McGill University in Montreal

Residences first, then the Montreal rental market

Housing is where McGill's cost advantage is real and where most international budgets are still built wrong, because people price the hall and forget the meal plan.

The guarantee. McGill offers secured housing to all first-year undergraduate students aged 22 or under who have accepted an offer of admission^[13]. Applications for the 2027-2028 academic year open in March 2027. For the 2026-27 cycle, room reservations had to be confirmed with a residence deposit and a non-refundable application fee by 14 June 2026, which is the shape the 2027 deadline will take. Accepting a residence offer commits you to a lease under Quebec law for the full academic year, and cancelling carries penalties — this is a contract, not a booking.

What you are choosing between. Downtown residences split into three kinds. Traditional dormitories — Royal Victoria College, the Upper Residences of Gardner, McConnell and Molson, and University Hall — and modern dormitories such as Carrefour Sherbrooke, New Residence Hall and La Citadelle all carry a mandatory all-you-care-to-eat meal plan. The quiet apartment-style residences on des Pins have kitchens and no meal plan at all. Leases run 8.45 months, from 20 August to 2 May in the 2026-27 year^[27].

Do the sum across the 8.45-month lease before you rank your preferences. A shared basement room at McConnell comes to roughly 6,664 USD of rent plus 4,793 USD of plan and fees; a single at New Residence is about 10,904 USD plus the same 4,793 USD. A single room on des Pins with a kitchen runs around 5,603 USD of rent plus 455 USD of fees, and you buy your own food. The cheapest catered option and the most expensive differ by more than the tuition gap between Arts and Arts and Science.

After first year, the open market — and this is the good news. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's 2025 survey put the average purpose-built two-bedroom rent in Greater Montreal at 965 USD a month with a 2.9% vacancy rate, against 1,458 USD in the Greater Toronto Area and 1,694 USD in Vancouver, and 1,111 USD for Canada as a whole^[9]. Two caveats keep this honest. Montreal rents rose 7.2% that year, faster than Toronto's 3.5%, driven largely by increases on renewed leases. And a Montreal lease is a Quebec-law contract with its own rules and its own moving season, which does not line up with a late-August arrival — check the current dates with McGill's off-campus housing service before you plan a flight. Budget a first month's deposit, expect a landlord to ask for a Canadian guarantor or credit history you do not yet have, and plan to share.

One January deadline, faculty by faculty

Undergraduate selection here runs on school results and prerequisite subjects rather than essays and interviews. It is mechanical, which makes it predictable, and unforgiving if a required subject is missing.

1. Find your school system's requirement page and read the prerequisites before anything else. Engineering wants mathematics, chemistry and physics; Science and Nursing want mathematics plus two of biology, chemistry and physics; Architecture wants mathematics and physics; Management wants higher-level mathematics^[20][29]. A missing prerequisite is not negotiable at the review stage.
2. Check the bar for your programme, not the university. The published international minimum is the equivalent of a B+ average^[29], and the competitive programmes run far above it — see the table below.
3. Book IELTS or TOEFL unless an exemption genuinely covers you. The exemptions turn on the country your school sits in and on specific English qualifications, not on your school's language of instruction^[2] — the detail is set out below, and it separates Nigerian and Ghanaian applicants from Indian and Emirati ones.
4. Apply online, pay the fee and upload what your system requires. Indian applicants upload Class X board results plus Class 11 and mid-year Class 12 school results in numeric form; positional grades and predicted final results are not used^[16].
5. Submit the Major Entrance Scholarship application separately if you want one — it is a different form with a different deadline, 21 January^[29].
6. Send official documents by 1 March, accept the offer, apply for need-based aid within 30 days of acceptance if you need it, and start the CAQ the same week.

The published minimum grade ranges are the most useful thing on McGill's requirement pages and the least read. For IB candidates they are quoted in subject points out of 42, excluding bonus points, which is why a figure like 39 looks lower than it is.

The ranges above are published as guidelines and the university states plainly that meeting them guarantees nothing, since minimum grades move year to year with the number of places^[20][22]. The IB Diploma baseline across most programmes is grades of 5 or better in every Higher and Standard Level subject.

