The United states education system is unforgiving.

In the United States, the college application process is comprehensive and competitive. For most universities, all four years of high school grades, 9 10, 11, and 12 are included when calculating your overall GPA. Every class and grade from those years contributes to your final GPA. Extracurricular activities are also an important part of the application. Whether it’s sports, clubs, volunteering, or leadership roles, having strong involvement outside of academics is often necessary to be considered for admission at a good college or university.

In Canada, the process is quite different and less complex in some ways. Canadian universities don’t rely on standardized testing. Instead, they focus mainly on grades. Grade 11 marks are sometimes used for early applications, but they don’t have much weight in the final decision. Admissions are based primarily on your grade 12 marks. Grade 11 grades can’t lead to outright rejection, as they are used for early decisions while universities wait for your grade 12 results.

Most Canadian universities do not place much importance on extracurricular activities. The majority of schools focus solely on academic performance. However, there are exceptions. Universities like McMaster, the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto, and Schulich do take extracurricular activities into account, and their admissions processes can be as competitive as those of top U.S. universities but they do not require essays. Top programs at Canadian schools are not that easy to enter, I'm drawing parallels between the education systems.

The U.S. system, by comparison, feels much harsher. It doesn’t leave much room for growth or redemption if you stumble early on. The Canadian system, while still demanding for top programs, at least allows students to recover from a bad start and prove themselves through their most recent achievements. For someone who’s been through both systems, I can’t help but feel that the Canadian approach is more forgiving and, frankly, more fair.

Coming, from a student who got 70's in grade 9 & 10 which is a C, and having 80's in junior year