Why Montreal

Canada's Largest Student City, Looking Outward

Our View

Montreal is a different kind of stop on the FPP calendar: the Salon Étudier à l'étranger brings together Canadian students, mostly from Quebec, who want to study outside Canada. Montreal has the largest student population in the country, a bilingual culture that makes Europe and the United States feel close, and families who are used to travelling and investing in education. For universities abroad, it is the most efficient way to meet this audience in one place.

FPP can also arrange visits to selected schools and CEGEPs and meetings with guidance counselors in the days around the event. If this is of interest, please book these services with your FPP representative well in advance.

Montreal is the largest city in Quebec and the second-largest in Canada, with a metropolitan area of about 4.3 million people. It is officially French-speaking and practically bilingual, and it is regularly ranked among the best student cities in the world.

Downtown Montreal seen from the Kondiaronk Belvedere on Mount Royal

Academic Profile & Student Mindset

The city is home to McGill University, Université de Montréal, Concordia, UQAM, Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal, and to a network of CEGEPs, the two-year pre-university colleges that are unique to Quebec. Students finish CEGEP at 18 or 19 with a strong academic base and a clear idea of the field they want to pursue.

Quebec students are bilingual or trilingual, independent and used to mobility: exchanges, gap years and summer programs abroad are common, and the province has long-standing agreements with France and other francophone countries that make studying in Europe familiar and affordable.

Why They Look Abroad

Canadian universities are excellent, but admission to selective programs (medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, law, architecture, some engineering and business programs) is extremely competitive and seats are limited. Many families therefore consider the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and other destinations for undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as for specialised master's programs, design, performing arts and hospitality.

Canada is one of the countries with the highest outbound mobility rates in the OECD, with more than 50,000 Canadians enrolled in full degrees abroad and close to 30,000 in the United States alone.

For universities outside Canada, Montreal offers prepared, financially capable, bilingual students with international expectations, and families who make decisions early and value meeting the institution in person. Programs taught in English or French both find an audience here.

Quality of Life

Montreal is famous for its festivals, its food, its neighbourhoods and the Mount Royal park in the middle of the city. Its airport connects directly to Europe, the United States and Latin America, which makes the Salon an easy addition to a North American recruitment trip.

Downtown Montreal seen from a park on a summer day

Photos: Kondiaronk Belvedere, Montreal by Wilfredor (CC0); McGill University downtown campus by Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.