Canada is one of the most popular study destinations in the world because of the great attention it pays to the quality of its universities and the emphasis it places on attracting international students who can then emigrate
Canadians are very welcoming to international students and invest heavily in making sure that students are safe, treated fairly and enjoy their stay in the country
Study in one of the strongest economies in the world while enjoying a high standard of living and a flexible study environment. Classes have smaller class sizes, ensuring that everyone gets the attention they need, and group assignments and discussions are encouraged.
With seven universities in the top 200, Canada offers many opportunities for international students to receive a world-class education.
Compared to the U.S., Canada can also offer cheaper tuition fees, easier application processes and more opportunities for permanent residency upon graduation.
Canada’s top two institutions – the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia – score especially high for research impact, meaning that these schools produce high-quality academic work that is highly respected.
Many of Canada’s universities are famous for promoting a global perspective by recruiting international students and staff and fostering international collaborations, so there will be a large community of international staff and students at any university in Canada.
Top 10 Universities in Canada
Here is a summary list of the top 10 universities to study in Canada
- University of Toronto
- McGill University
- British Columbia University
- McMaster University
- University of Montreal
- University of Alberta
- University of Ottawa
- Simon Fraser University
- University of Waterloo
- University of Western Ontario
1-University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is the only Canadian university in the top 20 of the World University Rankings.
Among its most prominent alumni are five Canadian prime ministers and writers Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood. In all, 10 Nobel laureates are affiliated with the university.
The University of Toronto is structured as a collegiate system, much like prestigious UK universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The seven colleges have distinct histories and traditions.
About 25% of the university’s students are international.
More than 700 undergraduate and 200 postgraduate degrees are offered, and the university is one of the best in the world in medicine.
2- McGill University
Students at McGill University come from more than 150 countries. It was founded in 1821
The main campus is at the base of Mount Royal, in downtown Montreal. First-year students have the option of living on the park-like campus.
In 1829, McGill University founded the country’s first medical school, and to this day the university scores particularly high in world rankings of clinical subjects.
The university offers more than 300 undergraduate courses to more than 31,000 students, both undergraduate and graduate.
There are a number of services for students, such as the Career Planning Service, the Office for Students with Disabilities and the Academic Advising service.
Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and actor William Shatner are McGill graduates. The university also educates more Rhodes Scholars than any other Canadian institution.
3- University of British Columbia (British Columbia)
33% of the students at the University of British Columbia are international. Eight Nobel laureates are associated with the university, as well as 71 Rhodes Scholars and 65 Olympic medalists.
The University of British Columbia has two campuses: one in Vancouver and one in the Okanagan.
The university is organized into 12 faculties at the Vancouver campus and another seven at the Okanagan campus. The university offers a special joint undergraduate program with Sciences Po in Paris.
The university’s faculties include applied sciences, education, music, nursing, arts, law and medicine, among others.
The university offers a number of scholarships for international students, including the Donald A. Wehrung International Student Award for candidates from war-torn countries.
Three Canadian prime ministers have been educated at UBC, including current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who graduated with a degree in education.
4- McMaster University
McMaster University is located in Hamilton, Ontario. Students and professors come from more than 90 countries.
The university is named after William McMaster, a prominent Canadian senator and banker who donated 900,000 Canadian dollars to found the institution.
McMaster’s medical faculty is world-renowned and there are also faculties of engineering, business, humanities, social sciences and science. The university places a strong emphasis on research to address some of society’s most pressing needs, particularly in the health sciences.
The university maintains some 70 international exchange agreements with institutions around the world.
It is among the top 50 in THE ranking of the world’s most international universities.
5- University of Montreal
The main language of instruction at the University of Montreal is French. A quarter of the university’s students are international.
The University of Montreal is the second university in the country in number of students, with more than 36,000 enrolled.
It has a student union representing undergraduate and graduate students and has three affiliated fraternities and sororities.
It offers full-time housing for undergraduate and graduate students.
Varsity sports are very popular: teams are known as the Carabins and compete in badminton, Canadian soccer and field hockey, among other sports.
The university counts former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and 10 Quebec premiers among its alumni.
6- University of Alberta
The research-intensive University of Alberta offers more than 200 undergraduate programs and more than 500 graduate programs
Located on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River near Whyte Avenue, where Edmontonians shop and socialize, the main campus is a serene green space surrounded by new steel and glass buildings dedicated to engineering, science and medicine.
The U of A has three other campuses in Edmonton, including the French-speaking Campus Saint-Jean. The nearby Augustana campus is located in the town of Camrose. “As one of the best universities in Canada and the world, we are confident you will find your purpose at the University of Alberta,” says President Bill Flanagan. “Immerse yourself in our vibrant and diverse community of change agents and community builders, and lead with purpose.”
With an endowment of $1.5 billion, the University of Alberta has a $20 million research chair of excellence and an average of $450 million in annual research funding.
