This year’s surge in the number of Americans applying to Canadian universities is not a clear sign that today’s students are dodging Donald Trump the way their grandparents dodged Vietnam, university admission experts say.
At many Canadian universities, applications from U.S. students for the 2017-18 academic year are up between 20 per cent and 80 per cent compared to last year, an informal survey conducted by The Globe and Mail shows. Even smaller schools such as Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., say they have seen applications from the United States increase by more than 60 per cent.
The interest comes after several years of renewed recruiting efforts in the United States. While the results of the U.S election may have stoked this year’s numbers, those recruitment campaigns combined with the drop in the Canadian dollar are likely to have played a large role, universities say.