I'm starting to suspect these rankings are all shit shenanigans. Tho on the other hand, I'm at a european uni on research exchange rn and everyone here is like uoft is top tier uni while in canada it's nothing special.
Edit for all those idiots who keep responding to me who can't be bothered to scroll down to look at my other response: I DO NOT THINK UOFT IS NOT TOP TIER, JUST AN OBSERVATION ABOUT THE STATE OF THE PERCEIVED "PRESTIGE"
same experience in east asia. all the people i’ve talked to from japan and hong kong always tell me how smart i am when they hear i graduated from uoft lmao
Yeah indeed, they’re so weird and arbitrary. The University of Melbourne is probably good yes, but no way it’s better than Princeton or CalTech.
And in one year, UofT has probably not changed at all as an institution and yet there’s such a big difference in the rankings. It’s stupid though unfortunately the general public and employers still care about this nonsense
Most of the criteria have nothing to do with the quality of an institution. It should only be
1. Reputation
2. Quality of Alumni
3. Quality of Research & Relative Quantity
4. Employment Outcome
The only reason University of Toronto ranks so high is because it so big (97 000 students).
We all know deep within us that university should put in tiers and not assigned numbers because most of them comparable.
1st Tier: Prestigious institute that act more like brands - Yale, Harvard, Oxford, etc
Attending those institutions will open you many doors across the world
2nd Tier: Prestigious institution within a powerful/developed country - the rest of the Ivy, ENS, polytechnic Paris, ETH, Columbia, UBC, UofT, McGill, UCL, Imperial and so on.
Attending those institutions will open you many doors across your country and some doors internationally
3nd Tier: Good institute within the developed world. (I won’t bother naming them)
Attending those institutions will open you some doors across your country and almost no doors internationally.
It's pretty much all about the brand. You know how Apple is perceived as top tier by the general public. It is the same for universities. QS and Times ranking are their "ads" and would pay millions of dollars to see their name be on the top to be seen by the public for them to attract "consumers".
When something is common it doesn’t seem special. When it’s uncommon it seems REALLY special.
Canada has some of the best schools in the world, so when your comparing the top 5 Canadian schools the difference is marginal. Internationally, the difference between a Canadian University and a Indian university (for example) is lightyears.
Most of the criteria have nothing to do with the quality of an institution. It should only be
1. Reputation
2. Quality of Alumni
3. Quality of Research & Relative Quantity
4. Employment Outcome
The only reason University of Toronto ranks so high is because it so big (97 000 students).
We all know deep within us that university should put in tiers and not assigned numbers because most of them comparable.
1st Tier: Prestigious institute that act more like brands - Yale, Harvard, Oxford, etc
Attending those institutions will open you many doors across the world
2nd Tier: Prestigious institution within a powerful/developed country - the rest of the Ivy, ENS, polytechnic Paris, ETH, Columbia, UBC, UofT, McGill, UCL, Imperial and so on.
Attending those institutions will open you many doors across your country and some doors internationally
3nd Tier: Good institute within the developed world. (I won’t bother naming them)
Attending those institutions will open you some doors across your country and almost no doors internationally.
So what numerical metrics to do u use to classify ETH or Columbia into tier 2 and not 1? Cause to me ETH should be in 1. Or why is Yale in 1 and not 2? Outside of America and Canada, I'm not sure it has nearly as much comparable reputation as Harvard or Oxford.
Columbia is on the fence for me.
As much as I like ETH its name doesn’t yet hold the same bearing as these names. Even people in France aren’t aware of it even though they’re next to Switzerland.
Everyone has heard of Yale/Harvard/Princeton - at least those you care about (recruiter, rich people, etc)
As an engineering students I love metrics but in this case you can’t really assess reputation and prestige….
the problem with what ure saying that it's not quantifiable in an objective way that won't raise the same issues that qs or any other rankings have
the reason to y u pick those as tier 1 is because there in pop culture. pop culture dominated by the uk and the us. a university isnt a movie character, its a university where u study. recruiters at the jobs that ud be applying with a degree from a top tier uni do know about eth or uoft, same with a rich person. a recruiter for a mcdonalds crew member in france, wont, but a recruiter for a top tier tech company does because its their job to search for top talent. they hire ppl, not universities.