In 2020, U of A virologist Michael Houghton won the Nobel Prize for his work on the discovery of the hepatitis C virus
Undergraduates receive a strong foundation of faculty who have received more 3M National Teaching Fellowships than any other Canadian university. Leveraging U of A programming, the new Indigenous Language Revitalization Support initiative will help communities create a future where Indigenous languages are spoken in all aspects of life.
7- University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa, often referred to as uOttawa , is a bilingual public research university located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The main campus is located on 42.5 hectares (105 acres) in the heart of downtown Ottawa, adjacent to the Sandy Hill residential neighbourhood, next to Ottawa’s Rideau Canal.
It was first established as Bytown College in 1848 by the first bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Ottawa, Joseph-Bruno Guigues
Placed under the direction of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, it was renamed Ottawa College in 1861 and received university status five years later thanks to a royal charter. On February 5, 1889, Pope Leo XIII granted it a pontifical charter, elevating the institution to a pontifical university
The university was reorganized on July 1, 1965 as a corporation, independent of any external body or religious organization. Consequently, the civil and pontifical statutes were retained by the newly created St. Paul University, federated to the university. The remaining civil faculties were retained by the reorganized university.
The University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual English-French university in the world. It offers a wide variety of academic programs, administered by ten faculties, including the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine, the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, the Telfer School of Management and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Social Sciences
The university’s Library has 12 branches, housing a collection of more than 4.5 million titles The university is a member of Canada’s U15 group of research-intensive universities, with research income of C$324.581 million in 2017.
The school is co-educational and enrolls more than 35,000 undergraduate and more than 6,000 graduate students. It has approximately 7,000 international students from 150 countries, representing 17% of the student population. It has a network of more than 195,000 alumni. The university’s sports teams are known as the Gee-Gees and are members of U Sports.
8- Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey and Vancouver
The 170-hectare Burnaby main campus, located on Burnaby Mountain, 20 kilometers from downtown Vancouver, was founded in 1965 and has more than 30,000 students and 160,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education in Canada.
SFU is a member of multiple national and international higher education associations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the International Association of Universities and Universities Canada
It has also partnered with other universities and agencies to operate joint research facilities, such as TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle and nuclear physics laboratory, which houses the world’s largest cyclotron, and Bamfield Marine Station, a major marine biology teaching and research center.
SFU’s undergraduate and graduate programs operate on a year-round, three-semester schedule. Consistently ranked as Canada’s top comprehensive university and named to the World’s 100 Universities Under 50 list, SFU is also the first Canadian member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the world’s largest collegiate athletic association.
In 2015, it became the second Canadian university to receive accreditation from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
SFU faculty and alumni have earned 43 Royal Society of Canada Fellowships, three Rhodes Scholarships and a Pulitzer Prize. Among the list of alumni are three British Columbia premiers(Glen Clark, Gordon Campbell and Ujjal Dosanjh), Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini, Lesotho Premier Pakalitha Mosisili, Max Planck Institute Director Robert Turner, and cancer research and humanitarian activist Terry Fox.
9- University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo ) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
The main campus is located on a 404 hectare (998 acre) site adjacent to“Uptown” Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also has three satellite campuses and four affiliated colleges
It offers academic programs administered by six colleges and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo has the largest cooperative post-secondary education program in the world, with more than 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university’s co-op program. Waterloo is a member of U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The institution has its origins in the Associated Faculties of Waterloo College, created on April 4, 1956; a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College, which was a subsidiary of the University of Western Ontario. This entity was formally separated from Waterloo College and incorporated as a university with the passage of the University of Waterloo Act by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1959. It was created to meet the need to train engineers and technicians for Canada’s growing post-war economy
Over the next decade it grew considerably, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the Ontario College of Optometry (now School of Optometry and Vision Sciences), which moved from Toronto in 1967.
The university is a co-educational institution, with approximately 36,000 undergraduate and 6,200 graduate students enrolled in 2020 Alumni and alumni of the university are located across Canada and in more than 150 countries; with a number of award winners, government officials and business leaders who have been associated with Waterloo
Waterloo’s varsity teams, known as the Waterloo Warriors, compete in the U Sports Ontario University Athleticsconference.
10- University of Western Ontario (Western Ontario)
The University of Western Ontario (UWO; referred to as Western University, commonly abbreviated as Western) is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is situated on a 455-hectare (1,120-acre) site, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and with the Thames River running through the eastern part of the campus
It has twelve faculties and academic schools. It is a member of U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The university was founded on March 7, 1878 by Bishop Isaac Hellmuth of the Anglican Diocese of Huron as Western University of London, Ontario, and incorporated Huron College, which had been founded in 1863
The first four faculties were Arts, Divinity, Law and Medicine. The university became non-denominational in 1908. Beginning in 1919, the university became affiliated with several denominational colleges. It grew substantially in the post-World War II era, and several colleges and schools were added.
Western is a coeducational university, with more than 24,000 students and more than 306,000 living alumni worldwide. Notable alumni include government officials, academics, business leaders, Nobel laureates, Rhodes Scholars and distinguished scholars. Western’s varsity teams, known as the Western Mustangs, compete in U Sports’ Ontario University Athletics conference.
