairies, which focus on the oil and gas industries).
Conclusion
Like I mentioned from the start, the whole process to select a Canadian school to study in is not rocket science – we just need a defined way to implement it. The research of the schools, by going down the list of Designated Learning Institutions, was the most tedious part of the process, but it also gave me a chance to find out more about Canada, like the location and distribution of cities.
Use the following links to refresh on the steps I listed, or to look for a particular information:
Step 1: Assessing Needs
Step 2: Research on the Schools Using the List of Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) on IRCC website
Step 3: Selecting the School
[Recap] Process to Do Research on Schools
Till then, sing while you can!
Disclaimer: Some schools were mentioned for illustration purposes, it does not mean Sing in Can endorses those schools or have affiliations to them. Sing in Can also does not engage in the service of offering immigration advice. Some photos were taken with permission from Pixabay.com.