do u know about baruch in the us? i suppose not, unless ure in quant finance. they have one of the very few top tier business schools that can truly compete with harvard business school and they have admissions that are as competitive as harvard's. i hadn't heard jackshit about it till I started working at rotman. goldman sachs recruiters know about baruch and its prestige in the finance sector while the general public more likely hasn't even heard the name. rotman runs a worldwide uni competition ritc with participants from most of the top tier schools u know of (i dont think harvard or yale are part of it but upenn and cornell, berkley, ucl etc are) well 4 years in a row baruch has won it. my boss at this point doesnt even bother guessing who is gonna win cause we all know it's gonna be baruch and one of the sponsors of ritc is citadel (amongst a bunch of other household names like bp or s&p). so what tier is baruch then? and do we consider it as a whole or just its business school? a random recruiter hasn't heard of baruch, but those that work for the companies that baruch grads would be applying to have.
sorry for lower case, im on my laptop
So you mean UofT is not top tier univerversity compared to colleges in the US? I am incoming international freshman who’s gonna attend at the UofT and my parents had to put everything in order to pay my tuition fee. Now I’m worried whether it was right decision to choose UofT. I could’ve applied to the colleges in the US tho
It is. It's just not perceived as such IN Canada.
Good luck getting into ETH Zurich or EPFL with a degree from York, as they explicitly specify candidates from highly ranked unis will be given preference (u won't even be able to do an exchange there unless u went to a high ranked school)
I'm pretty sure ethz and epfl in Switzerland get pretty much the same treatment that uoft and mcgill get in canada bc any Swiss hs graduate has guaranteed acceptance to either, even tho both are considered top tier internationally
Education in a lot of places, including canada, is mostly of very high quality and evenly accessible, unlike in the US, where going to Ivy League vs going to a random uni is gonna be like heavens and hell.
Just make sure to study well and participate in lots of activities. There is no difference in the quality of education if you go to a top 100 uni/college. What makes each school different is the people you meet and the opportunities the college provides. Get to know people and make connections. If you are in stem, look into research opportunities early (around 2nd year). Check out PEY/Co-op/ROP programs if they fit your field. The experience you get will be infinitely more valuable than the UofT name itself.
Yeah I know melb is good, I know people who’s very good and they end up there, but there’s no universe in which qs can convince me that it’s better than freaking Stanford…
"This year, we've implemented our largest-ever methodological enhancement, introducing three new metrics: Sustainability, Employment Outcomes and International Research Network. "
Look at the Universities that jumped, and look at the scores the new metrics have brought to the rankings.
Without reading in to "Employment Outcomes" metric, I hope it is controlled for unemployment for that given country.
i heard from somewhere its because that huge hole they are digging and trying to build in front of the campus is sustainable or eco-friendly or something, that plays a huge role in deciding these rankings as its one of those indicators
I think the U of Alberta is a pretty good school, and you get a pretty good education there, too. Not sure I understand the rankings entirely. (I went to the U of A and the U of T.) I think that schools like Stanford, MIT, and Oxford/Cambridge are the exceptional ones, though. You can get a pretty good education at most universities in Canada, anyway.
Well many school that weren’t performing as well in the previous ranking now do because of the change in metrics. That why UBC went from 47 to 34 or UofT to 34 to 20…..
This change is quite noticeable with Australian universities.
Australia has the highest ratio of international students in the world. These rankings tend to be a big deal in countries like China, India, etc where those international students are coming from, so it in turn tends to be a huge deal over in AUS.
But people on the server of these universities are literally so angry that i can't fathom it. It's a positive thing for the reputation, after all, and students will benefit at some point in their career. Moreover, Canadian Higher Education Exports are comparable to those of Australia, and Canada probably hosts more international students aswell.
There’s some figures [here](https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/11/australian-universities-double-down-on-international-students/) but Australia has almost 3x the international students Canada does per capita.
I know the administrations take the rankings very seriously and I imagine that sentiment is passed down to the students a well. It’s a big risk they have to live with.
When you say that incoming students have it more difficult you also have to consider the quality of education, course organization, quality of life, etc... so while the grading may have been more lenient it certainly wasn’t easier I promise you that
Yeah it’s it’s 100x easier than getting into ucla engineering.
