Top Universities in Canada - International V.S. Domestic Reputation

Top universities in Canada do not like getting ranked numerically. The disapproval by university officials reached a point in 2006 that 11 universities refused to complete the university ranking survey by Maclean's.

While the university ranking might be oversimplifying a rather complicated topic, it is exactly what students need to know to understand the difference from one university to another, and help them guide their selections of undergraduate program to enter. In an increasingly globalized economy, students are getting curious about how universities perform with their peers not just in the country, but in the entire world. That explains the popularity gain of world university rankings by QS, Times, and U.S. News. So I did an aggregation of data to save your time of compiling something similar, with insights to follow.

Here is a comparison of Canadian university rankings published by QS, Times, U.S. News and Maclean's. I added a column "Average" to show the average rankings, and a column "Standard Deviation" to show, well, how diversely publishers view the rankings.

	A		B	C	D	E	F	G
1	University		QS Ranking	Times Ranking	U.S. News Ranking	Maclean's Ranking	Average	Standard Deviation
2	University of Toronto		1	1.00	1.00	1	1.00	0.00
3	University of Waterloo		7	9.00	9.00	2	6.75	3.30
4	University of British Columbia		3	2.00	2.00	3	2.50	0.58
5	McGill University		2	3.00	3.00	5	3.25	1.26
6	McMaster University		6	4.00	4.00	5	4.75	0.96
7	University of Alberta		4	6.00	5.00	6	5.25	0.96
8	Queen's University		10	12.50	15.00	7	11.13	3.42
9	University of Western Ontario		8	9.00	11.00	8	9.00	1.41
10	Simon Fraser University		13	12.50	12.00	9	11.63	1.80
11	Université de Montréal		5	5.00	5.00	10	6.25	2.50
12	University of Calgary		9	9.00	7.00	11	9.00	1.63
13	University of Guelph		20	20.00	18.00	12	17.50	3.79
14	University of Victoria		14	17.00	10.00	13	13.50	2.89
15	Dalhousie University		11	12.50	14.00	14	12.88	1.44
16	Université Laval		15	12.50	13.00	15	13.88	1.31
17	Ryerson University		26	25.00	25.00	16	23.00	4.69
18	Concordia University		17	25.00	23.00	17	20.50	4.12
19	University of Ottawa		12	7.00	8.00	18	11.25	4.99
20	Université de Sherbrooke		23	25.00	24.00	19	22.75	2.63
21	University of Saskatchewan		16	17.00	20.00	20	18.25	2.06
22	York University		18	17.00	17.00	21	18.25	1.89
23	Memorial University of Newfoundland		25	20.00	22.00	22	22.25	2.06
24	University of Manitoba		21	15.00	16.00	23	18.75	3.86
25	Carleton University		23	20.00	19.00	24	21.50	2.38
26	Wilfrid Laurier University		N/A	N/A	32.00	25	28.50	4.95
27	Université du Québec		19	25.00	21.00	26	22.75	3.30
28	Trent University		N/A	N/A	35.00	30	32.50	3.54
29	University of New Brunswick		N/A	N/A	26.00	31	28.50	3.54
30	University of Ontario Institute of Technology		N/A	N/A	29.00	32	30.50	2.12
31	University of Regina		N/A	25.00	28.00	33	28.67	4.04
32	University of Northern British Columbia		N/A	29.00	N/A	34	31.50	3.54
33	University of Lethbridge		N/A	30.00	36.00	35	33.67	3.21
34	Brock University		N/A	N/A	30.00	38	34.00	5.66
35	University of Windsor		23	25.00	27.00	40	28.75	7.68
36	Lakehead University		N/A	25.00	31.00	42	32.67	8.62
37	Laurentian University		N/A	N/A	34.00	45	39.50	7.78

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The Top 3

University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, and McGill University are considered the Top 3 Canadian universities by QS, Times and U.S. News. Maclean's, on the other hand, only agree with others on the reputation of  University of Toronto. The top 3 universities locate in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, the largest 3 cities in Canada. 

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