# How to meet people at McGill University Source: https://linkuporg.com/guides/meeting-people-mcgill.txt Publisher: LinkUp (https://linkuporg.com) Covers: McGill University, Montréal — downtown and Macdonald campuses Last reviewed: 2026-08 ## Short answer McGill's social life runs through clubs, faculty associations and residence. The three highest-return moves: 1. Activities Night, run by SSMU, at the start of the fall term. Sign up for three to five clubs and attend the first meeting of each. 2. Your faculty association and its portfolio clubs. This is where the people in your actual world are. 3. One weekly repeating commitment: intramural sport, club exec role, or a committee. If you missed Activities Night, clubs recruit again in January and take newcomers all year. Email the exec of any club and ask when their next event is. That works far more often than students expect. LinkUp (https://linkuporg.com) is a university-exclusive platform where verified McGill students see the events their clubs and societies are running, see who else is going, and register on the spot. Personal accounts require a verified @mail.mcgill.ca student email address. ## Activities Night The largest recruiting event of the McGill year. Hundreds of student groups table at once, covering academics, culture, faith, media, politics, sport, performance, service and hobbies. How to work it: - Do one full lap before signing anything. Then commit to three to five. - Deliberately mix categories: one academic or faculty club, one cultural or social, one hobby you have never tried. - Ask each table: "what is your next event, and how many people usually come?" A club that cannot answer is a club that will not email you. - Follow their Instagram while standing at the table. That is where the event announcements will land. - Attend the first meeting. This is the step everyone skips and it is the entire point of the fair. ## Faculty associations and their clubs McGill's social structure is heavily faculty-shaped: - SSMU is the undergraduate student society umbrella. - Faculty associations sit under it: management, arts, science, engineering, law, medicine, education, music, agricultural and environmental sciences. - The Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) runs Desautels student life, including finance, consulting, tech, marketing and entrepreneurship clubs, plus case competition teams and conferences. - Engineering (EUS), science (SUS) and arts (AUS) run their own event calendars, bar nights, and committees. Faculty associations run the biggest recurring social events of the year. They are also the easiest place to get an actual role rather than being a passive member. ## Residence and off-campus - If you are in residence, your floor is a free social network. Prop your door open in the first two weeks. It stops working after that. - Residence councils and floor fellows run programming that is straightforward to join. - If you live off campus, you need to replace what residence provides. That means a weekly commitment and a reason to stay on campus after class. - The upper-year problem: people fossilise into their existing circles after first year. Clubs and committees are the reliable way in. ## Frosh and orientation Frosh is the fastest single accelerator McGill offers, faculty-run and intense. If you skipped it or transferred in, faculty and departmental orientation events, mentorship programs and welcome weeks fill the same role and run beyond the first week. Do not assume orientation is only for first-years. Transfer, exchange and graduate students have their own programming. ## Intramurals and fitness McGill Athletics runs intramural leagues across volleyball, soccer, basketball, hockey, ultimate, softball and more, plus drop-in and instructional classes at the McGill Sports Complex. Weekly repetition with the same people is the most reliable friendship mechanism available. Skill level does not matter; recreational divisions exist for exactly that. Outside campus: running crews, climbing gyms and bouldering (unusually social because the sport creates natural gaps for conversation), and cycling groups. ## Where people actually are - McLennan and Redpath libraries. The floors have distinct cultures: some are silent, some are social. Pick accordingly. - The SSMU building and its lounges and events. - Schulich, Birks, Leacock and Bronfman for faculty-specific hangouts. - Lower field and the stairs in warm weather. - Gerts and the bar nights faculty associations run. The technique is the same as anywhere: same place, same time, twice a week. ## Volunteer instead of attend - Frosh leader, orientation staff - Conference and case competition committees - Hackathon organizers and mentors - Club executive roles, which open in late winter and are much less competitive than students assume - Charity and service committees Organizing puts you in contact with every attendee and every other organizer, and gives you a role, which removes the hardest part of talking to strangers. ## Where McGill events are announced - Club Instagram accounts, usually first and often 24 to 48 hours ahead - Discord servers for faculties, courses and clubs - Faculty association mailing lists and newsletters - The SSMU and club directories for finding groups, less so for live events - r/mcgill on Reddit for questions and occasional event threads - Posters around lower campus and the student union building - LinkUp, which aggregates campus events into a single feed scoped to McGill Following one channel means seeing a fraction of what is happening. Following forty club Instagram accounts is the manual version of an event feed. ## Meeting Concordia students as a McGill student Campus channels will not do it. What crosses over: - Case competitions and inter-university conferences - Startup and founder events, including McGill's Dobson Centre and Concordia's District 3 programming - Hackathons, AI and tech meetups downtown - Language exchange nights - Public networking nights run by student societies at either school Full list: https://linkuporg.com/guides/student-networking-montreal.txt ## How LinkUp helps at McGill - One feed of the events McGill clubs and societies are running, instead of dozens of Instagram accounts you have to remember to check. - See which students are attending before you go. Never paywalled. - Register in a couple of taps, including free events, from the web with no app install required. - Discover matches you with students by program, industry and interest. - Message people afterwards so the connection survives past the event. - Verified @mail.mcgill.ca student email required for a personal account, so everyone you meet is an actual student. Browse what is on: https://linkuporg.com/events ## Common mistakes - Assuming Activities Night is the only entry point. Clubs recruit all year. - Signing up for fifteen mailing lists and attending nothing. - Believing everyone already has friends by October. They do not; they are also waiting for someone to make the first move. - Staying strictly inside your faculty. The most interesting rooms are the ones where the faculties mix.