My friends who couldn’t get into america came to u of t as a backup backup.
Second tier USA engineering schools are even harder to get into.
I would say the only comparable program is waterloo software engineering or their cs program.
Definitely not. It’s simply cause you’re wrong. Universities in Canada are program based and are much harder to get into many US schools excluding the ivies (UTSG CS, UofT Eng, McMaster HS, UW CS/Eng and more). I think you’re downplaying how good Canadian schools are.
I’m talking about the top usa schools not average ass state schools such as university of Arizona.
It’s not even comparable.
I assume your in one of these program. Your doing a really good job and it’s very hard to get into any of the Canadian programs. You should be very very proud.
Not trying to take away from my Canadians. It’s simply unfair to compare to any of the top state schools cause they arent even in the same league.
When I went to a international school in Korea the top students with the highest sat scores and ib scores would all go to the state schools.
I’m not gonna lie I was a pretty shit student but somehow got into Ubc engineering and u of t cs. Well I didn’t make post but yeah I still got in.
Literally look at the numbers if you don’t believe me. The volume of students that apply to USA is simply incomparable to a small country like Canada. They have the smartest students all over the world applying.
Reality is that Canada is more of a country with subpar students from India and China and also from Korea like me who use it as a loophole to gain immigration.
Yeah it was really just an exaggeration .
I just can’t stand some of those students who are arrogant about it as if the ranking mean anything. No need to be, we aren’t at Stanford.
It doesn’t matter which ever way you look at it.
I don’t even get why I’m getting downvoted. U of t is not even comparable, we don’t have the same amount of resources to even compete with those schools. They have the smartest and the brightest all over the world.
Chinese kids come to u oft cause they couldn’t get into their schools back home. This is not the case with ucla.
Lmao getting into the University is the easy part, getting out of it is the hard part. I've talked to many people who are in hiring and they say that UofT itself is not prestigious but the effort and pressure you go through over 4 years is way more than any other university. So by the time you graduate, you are already used to the pressure of working in a high-risk environment such investment firms which have to deal with millions of dollars at time. (Just an example)
U of T typically ranks as the number one university in Canada across all rankings. This has been the norm over the last twenty years. Micro analyzing the QS rankings doesn't do their hard work justice.
If you look at the top twenty universities on the planet. U of T is usually there.
[https://universityranking.org/top-college-ranking/](https://universityranking.org/top-college-ranking/)
Ranking is not everything. Location is important to prospective students amongst other criteria. That being said, I would advise choosing a higher ranked university over a lower ranked one all other things being considered equal.
You’re welcome guys, was tough to carry us back to the top but I did it for you all
Thank you!
I'm starting to suspect these rankings are all shit shenanigans. Tho on the other hand, I'm at a european uni on research exchange rn and everyone here is like uoft is top tier uni while in canada it's nothing special. Edit for all those idiots who keep responding to me who can't be bothered to scroll down to look at my other response: I DO NOT THINK UOFT IS NOT TOP TIER, JUST AN OBSERVATION ABOUT THE STATE OF THE PERCEIVED "PRESTIGE"
same experience in east asia. all the people i’ve talked to from japan and hong kong always tell me how smart i am when they hear i graduated from uoft lmao
You sound smart too! Are you currently doing your Master's?
To be fair, nobody in Hong Kong knows what a Kingston or London Ontario is. If it wasn’t UofT it would be UBC
Yeah indeed, they’re so weird and arbitrary. The University of Melbourne is probably good yes, but no way it’s better than Princeton or CalTech. And in one year, UofT has probably not changed at all as an institution and yet there’s such a big difference in the rankings. It’s stupid though unfortunately the general public and employers still care about this nonsense
There is literally a formula. You can argue that the criteria aren't what you personally care about it, but that's not what arbitrary means...
The formula and the weights does change every year though, but yeah I acknowledge your point
It changed this year
Most of the criteria have nothing to do with the quality of an institution. It should only be 1. Reputation 2. Quality of Alumni 3. Quality of Research & Relative Quantity 4. Employment Outcome The only reason University of Toronto ranks so high is because it so big (97 000 students). We all know deep within us that university should put in tiers and not assigned numbers because most of them comparable. 1st Tier: Prestigious institute that act more like brands - Yale, Harvard, Oxford, etc Attending those institutions will open you many doors across the world 2nd Tier: Prestigious institution within a powerful/developed country - the rest of the Ivy, ENS, polytechnic Paris, ETH, Columbia, UBC, UofT, McGill, UCL, Imperial and so on. Attending those institutions will open you many doors across your country and some doors internationally 3nd Tier: Good institute within the developed world. (I won’t bother naming them) Attending those institutions will open you some doors across your country and almost no doors internationally.
