In my last year of high school I was named a Schulich Leader at the University of Toronto. I turned it down to go to Waterloo.
Here's the reasoning, with all the thoughts I had, at that time.
why i chose waterloo
I wanted software, specifically. UofT didn't have a software engineering degree, so I applied to computer engineering. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'm drawn more to the coding side. With software, the whole loop is a laptop and an editor: you think it, type it, see it, fix it. Hardware required parts, a bench, tools, so I just never racked up the same hours. It's not that hardware doesn't matter to me. If anything, I think it's one of the most important understandings to have to do software. But there's a difference between designing the machine and writing code that respects it, and I wanted the second.
Co-op buys you more shots. Software is enormous and I can't yet tell you which corner of it I want to live in. Waterloo's model is six co-op terms, four months each: six chances to try something, be wrong, and adjust. To me, I felt like that had an advantage over UofT's year-long PEY, which lands later in the degree and is a longer placement. Both are strong, I just wanted shorter rotations to sample widely before committing. I'd rather iterate than gamble, and I think being exposed to breadth is not a bad thing.
Timing forced my hand. The Schulich offer came well before Waterloo had sent anything, with a tight deadline. I had to decide without knowing what Waterloo would offer, and a hopeful part of me wondered if it might come through with something comparable. It didn't. Part of this call was made under real uncertainty, and I'd rather say that than pretend it was clean.
what i actually believe about it
I'll probably never know which version of the next four years would have been better. There's no "control group". What I keep coming back to is that the choice mattered less than what I do with it. Either path still required me to put in the work to get where I want to go.
So: a bet, made with incomplete information, that I'm at peace with even though I can't prove it was right. That feels like most of the important decisions I'll make, honestly. But this was just one of the first big ones, with many more to come.