The Complete Guide to Canadian Universities

George G. Ambury is an associate professor of adult education at
Queen’s University.

This book is intended to be both a reference and selection guide for
people planning on beginning a first degree program at a Canadian
university. As a self-help manual, it includes four exercises that are
supposed to help keep the user organized and aware of a broad range of
issues. Introductory chapters tell how to use the book, ask if
university is the right choice, present an overview of admissions
procedures and financing issues, and describe the university experience.
These chapters are followed by very brief entries for anglophone
universities, including those offering correspondence degrees.

There are a number of major weaknesses. This certainly is not a
“complete guide,” as the title would lead one to believe, since it
excludes the 12 uniligual francophone universities. Also, it provides
much less information than a similar book (U-CHOOSE [1986]) that
students can receive free of charge. Reproductions of some of the campus
maps (which are available from the universities anyway) are almost
incomprehensible and take up valuable space in the book. High-school
students may get frustrated using a reference work with no index and no
listing of the universities in the table of contents. Purchasers will
see a promising book with an attractive cover and the appearance of ease
of use (two-column text with plenty of white space), but may be
disappointed at the lack of substance.