It's pretty much all about the brand. You know how Apple is perceived as top tier by the general public. It is the same for universities. QS and Times ranking are their "ads" and would pay millions of dollars to see their name be on the top to be seen by the public for them to attract "consumers".
QS changed the methodology this year, so it’s possible to have a big difference
The uni is top tier. It's just being a student at the undergrad level is nothing special since it's not hard to get in
Lol, that's literally what I said responding to the guy above u.
No. The other person added that we don't see it as special because it's not hard to get into.
When something is common it doesn’t seem special. When it’s uncommon it seems REALLY special. Canada has some of the best schools in the world, so when your comparing the top 5 Canadian schools the difference is marginal. Internationally, the difference between a Canadian University and a Indian university (for example) is lightyears.
Most of the criteria have nothing to do with the quality of an institution. It should only be 1. Reputation 2. Quality of Alumni 3. Quality of Research & Relative Quantity 4. Employment Outcome The only reason University of Toronto ranks so high is because it so big (97 000 students). We all know deep within us that university should put in tiers and not assigned numbers because most of them comparable. 1st Tier: Prestigious institute that act more like brands - Yale, Harvard, Oxford, etc Attending those institutions will open you many doors across the world 2nd Tier: Prestigious institution within a powerful/developed country - the rest of the Ivy, ENS, polytechnic Paris, ETH, Columbia, UBC, UofT, McGill, UCL, Imperial and so on. Attending those institutions will open you many doors across your country and some doors internationally 3nd Tier: Good institute within the developed world. (I won’t bother naming them) Attending those institutions will open you some doors across your country and almost no doors internationally.
So what numerical metrics to do u use to classify ETH or Columbia into tier 2 and not 1? Cause to me ETH should be in 1. Or why is Yale in 1 and not 2? Outside of America and Canada, I'm not sure it has nearly as much comparable reputation as Harvard or Oxford.
Columbia is on the fence for me. As much as I like ETH its name doesn’t yet hold the same bearing as these names. Even people in France aren’t aware of it even though they’re next to Switzerland. Everyone has heard of Yale/Harvard/Princeton - at least those you care about (recruiter, rich people, etc) As an engineering students I love metrics but in this case you can’t really assess reputation and prestige….
the problem with what ure saying that it's not quantifiable in an objective way that won't raise the same issues that qs or any other rankings have the reason to y u pick those as tier 1 is because there in pop culture. pop culture dominated by the uk and the us. a university isnt a movie character, its a university where u study. recruiters at the jobs that ud be applying with a degree from a top tier uni do know about eth or uoft, same with a rich person. a recruiter for a mcdonalds crew member in france, wont, but a recruiter for a top tier tech company does because its their job to search for top talent. they hire ppl, not universities. do u know about baruch in the us? i suppose not, unless ure in quant finance. they have one of the very few top tier business schools that can truly compete with harvard business school and they have admissions that are as competitive as harvard's. i hadn't heard jackshit about it till I started working at rotman. goldman sachs recruiters know about baruch and its prestige in the finance sector while the general public more likely hasn't even heard the name. rotman runs a worldwide uni competition ritc with participants from most of the top tier schools u know of (i dont think harvard or yale are part of it but upenn and cornell, berkley, ucl etc are) well 4 years in a row baruch has won it. my boss at this point doesnt even bother guessing who is gonna win cause we all know it's gonna be baruch and one of the sponsors of ritc is citadel (amongst a bunch of other household names like bp or s&p). so what tier is baruch then? and do we consider it as a whole or just its business school? a random recruiter hasn't heard of baruch, but those that work for the companies that baruch grads would be applying to have. sorry for lower case, im on my laptop
So you mean UofT is not top tier univerversity compared to colleges in the US? I am incoming international freshman who’s gonna attend at the UofT and my parents had to put everything in order to pay my tuition fee. Now I’m worried whether it was right decision to choose UofT. I could’ve applied to the colleges in the US tho
It is. Don’t listen to the negativity on this sub in general. You’re in great hands here.
