Why don’t you want my money?
By Molly Gartner
Growing up, Canada was never far away. I have lived in Duluth, Minnesota pretty much my whole life. Once I graduated high school I looked at schools all over the country, some even in Canada. My grandfather and my boyfriend are both from Canada, and it seemed like a plausible option.
Due to financial reasons, I decided to attend a community college in Duluth for two years. At Lake Superior College I studied a range of topics from humanities to sciences, eventually earning my Arts and Sciences Degree on top of having the required amount of credits to transfer.
When the time came to apply for schools, I decided to give Laurentian a shot. I even toured our university on my winter break. I became interested in Laurentian when looking at schools, not only in a city I was familiar with but had what looked to be a good English program, and a beautiful campus.
I was assured by Hub workers and other Laurentian employees I had been in contact with that it shouldn’t be too much trouble to make the transition. It has been a long time since then and I was so overwhelmed I could no longer say who exactly I was talking to. The normal international recruiters were in France at this time and unavailable. However, when taking a quick look at my transcripts, the employees I spoke to (of which there were quite a few) seemed confident.
They also encouraged me for the international student scholarship, with my near-perfect GPA, how could I not get it?
That did not end up being the case.
My second year of college was a balancing act. I had to make sure my grades stayed up, ensuring I had the credits I needed for my first degree, applying for a student visa, and struggling with Laurentian to make sure all my hard-earned credits were counted.
It was much, much harder than I had been expecting. I needed specific documentation for my visa which was not easy to get.
While waiting to see if I will even be approved, I knew I couldn’t let things slip with my Laurentian communication.
I was emailing multiple people, multiple times a week trying my best to keep on top of things. I worked hard to make sure every transcript was received and was clearly understood. I had to make an appointment with my college registrar, Melissa Leno, and have her email Laurentian proving that my (nation-wide accepted) credits were legitimate and up to standard.
Whether or not I was emailed back in anything that could be considered a timely manner was another story.
Sometimes I wasn’t emailed back at all, for example, an email sent to International Services and the Laurentian Registrar June 8, 2019.
“After applying I emailed extensively employees of the HUB as well as admissions officer Ryan Hicks to create a pathway for at least the majority of my 60 earned credits to transfer to Laurentian from Lake Superior College. I also had a confirmation email sent from Registrar Melissa Leno of Lake Superior College.”
“In my MyLaurentian Portal I have a document which states I have 48 transferrable credits, I have included this as an attachment. This was added a few weeks before I graduated from LSC. After my Lake Superior College graduation, I sent off my official transcript with my final credits, which I have not seen any documentation about from Laurentian.”
I never received a response.
My boyfriend’s brother works for Laurentian and has been my quasi-liaison. Some of the communication would never have gone through if I didn’t have this contact. Without him and Mélanie Racine, a Liaison Coordinator, I really don’t believe I could have attended Laurentian.
15 of my credits were never accepted, and I ended up having to take and pay for an extra full semester.
I was told, when speaking to Academic Advisors, that Laurentian just did not have any equivalent classes. While my credits are valid elsewhere, they just were not up to Laurentian’s standards.
It is unclear if this is because these credits are from another country, or if it would be a similar story had I attended a college in Canada.
I never received that scholarship, nor do I know any students who have.
I’m sure that some international students do receive it, just not as many as I feel we are led to believe when we apply. I think that an easy resolution exists here. Post the numbers of winners annually publicly, as an applicant I want my chances to be obvious.
I asked the always helpful Student Awards Manager, Josee Gervais for some more information about the subject. I was able to find out that “Approximately 25 first-year students qualified for the Academic Excellence Scholarship for International Students in the Fall of 2020. This Fall, approximately 60 students have received the scholarship either for their first term of study or on a renewal basis.”
Gervais also was able to direct me to a link that more clearly stated the policies, some of which I had not been made aware of in the past. In my case most specifically I found out one is not eligible if “The student already has a degree from Laurentian or from another university.”
Though I do not have a degree from Laurentian or a university, I do have a degree from the college I previously attended, and I wonder if that is what kept me from it in the end.
It was made clear to me that college and university are not equivalents in transferable credits, so I wonder if they are suddenly equivalent when it comes to scholarships?
What I’ve learned in my struggles is that if you’re not from a country Laurentian recruits from, you are going to have to work very hard to actually make it here, even after you’re accepted.
The battle to make it here did not end until I arrived in Sudbury, and even then I spent a decent amount of time in the academic services trying to get things straightened out.
My time getting to, and at Laurentian, I see as a never-ending battle.
I am glad I made it here. I have enjoyed my professors, meeting new people, the classes offered, and my time in Canada. The campus is beautiful, interesting, and fun. I am eternally grateful to those who did all they could to help me, before and after I arrived. I will say, however, that I have never had to work so hard to get an institution to accept me, or my approximately $80,000 CAD of tuition.