It's time to pay the bills
Yesterday I finally received my physical carte étudiante. Now I have a document that entitles me to various discounts. I don’t know exactly which ones yet, but I’m going to look into this issue in more detail and make a list.
However, not only the student ID became the news of the day - also I received a bill for my tuition. And this is where the fun began. All information about tuition fees is publicly available on the university website, but understanding it was not so easy.
Paying for school in Quebec is very different from the system we are used to. The cost consists of several coefficients and depends on your status. Since I live in Ontario and will study in Quebec, I will have to pay the so-called ‘droits de scolarité supplémentaires’.
But that's not all. In addition to mandatory payments, there are also hidden fees - ‘for curtains’, which I learned about from discussions in a group of students on Facebook. Many are dissatisfied with the fact that various insurances and fees are imposed for using locations such as the library, gyms, for example, even if studying takes place entirely online.
The good news is that many of these hidden fees can be removed, but no one warns you about this in advance. You have to look for information yourself and figure it out as the play progresses.
The second surprise for me is the completely opaque payment system by trimester in my program. Officially it is said that the entire study consists of two trimesters, but the courses are spread over three. Hopefully this means that I will have to pay for two terms and will study longer - autumn, winter and summer. The most difficult is the first trimester, it includes five courses, which is equal to fifteen credits and which is equivalent to fifty hours of classes per week. The second and third trimesters will be a little easier, or so the website promises.
After that, I will have to undergo licensing, which is carried out only a few times a year. Therefore, when exactly I will be able to complete it - in the fall of next year or in winter - is still unknown.
But one thing is for sure: studying in Quebec is not cheap, and I still have a lot to figure out, including hidden fees. But I can already say that the amount will be no less than 10 thousand Canadian dollars.
So let's continue to work and study, and I will try to keep you up to date with all the news. In the meantime, I’ll go study what else the student card provides - maybe I’ll find something interesting that I can tell you about later.