I just had a flashback to the beginning of my fourth year in computer science where I had an internal debate: Go for grad school, a PhD, and the works, or go make money? The debate was over in two seconds - maybe less. I was working in private industry three weeks from the day I took my last exam.
At the time of my decision, I had inside knowledge on what academia and the pure research field entailed. It isn't pretty, it isn't glamorous and it sure as hell doesn't have much job security. That said, if you're a research superstar, the money and fame will come.
Apologies for not having a substantive reply - I'm not from your country anyways so my knowledge of institutions wouldn't help you much. Good luck, though. You will certainly need it.
See, not many people enjoy reading lots of papers and critically analyzing them.
I do. I really love reading papers, actually. :/ If I don't have the knowledge then I usually do extensive study on the background/preliminaries to help guide my intuition.
There is nothing pretty about graduate school, especially in Computing Science, if you're not in it because you love the Science. I actually want to learn more, this isn't about "padding" my resume...
I just wanna learn, and I want to contribute. I'm actually looking to apply anywhere in the World, not just Canada (where I am now)... That's why I'm here asking about potentially good schools for the above areas of interest.
Graduate school isn't easy, but it isn't hard. As long as you have fun while you're doing it, then it's not really ugly. I have had so much fun this past year learning about new things from papers, they truly are amazing..