<p>So I'm posting this in the admissions forums because I want to know how Canadian schools rank for the average American. </p>
<p>So first of all, which Canadian Schools do you know (if any)? </p>
<p>And how would you rank those schools in overall prestige? And how would you rank those schools in terms of their engineering programs?</p>
<p>And how would you compare the top Canadian engineering programs to the top 10 engineering programs in the states prestige-wise?</p>
<p>Most Americans could not name two provinces much less Canadian colleges.</p>
<p>McGill has always struck me as one of the top ones. I’m not that well informed on Canadian schools, however.</p>
<p>I only know of McGill because I know somebody hat attends but in my general view I wouldn’t rank it very high just from my “lay prestige”(even though its ranked fairly high in the rankings)</p>
<p>Other than that I don’t know of any other Canadian schools or of anybody that knows any.</p>
<p>I will list down Canadian schools (in sequence) according to dates I’ve first heard about them:</p>
<p>Toronto
McGill
UBC
Richard Ivey (school of business)
York
HEC (business school)
Dalhousie</p>
<p>Right or wrong, this is my perception:</p>
<p>These are all big, though very good public schools. </p>
<p>For prestige in Computer Science, I would say</p>
<p>Waterloo (Comparable with Cornell)
Toronto (Just below Cornell, but above Purdue)
UBC (Comparable with, though just below University of Washington)
McGill (Comparable with UCLA)</p>
<p>For most other science and engineering
Toronto (Comparable with Texas)
UBC - McGill (tie) (Comparable with Wisconsin)</p>
<p>For everything else
McGill (Below Michigan, above UNC)
Toronto (Below Michigan, above UNC)
UBC (I would say comparable to University of Wisconsin)</p>
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<p>Most Americans could not name any non-HYP ivies, but we still talk about their prestige, don’t we??</p>
<p>Eh. I couldn’t name any prestigious Canadian schools.</p>
<p>^^^ This says more about you than the Canadian schools…</p>
<p>^^Not true, Canada is a huge (geographic) country with the population of California and no world dominance in any area. To most Americans it just isn’t on the radar screen.</p>
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<p>Neither is a non-HYP ivy…</p>
<p>To be honest, most American’s don’t care for Canadian schools because there are so many good ones in America.</p>
<p>The only Canadian schools I have heard of are McGill and UToronto. I’ve always thought of McGill as being the better one, sort of in the WashU/Northwestern/Vanderbilt/Georgetown type prestige tier - right after all of the ivies, and Duke, Stanford, MIT, etc, but still obviously very good. I’ve always thought of UToronto as being like of the good publics in America, maybe comparable to UMichigan or UCLA or something. </p>
<p>And I would argue that the non-HYP Ivies are MUCH better known in America than Canadian schools if only for their media coverage. Peter Parker goes to Columbia in the Spiderman movies. Fogel and whateverhisname is are going to Dartmouth in Superbad. Andy from the office is obsessed with Cornell. Canadian schools are virtually unheard of in America. Even without the media boost, just the fact that they are in the Ivy League gives them a huge prestige boost, because while not every American may have heard of Dartmouth, pretty much every American has heard of the Ivy League (regardless of the fact that they might think Stanford or MIT is a part of it.)</p>
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<p>That’s not saying MUCH…</p>
<p>I’ve heard of:</p>
<p>McGill
UToronto
Queens U
McMaster
UBC
Waterloo
U Windsor
… and that’s it :(</p>
<p>The Canadian schools I can name off the top of my head and how I would rank them based on prestige:</p>
<p>McGill
Toronto
Waterloo - Engineering
Queens
UBC</p>