University Rankings

Canada’s Top School by Reputation 2018: University of Toronto

In the heart of Canada’s largest city, a multicultural campus, stunning architecture and bleeding-edge research have earned global renown

  • Maclean’s Education Hub »

    With almost 90,000 students, 14,000 faculty and a network of almost 600,000 alumni, the University of Toronto is often described as a “city within a city.” Students from across the globe are drawn to the school’s 700-plus undergrad and almost 300 graduate programs for a world-class education at the institution that turned out grads including Margaret Atwood, Adrienne Clarkson, David Cronenberg and Michael Ondaatje. In fact, the number of foreign students who accepted admissions in 2017 rose 20 per cent over the previous year. A recent report in the Boston Globe cites the school’s cultural diversity as one of the reasons for the influx.

    MORE: Create a custom university ranking based on what’s most important to you

    A glance around the university’s three campuses reveals that the student body reflects the multicultural city that surrounds them. And a big part of what students love about U of T is its location. The leafy-green and bustling St. George campus is located in the middle of downtown, while the Mississauga and Scarborough campuses cover the east and west of the city, and have a more suburban feel.

    The most recent addition to U of T facilities is One Spadina, the new home of the John H. Daniels faculty of architecture, landscape and design. Designed by acclaimed architects Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, the glass-fronted, zigzagging concrete structure has been lauded by the Globe and Mail as “one of the best Canadian buildings of the past decade.”

    A stellar reputation in research areas including science, medicine and artificial intelligence are the school’s big draws. One of the world’s foremost authorities on AI, Google fellow Geoffrey Hinton, is U of T’s professor emeritus of computer science. He and his students are responsible for turning Canada into what the New York Times calls a “high-tech hotbed.” U of T associate professor Raquel Urtasun, a researcher in the field of self-driving vehicles, has been tapped by Uber to run its first international research lab in Toronto.

    Also in the realm of cutting-edge tech, the Rotman School of Management’s Creative Destruction Lab is now providing start-ups with access to the world’s only commercially available quantum computers, thanks to a seed-stage accelerator program run by U of T.

    U of T research often makes the headlines with fascinating new discoveries and creative solutions. For example, researchers at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics recently converted Saturn’s rings and moons into two pieces of music in celebration of NASA’s Cassini mission. And earlier this year, an undergrad student led a team of palaeontologists in classifying ancient, mythical-looking cone-shaped marine creatures called hyoliths.

    The school’s faculty draws a lot of attention as well. Assistant professor Angela Schoellig of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies was recently named one of the world’s top innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review for her work on applying machine learning to drones and robots. And Aisha Ahmad, an assistant professor of political science at U of T Scarborough and the Munk School of Global Affairs, is receiving attention for her new book Jihad & Co., an exploration of how exploiting local businesses in conflict zones helps groups like Islamic State rise to power.

     

    National reputational ranking

    Maclean’s surveyed university faculty and senior administrators, high school guidance counsellors, and a variety of businesspeople across the country, asking for their views on quality and innovation at Canadian universities. This list show the results of the reputational ranking, combining all the universities from the Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive and Medical Doctoral categories into one group.

    1 Toronto

    2 Waterloo

    3 UBC

    4 McGill

    5 Alberta

    6 McMaster

    7 Western

    8 Queen’s

    9 Simon Fraser

    10 Calgary

    11 Guelph

    12 Montréal

    13 Ryerson

    14 Dalhousie

    15 Concordia

    16 Ottawa

    17 Victoria

    18 Laval

    19 Sherbrooke

    20 Carleton

    21 York

    22 Memorial

    23 Saskatchewan

    24 Wilfrid Laurier

    25 Manitoba

    26 Mount Allison

    27 St. Francis Xavier

    28 New Brunswick

    29 UQAM

    30 UOIT

    31 Lethbridge

    32 Acadia

    33 Trent

    34 UNBC

    35 Brock

    36 Regina

    37 Winnipeg

    38 Windsor

    39 UPEI

    40 Saint Mary’s

    41 Lakehead

    42 Bishop’s

    43 Moncton

    44 St. Thomas

    45 Laurentian

    46 Mount Saint Vincent

    47 Cape Breton

    48 Nipissing

    49 Brandon

    EDUCATION HUB_NAV

    Looking for more?

    Get the Best of Maclean's sent straight to your inbox. Sign up for news, commentary and analysis.
    • By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.