Bachelor of Social Work (BSW)

Mount Royal University is an amazing school that focuses heavily on fostering community, practical undergraduate education, and reconciliation efforts. I have always felt like I belong at MRU. The nursing program is one of the best in the country, having students in clinical as early as first year. The program also features theory courses regarding nursing history, policy, social justice, advocacy, and indigenous studies.

The structure of the program is uncoordinated and very often frustrating. This is what happens when you have a program chair who doesn't actually feel any accountability for making sure the students taking the program have a cohesive and worth-while experience. Instead, the program has a club and all responsibilities for student social life are passed on to the poor suckers who volunteer to take on the role of representatives. Which you'd think would guarantee a lot of networking and profs putting you on a platter with industry, but nah. They just want your free labour and then shrug when you can't find an internship.... which you pay a course fee for, just for the prof in charge of that to tell you to go look for internships yourself, great use of my money. And speaking of profs, they sure will give you very biased and often irrelevant crits then get frustrated when you stop showing up for daily studio even though showing up is simply not helpful. But don't worry, they'll gossip about you openly in the middle of the room too. You need to have a job to pay for food? Nah, you are just lazy and not committed to your education. I'm on my last semester of this hellscape and I can tell you it doesn't get better - it actually gets worse, which is insane that for a THESIS project you get no form of autonomy or reward for having made it this far. I have not met one person who had to show up to daily check-ins to review their thesis. I actually feel more micromanaged and infantilized in my last ducking year in this program than I did last year, which has absolutely ruined every speckle of joy for having made it this far. You can bring up comments to faculty, but they will only be ignored and you'll get labelled as problematic, even though your classmates have always been whinny babies who get extensions left and right. Again-bias. I could go on about all of the frustrating, unfair and ridiculous realities of being in this program, but my point and advice to you would be to look for another CIDA accredited program if you can find it. If not just be ready to be frustrated and disappointed a lot through your experience with the program.