Canadian colleges woo Trini students

She was speaking yesterday at the annual Canadian Embassy College Fair held at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of- Spain. Boyce told Sunday Newsday that they issue about 600 students visas a year for the Caribbean but there are a lot of students that are dual national “so we don’t really know how many”.

“But anecdotally in the two years I have been here I meet so many people that have studied in the US or have connections with Canadian institutions.

So I think we’ve developed over the years some really, really strong ties and academic ties (and) people ties from people who have gone to Canada to study,” she said.

Asked about the benefits of studying in Canada she responded “the quality of education is consistently high across the board”. She continued: “Among the G20 countries we spend among the top amount of cash on our schools”.

She also said that students can select from a wide range of experiences, whether big campus or small university, and from a cultural perspective Canada is “warm people, warm welcome”.

“We have a multicultural, safe, clean environment for people to come study where they can experience our fabulous nature, our cities, our museum, arts, culture, festivals. It is just a really incredible experience for students to come to Canada,” she added.

She also pointed out that “right now, from an economic perspective, it is very cost affordable”.

She explained that the fair is an annual event that is co-hosted with the United States.

She reported they had 23 Canadian schools, many from Ontario but also some from British Columbia, Quebec and East Coast.

She said they were very excited to have some of their premiere universities notably University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Western, York and Concordia from Montreal.

She added they also had a lot of smaller colleges and the benefit is a huge range of institutions that offer “almost any kind of course imaginable”.

Sarah Braun, admissions counselor at Wagner College, Staten Island, New York City, said they are participating because “we would love to get our international numbers up.

That’s why we’re very happy to be here in Trinidad”. She explained that the offer different scholarships for their students including one international full tuition scholarship. Scores of young people attended yesterday, the last day of the two day event, and visited the various booths.

Pavan Ramkissoon, 17, from Rio Claro, told Sunday Newsday he was interested in pursuing business management.

He said there were a lot of colleges to choose from and he was looking at Canada but the US was “fine too”.

Leasel Lord, 18, from Santa Flora, said she was looking for the best schools that facilitate law as she wants to study family or corporate law.

She reported that so far Canada was not looking as the best option as she was only seeing masters in law and not undergraduate programmes and she would more likely go to the US.