Graduate admission is departmental. The university deadline is only the outer limit, and the money is decided by the department rather than centrally.

1. Choose the department first, then the supervisor. For a thesis programme, a supervisor whose funding covers you is the application.
2. Check that department's own deadline — many close well before the university date, some as early as 1 December^[30].
3. Have test scores sent electronically from the test centre. Paper reports, IELTS Online and the One Skill Retake are refused^[5].
4. File transcripts, references and a research statement, then read the funding letter that arrives with a thesis offer before you accept anything^[31].

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Entrance awards, bursaries and what actually lands

McGill's own summary of its funding is that it is merit-first and faculty-administered, with a genuine but modest need-based layer underneath. Four distinct pots exist and they have different rules.

Centrally-administered entrance scholarships. Every applicant to an undergraduate degree is automatically considered for a one-year entrance scholarship of 2,151 USD, with no separate form — the assessment is purely academic and rests on the grades in your admission file^[32]. Above that sit the Major Entrance Scholarships, worth 8,603-34,412 USD in total at 2,151 USD, 3,585 USD, 7,169 USD or 8,603 USD a year renewable for up to four years. These need a separate application, which opens on 1 October, and they are decided by selection committees weighing academic excellence first and demonstrated leadership second. Read one restriction carefully: the 8,603 USD tier is available only to Canadian citizens and permanent residents, so the realistic international ceiling is 7,169 USD a year. You can hold only one centrally-administered entrance scholarship, and transfer, mature, diploma, exchange, special, part-time and visiting students are excluded outright.

Faculty entrance scholarships run alongside the central ones and are not capped by the same rule, so a student can in principle hold a central award and a faculty award. Music, Law and Medicine administer their own.

Need-based aid, which does exist here. The Entrance Bursary Program supports students from low and modest-income families, and McGill states explicitly that financial need is considered for all students including international ones, even though government student aid is not open to them^[14]. The mechanics: apply on Minerva once your acceptance letter is in the Applicant Portal, and submit a CSS Financial Aid Profile if you are international, American, or a Canadian living abroad. Award sizes depend on demonstrated need relative to other applicants and on the tuition rate your programme charges, so an international Management applicant is assessed against a larger sticker price than an international Education applicant. Decisions begin in February and continue on a rolling basis, two to three weeks after a complete file, until the money runs out — which is why the advice is to apply within 30 days of acceptance rather than by the 30 June closing date. A limited number of these bursaries are renewable for up to four years, and recipients are automatically approved for the Work Study Program.

In-course awards, once you are here. This is where the realistic numbers live, and they are better than most applicants expect. In the most recent year reported, 8 million CAD of in-course merit scholarships went to undergraduates, and 6.8 million CAD of non-repayable in-course bursaries went to 1245 undergraduates in financial need. The split is the striking part: Quebec and Canadian students received 795 awards averaging 2,706 USD, while US and international students received 450 awards averaging 6,058 USD^[35]. In-course merit scholarships are administered by faculties rather than centrally, so the Student Affairs Office in your faculty is the office to ask.

At graduate level the headline award is external to the ordinary process. The McCall MacBain Scholarship is open worldwide for a full-time master's or second-entry professional programme at McGill: up to 30 full awards covering tuition, a living stipend and relocation, plus 100 entrance awards, on a separate application with its own timetable^[36]. Treat it as a long shot rather than a plan. For most graduate students the money that matters is departmental, arrives in the funding letter attached to a thesis offer, and is negotiated with a supervisor rather than won in a competition. McGill also runs tuition payment deferrals specifically for international students whose funds are delayed in transfer, plus emergency loans and the Work Study Program^[37]. For the wider picture, see our guide to scholarships for international students.

A term abroad, the BCL/JD and McGill's internship routes

Exchange. McGill Abroad runs exchanges with more than 140 universities in 39 countries^[38]. You take the equivalent of 15 McGill credits a term at the host, the credit counts towards your McGill degree, and you keep paying McGill tuition for those 15 credits — so for an international student an exchange changes where you study, not what you pay. For a Fall 2027 exchange the application window runs from 1 December 2026 to 15 January 2027, and full-year exchanges are not offered in 2027-28 except at Durham University, whose agreement allows only a full year. You need at least 24 graded McGill credits by the start of the term abroad and your faculty's minimum CGPA; you rank up to four hosts with no guarantee of a nomination, and submitting the request costs a non-refundable 120 USD^[39]. The partner list reaches regions many applicants come from: the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University take McGill students from every faculty, and Ashesi University in Ghana from every faculty except Arts^[40]. Upper-year students from any faculty can instead take a 15-credit Field Study Semester in East Africa, Barbados or Panama^[41].

