Hi everyone! Over the summer I visited the University of Toronto as part of my college search process and fell in love not only with the university but with the city of Toronto as well. I’m very much interested in their biological science programs but have not fully decided if that is the route I want to take.
Anyway back to the question, why is the University of Toronto ranked so high world wide? For the 2015/16 calendar year UofT is currently ranked 14th, ahead of schools such as Tufts University, Boston University, Northeastern, McGill, New York University, all of which I visited and loved. The only schools that surpassed UofT in rank that I visited were UPenn and Johns Hopkins University.
Is there a specific reason why UofT is ranked so highly, is it the education offered, job opportunities, location, etc.? Would love a detailed answer as I’m considering applying to UofT early decision. Thank you so much!
One major reason is the research output at U of T. For decades, it has been second only to Harvard. The impact of the research (rated by how often it’s cited) is in the top 5 universities of North America.
U of T has an extensive range of courses offered in all subjects. I attended U of T for undergrad and grad. D16 is looking at tier one and two schools in the U.S. None of the schools that she’s looked at, including Ivies and UC Berkeley, have the extent of course offerings that U of T has.
BTW, there is no such thing as early decision (or early action) at U of T.
The world wide rankings look at research output without regard to the size of a school. The main campus of U of T has 46,000 students and each of the two suburban campuses has 12,000 students. It is considered one institution. U of T is enormous. Undergraduate admission is easier than UMass but there is a high flunk out rate compared to the other schools you mentioned.
World rankings, as others have said, are based more on “output” – research – than on “input” – how “popular” a school is, as reflected in its acceptance rate – or test scores and gpa s of incoming students.
As a dual academic family, with a kid at a major research university, our bias is that rankings such as the world rankings, which measure quality of faculty, are more meaningful than US News etc which measure popularity among high schools students. Toronto is a world class university, and for US students prepared to handle the independence of a major research university, well worth it.
@midwestmomofboys My problem with the worldwide rankings is that they look at total research output, not research output for faculty member. Toronto has 60,000 students, McGill has 30,000 students. Assuming Toronto has twice the faculty as McGill, there is a lot more total research output.
@TomSrOfBoston, University of Toronto doesn’t have twice the faculty that McGill has. UT has 2,547 academic staff members while McGill has 1,674. If you count academic staff at the two suburban campuses (Scarborough and Mississauga) you still don’t get to twice McGill, but faculty members at satellite campuses don’t usually have the research output or impact that faculty do at main campuses.
That said, whether or not it matters is up to the individual making the evaluation. Some might argue that they simply want to be at a university with a high volume of research period; it doesn’t matter whether each individual faculty member is doing research in a big way, but rather that there’s a variety of different project and labs to get involved in. Others may want to attend a university where each individual faculty member (or most of them) is world-renowned and making a big impact in the field, so they may choose a school with a smaller faculty that have comparable research output. Either way, the worldwide rankings are ranking universities as a whole, so it would make sense for them to consider total research output and not per capita.
The OP was asking why U Toronto is ranked so high, above other schools he listed. The volume of research is the answer. It doesn’t mean that Toronto is "better’ than the lower ranked schoosl.
@juillet Based on your faculty figures, the student/faculty ratio at Toronto must be significantly higher than at McGill.
Probably on face, but even that can be misleading:
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How many part-time and other contingent faculty are there, and how are they counted in student-faculty ratio figures? A school with an 8:1 student faculty ratio might get there by hiring a lot of adjunct faculty who aren’t really around to do the advising undergrads need.
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How many of those faculty actively teach undergrads? Many large research universities have very low student-faculty ratios, but many or most of those faculty may not teach undergrads. Some of them may be research only faculty at the medical center; some of them may be faculty in the journalism or business school that only teach graduate students.
An example: the student-faculty ratio at Columbia, where I went to graduate school, is 6:1. The student-faculty ratio at Spelman, where I went to undergrad, is 10:1. Do I think that the undergrads at Columbia get more personalized attention from faculty than undergrads at Spelman? Definitely not! In fact, a quick glance through the departmental listing of my own department reveals a bevy of professors who don’t teach undergrads and would have no reason to even interact with them, and quite a few others who teach maybe one undergrad class a year and the rest graduate classes.
I’d like to note that I’m just saying this more generally. I’ve no doubt that students at McGill probably get more personalized attention and mentoring from professors than University of Toronto students.
Canadian and U.S. methodologies for calculating student to faculty ratios are different. Under the Canadian methodology UT’s S/F ration is 27.4:1; under the U.S. model, it’s 39:1. McGill reports theirs as 16:1, although it’s not clear what methodology they use.
Thank you all so much for the quick responses! I guess I should rephrase my original question to why is UofT such a good school compared to the other universities I listed in my original post. For me, location, the amount of students, and student to teacher ratio isn’t too much of a factor in my college search, which seems to be the big topic at hand above. However, I’m mainly concerned with the overall value of the school, job opportunities after college, and the recognition a degree from UofT receives worldwide.
I posted a study of U of T’s student: faculty ratio a few weeks ago. Depending on how it’s calculated, it can range from 39:1 to 5:1. Canadian universities have a vested interest in keeping the ratio high for reporting purposes - the opposite of US universities. It makes it easier to get funding from the provinces who are the main income source for universities if the student:faculty ratio is high.
U of T’s faculty numbers are less than 10% higher than Harvard’s. Citation index calculations normalize for number of papers. U of T is in the top 5 in North America in both citation index and number of papers.
@alex114323 As you see from the above posts, a lot of Americans are of the belief that U of T can’t possibly be as good as a first tier American university. This makes it harder to get a job in the U.S. than if you had a second tier US degree. (Personal experience)
I think of UToronto as a colder Canadian version of a big American public like UCLA. Or maybe an urban version of UW-Madison. Possibly UMich. Where do UCLA, UW-Madison, and UMich rank in that world ranking that you’re looking at?
@PurpleTitan A couple of folks do “world rankings”, but you can use US News as a start.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/university-of-toronto-499968
US News has them ranked #14, tied with the University of Michigan and the University of Washington…
Some example rankings for U of T:
Publications #2
Normalized citation impact #106
Total Citations #2
Number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited #3
USNews does not rank schools globally. They reprint the Thomson Reuters ranking, which is one of the three worldwide rankings.
Note that Queen’s University, a very highly regarded Canadian school, ranks 297. Queen’s is small by Canadian standards, only 19,000 students.
CalTech is ranked #7, and they have 2,209 (983 undergraduate) students. 
But they have massive research funding.