to all American students

[icybeat]

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Hello,

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

 

[Weirdy]

Hello,

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

Have a few friends from Canada who came over to the States to do MD/DPM schooling.

No one cares.

 

[PickleRickelus]

Hello,

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

Canadians are basically polite Americans who love hockey. That's the only difference between us and that will make you stand out more than your vernacular.

 

[Wahed]

Americans won’t be too thrown off by any of these words. It does stand out as a little different though.

Why not just use American terminology?

 

[sunshinefl]

@icybeat

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

Depends on context. But every time I hear “university” without the full name/proper noun, I know the person is not from the US. Often we just say “Medical school” referring to this level.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

Since it’s a self explanatory phrase I wouldn’t think too much of it. And we don’t say freshman etc for medical school anyway. We say “I’m an M1” or “I’m a first year”.

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 mark?”

In those phrases we would use grade and questions. We also use score. No one says marks like you’re using it. We might say “marked off” for something we lost credit on.



All that being said, none of this is that weird. Just replying.

 

[AllBleedingStops]

Why should I care if you say marks or years or uni? Eat all the poutine you want. Yearn for 2 dollar coins and Timmies (actually I think there are some Tim Hortons in the US). You can be in a sexual relationship with moose for all I care. Is this really a big concern for you about medical school in the USA?

 

[Catalystik]

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

We're used to it, as well as alternative spellings of common words, and variant territory-based grading systems.

 

[LizzyM]

We're used to it, as well as alternative spellings of common words, and variant territory-based grading systems.

On the other hand, @icybeat if you know the terminology typically used by Americans, why not adopt a "when in Rome" attitude to language using whatever words are typically used in the location you're in. It shows flexibility and an abililty to adapt to changing circumstances.

 

[Stagg737]

Hello,

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

1. People say university for UG all the time but people in the US don't say "uni". Usually I've heard "where did you go to college?" Vs "what university did you go to?" Nuances.

2. Different, but again not that weird. Most probably won't even notice.

3. This one would stand out. We say grade or score. I've never heard anyone (even Canadian classmates) refer to exam grades as "marks". As another user said, only time I've heard it used in the US is if you get marked off on a question (meaning you lost points).


The other phrase that was really confusing to me was "writing" an exam. Apparently in Canada people refer to taking a test as "writing an exam". I had never heard this before and one of my classmates said they wrote the exam earlier than the rest of us. We thought the person had actually written some of the exam questions as no one in the US uses that phrasing.

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

Hello,

I would like for only Americans to reply. I'm a pre-med from Canada. In the future, I might apply to medical schools in the US. I wanted to ask some questions about how Canadian word usage and terminology will be perceived if I'm in the States. Like will people be familiar with these terms? Will they find them funny or unusual?

1) The first one is saying university or uni instead of college. College in Canada usually refers to a trade school or a community college. Therefore, the word used is always university or uni.

2) Secondly, Canadians don't say freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. They just call it by the year number. Like first year, second year... etc. For example, "Back when I was in second year undergrad...".

3) The third one is referring to exam grades as marks and referring to exam points as marks. I've never heard Americans referring to marks on report cards. And also on the MCAT and SAT, the marks are called points. So what if I said "My mark was an A+ and the test was out of 40 marks?"

Just make sure you never tell a U.S. interviewer to have another doughnut.

 

[AttemptingScholar]

The other phrase that was really confusing to me was "writing" an exam. Apparently in Canada people refer to taking a test as "writing an exam". I had never heard this before and one of my classmates said they wrote the exam earlier than the rest of us. We thought the person had actually written some of the exam questions as no one in the US uses that phrasing.

The other one that took me a few tries to understand is "revising" for "studying" or "reviewing", something I hear from the British. To me, you revise a piece of writing, you rewrite it. It kinda of implies intellectual ownership and intent to make changes to something to me, so the other phrasing confused me!