Two degrees in one law programme. McGill's law graduates leave with two degrees, in civil law and in common law — the BCL/JD — and are eligible to sit the bar in any Canadian province and in some US jurisdictions, including New York and Massachusetts. The programme is bilingual: course materials come in English and French, and students are expected to be fluent in one and at least passively bilingual in the other^[42]. Law also offers two joint programmes, the BCL/JD with an MBA from the Desautels Faculty of Management and the BCL/JD with a Master of Social Work; each requires separate admission by both faculties^[43].

Internships and co-op, faculty by faculty. Engineering has co-op versions of three degrees with compulsory work terms: Software Engineering^[44], and Mining and Materials Engineering, the last two with three industrial work terms each^[45][46]. Students in the other engineering programmes use the Engineering Internship Program: paid, full-time internships of at least 35 hours a week, lasting 4, 8, 12 or 16 months and related to the degree, with no more than two academic terms away; international students are eligible if their study permit carries the necessary work authorisation^[47]. Science offers a four-month Industrial Practicum and an Internship Year in Science of 8, 12 or 16 months, open after at least 27 credits with a CGPA of 2.7 or higher; international students may qualify, with restrictions, and completing the Internship Year or two practica adds "Internship Program" to the name of a Science degree^[41]. Arts students go through the David M. Culver Centre: Arts Internship Office, which also funds summer internships^[48].

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Applying to McGill from another country

Order official transcripts the day you decide to apply. Schools and boards in India, Nigeria, Ghana and the Philippines routinely need weeks to release sealed copies, and McGill wants your record at more than one stage — Class X results and Class 11 plus mid-year Class 12 for Indian applicants, then the final certificate when it is issued^[16]. Documents not in English or French need a certified translation of your diploma and transcripts, so budget that turnaround too.

Do not convert your own grades. McGill publishes country-by-country requirement pages listing exactly which credential it recognises — the Senior School Certificate for Nigeria, the Senior High School Diploma for the Philippines, the Shahadat Al-Thanawiya Al-Amma for the UAE, the Tawjihiyah for Saudi Arabia, the US high school diploma, A-Levels for the UK and the Commonwealth systems that follow it^[29]. Applied, vocational and technical school programmes are not normally eligible. No admission office wants your self-computed GPA equivalent.

The English exemption is where applicants from our largest markets go wrong. Four consecutive years of schooling in a country where English is the acknowledged primary language exempts you — and McGill's list of those countries includes Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Singapore, the UK and the USA. It does not include India, the Philippines or the UAE. The page says so explicitly: you must supply a test result even if you consider English your first language, and even if your school in a non-English-speaking country taught entirely in English^[2]. A CBSE student from Delhi and a WAEC student from Lagos are in genuinely different positions here, and the CBSE student needs to book a test.

Exemptions attached to a qualification rather than a country are narrower but real: IB Group 1 English at 5 or better, A-Level English at C or better, IGCSE, GCSE or O-Level English at B or 5 or better. Where a test is needed, the undergraduate minimums are IELTS Academic 6.5 with no component under 6.0, or TOEFL at 4.5 on the six-point scale in use since 21 January 2026, equivalent to 90 on the old 120-point scale — with 5.0 or 100 required for Management and the TESL programme. Duolingo is accepted at 125, or 130 for Management^[2]. Results must come directly from the examining organisation; you cannot upload them yourself.

Sequence the money as deliberately as the documents. The application fee falls at submission, the deposit follows the offer, the CAQ fee follows acceptance, and the CAQ itself requires proof that you can cover 17,649 USD of living costs for a year on top of tuition and travel^[7]. Bank documentation of that kind takes time in most of our markets, so start it when you accept, not when you apply for the permit.

French, the CAQ and other Quebec questions

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