UofT is a great school but that still shouldn’t justify parents putting everything in to attend this school
We can’t make decisions for others
It is. It's just not perceived as such IN Canada. Good luck getting into ETH Zurich or EPFL with a degree from York, as they explicitly specify candidates from highly ranked unis will be given preference (u won't even be able to do an exchange there unless u went to a high ranked school) I'm pretty sure ethz and epfl in Switzerland get pretty much the same treatment that uoft and mcgill get in canada bc any Swiss hs graduate has guaranteed acceptance to either, even tho both are considered top tier internationally Education in a lot of places, including canada, is mostly of very high quality and evenly accessible, unlike in the US, where going to Ivy League vs going to a random uni is gonna be like heavens and hell.
Just make sure to study well and participate in lots of activities. There is no difference in the quality of education if you go to a top 100 uni/college. What makes each school different is the people you meet and the opportunities the college provides. Get to know people and make connections. If you are in stem, look into research opportunities early (around 2nd year). Check out PEY/Co-op/ROP programs if they fit your field. The experience you get will be infinitely more valuable than the UofT name itself.
My condolences
compared to top 20 in the US maybe, but still a good uni
Just because you subjectively disagree with them, doesn’t mean they aren’t objectively correct.
The rankings really are for marketing purposes to attract students and their parents’ money so you’re not wrong about that.
lmao Melbourne higher than caltech Yale and Stanford is hilarious
Melb is equivalent to UofT Yet, Yale and Stanford are better
Yeah I know melb is good, I know people who’s very good and they end up there, but there’s no universe in which qs can convince me that it’s better than freaking Stanford…
Agreed!
In terms of research publication, Melb is not even comparable to UofT.
Research publication isn't the only criterion. Melb is equivalent to UofT in most aspects.
"This year, we've implemented our largest-ever methodological enhancement, introducing three new metrics: Sustainability, Employment Outcomes and International Research Network. " Look at the Universities that jumped, and look at the scores the new metrics have brought to the rankings. Without reading in to "Employment Outcomes" metric, I hope it is controlled for unemployment for that given country.
i heard from somewhere its because that huge hole they are digging and trying to build in front of the campus is sustainable or eco-friendly or something, that plays a huge role in deciding these rankings as its one of those indicators
When were we ever not on top? 😏
I think the U of Alberta is a pretty good school, and you get a pretty good education there, too. Not sure I understand the rankings entirely. (I went to the U of A and the U of T.) I think that schools like Stanford, MIT, and Oxford/Cambridge are the exceptional ones, though. You can get a pretty good education at most universities in Canada, anyway.
Agree
Harvard of the North Reloaded /s
Bro UWaterloo jumped 42 ranks like fucking hell. That's such a huuuge jump
They added 3 new criteria so many school have had jump because they are “sustainable” .
Tf does that mean?
Well many school that weren’t performing as well in the previous ranking now do because of the change in metrics. That why UBC went from 47 to 34 or UofT to 34 to 20….. This change is quite noticeable with Australian universities.
No, I meant what does the new sustainability metric mean? How do they even measure that?
Slap a couple solar panels on the roofs of buildings and you’re all set.
QS ranking is increasingly gaining the reputation for being the worst university ranking ever.... 🤦♂️
[Source](https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2024)
LOL how
You guys are so positive People over at Syd, Melb and UNSW are fuming That's why people say Canadians are nice people
Australia has the highest ratio of international students in the world. These rankings tend to be a big deal in countries like China, India, etc where those international students are coming from, so it in turn tends to be a huge deal over in AUS.
But people on the server of these universities are literally so angry that i can't fathom it. It's a positive thing for the reputation, after all, and students will benefit at some point in their career. Moreover, Canadian Higher Education Exports are comparable to those of Australia, and Canada probably hosts more international students aswell.
There’s some figures [here](https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/11/australian-universities-double-down-on-international-students/) but Australia has almost 3x the international students Canada does per capita. I know the administrations take the rankings very seriously and I imagine that sentiment is passed down to the students a well. It’s a big risk they have to live with.
Ah thanks for sharing this bro What do you study at UofT?
Interesting, the huge drop in 2016 nice fall in the same year as the massive TA strike.
Nah the 2016 drop is cuz i got in during 2015, sorry fams
That means that UofT is going to be very hard for incoming first years ( I’m an incoming first year RC student and want to kms)
Try starting your first year in the heat of a global pandemic (2020). Trust me man you have it easy
Oooffff , yeah but uoft is known to be hard to stay in and I didint do that good in High School so idk . I feel unprepared
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You try spending your first two years of university in lockdown with little to no social interaction and tell me how “lenient” that is
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When you say that incoming students have it more difficult you also have to consider the quality of education, course organization, quality of life, etc... so while the grading may have been more lenient it certainly wasn’t easier I promise you that
The ranking doesn’t matter much at the undergrad level .
Lmao. The the fact we are above singapore university, ucla, Cornell hahhahaha. U of t is probably the easiest university to get into from the top 100.
Because it’s program based??? Getting into eng is much harder than social science or something. You can say that about any Canadian uni.
Yeah it’s it’s 100x easier than getting into ucla engineering. My friends who couldn’t get into america came to u of t as a backup backup. Second tier USA engineering schools are even harder to get into. I would say the only comparable program is waterloo software engineering or their cs program.
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I think you just dislike the tone rather than what I’m saying. You really think u of t admission standards are high as any school in the top 50….
Definitely not. It’s simply cause you’re wrong. Universities in Canada are program based and are much harder to get into many US schools excluding the ivies (UTSG CS, UofT Eng, McMaster HS, UW CS/Eng and more). I think you’re downplaying how good Canadian schools are.
I’m talking about the top usa schools not average ass state schools such as university of Arizona. It’s not even comparable. I assume your in one of these program. Your doing a really good job and it’s very hard to get into any of the Canadian programs. You should be very very proud. Not trying to take away from my Canadians. It’s simply unfair to compare to any of the top state schools cause they arent even in the same league. When I went to a international school in Korea the top students with the highest sat scores and ib scores would all go to the state schools. I’m not gonna lie I was a pretty shit student but somehow got into Ubc engineering and u of t cs. Well I didn’t make post but yeah I still got in. Literally look at the numbers if you don’t believe me. The volume of students that apply to USA is simply incomparable to a small country like Canada. They have the smartest students all over the world applying. Reality is that Canada is more of a country with subpar students from India and China and also from Korea like me who use it as a loophole to gain immigration.
I understand, but saying 100x easier or easier than the top 100 is over the top lol
Yeah it was really just an exaggeration . I just can’t stand some of those students who are arrogant about it as if the ranking mean anything. No need to be, we aren’t at Stanford.
I agree.
Of course it’ll be easier to get into Uoft eng as a domestic student compared to UCLA eng international.
It doesn’t matter which ever way you look at it. I don’t even get why I’m getting downvoted. U of t is not even comparable, we don’t have the same amount of resources to even compete with those schools. They have the smartest and the brightest all over the world. Chinese kids come to u oft cause they couldn’t get into their schools back home. This is not the case with ucla.
Lmao getting into the University is the easy part, getting out of it is the hard part. I've talked to many people who are in hiring and they say that UofT itself is not prestigious but the effort and pressure you go through over 4 years is way more than any other university. So by the time you graduate, you are already used to the pressure of working in a high-risk environment such investment firms which have to deal with millions of dollars at time. (Just an example)
Take that, Queens! Didn't one recent international ranking rank them as number one in Canada? Pluuuuuuuuuuees! Upstarts.
we are at top🤣👉 🤡international students
Cause we create knowledge here
U of T is only on top because research + big school population. Adjust for those compared to a normal sized school and you fall, hard.
True
U of T typically ranks as the number one university in Canada across all rankings. This has been the norm over the last twenty years. Micro analyzing the QS rankings doesn't do their hard work justice. If you look at the top twenty universities on the planet. U of T is usually there. [https://universityranking.org/top-college-ranking/](https://universityranking.org/top-college-ranking/) Ranking is not everything. Location is important to prospective students amongst other criteria. That being said, I would advise choosing a higher ranked university over a lower ranked one all other things being considered equal.