I keep reading a bunch of shit on here and elsewhere about how some employers will only hire/preferentially hire graduates from ‘Ivy League’ universities. What I want to know is how Canadian universities are seen within this system. I have a friend who is a former lawyer, now a MD who graduated law school from Osgoode Hall (York university, Toronto) who interviewed in NYC in some big firm before quitting law and going back for an MD. According to him, Osgoode grads were one of few Canadian grads that would be interviewed by the big firms in NYC. I also notice how Wilson on ‘House’ has sometimes worn a McGill sweater. Is McGill considered a ‘good university’? Do certain universities have better ‘prestige ratings’ within Canada? Outside Canada? Inquiring minds want to know.
From what I’ve seen, there seems to be a great reluctance on the part of Canadians to “rank” Canadian universities like US universities are ranked. For years, Maclean’s magazine tried to assess the various schools and come up with a ranking; but in recent years, some schools have stopped cooperating with Maclean’s. Because of that, what Maclean’s says nowadays may not necessarily be the whole picture.
I think that, within Canada, a university’s “prestige” is largely in the eye of the beholder. McGill grads will say their school is the best, U of Toronto grads will disagree, and U of British Columbia grads will laugh at both of them. In fact, all of them (plus a few others) are excellent schools whose grads would probably be on par with graduates of Ivy League universities in the US. But how they are seen in the US, I don’t know. If Americans are basing their impressions of Canadian universities on the Maclean’s rankings or on what graduates of those schools say, they may not be getting accurate and objective information.
There’s definitely some Canadian universities that are considered in the top tier here; McGill, Queen’s, UBC are fine schools.
However, it’s all in the ey of the beholder, and it depends on the program. MIT is not in the Ivy League (I don’t think a lot of people realize the Ivy League actually is a sports conference, not an adjective meaning “good school”) but if you’re entering certain technical fields a degree from MIT means a lot more than a degree from Columbia, which is in the Ivy League.
Similarly, a degree from Queen’s University is generally more prestigious than one from Waterloo… unless you’re in the hard sciences, in which case Waterloo is arguably the finest school in the country. Carleton is not a well regarded university overall but IS very well regarded, specifically, for its journalism program. McMaster is very highly regarded, especially for life sciences, but if you want veterinary science you sort of have to go to Trent, which is otherwise nothing special.
And then there’s Windsor which is pretty forgettable and is usually ranked at the bottom of those lists. I graduated from Environmental Engineering at Windsor. Graduating class was 9 people; 3rd and 4th year were awesome.
Don’t you mean U of Guelph? I don’t recall Trent having a veterinary medicine program.
ETA: Of course, if you want to go outside Ontario for veterinary medicine, U of Saskatchewan is well-regarded. But there are few veterinary schools in Canada (only about four, last time I checked), so I don’t imagine that you’ll see a wide range of differences between them.
Sorry, yes, Guelph.
Macleans’ rankings are also largely based upon student response to surveys, and employers don’t usually care if you attended a school where many students felt they had a positive experience!
My impression is that Canadians are generally more likely to attend school based on geography. I’ve usually found that people assume I went to York because I’m from the outskirts of Toronto (which is in fact the case) and don’t immediately assume that it’s because I couldn’t get into U of T (which is not the case :p). I’m in graduate school now and there are people here from U of T, McGill and the University College of Cape Breton - and no one is surprised by the latter, as the guy grew up in Sydney.
The idea of some colleges being the Holy Grail of education does seem particularly US American to me (I suppose the British system is similar, but we don’t hear about it as often). Kids really do just go to university by geography here for the most part - in all my life I have never met anyone who wanted to attend a “prestige” university. I have met the occasional one who had to go to school outside of their area for something more specialized like a veterinarian/agriculture degree, but that’s it. If you asked me what the most prestigious Canadian universities are, I couldn’t tell you. I have zero knowledge of how our universities compare when looking for a job outside of Canada - as far as I’m concerned, an MBA is an MBA is an MBA.
My ranking for a university is Average Intelligence of Students + Resources and Opportunities Offered by University. You can determine this just as easily as US News and World Report can.
Oh, and I should say that I think law school is a different beast entirely. (In just about every aspect.) I’m not a lawyer but I think there is a pretty clear ranking of them, although it of course depends on specializations, which you might not have decided upon when applying. Osgoode does seem to be well-regarded, which also goes to show that you can’t judge a university as a whole - it’s much more prestigious than York, so much so that they stress that they just share campus space, they’re not actually York’s law school!
Sadly, I think the truth is that many Americans will never have heard of your school, whether it’s McGill or Acadia, and don’t really care.
Sonnenstrahl
Say hi to my fellow Caper for me. I was at UCCB myself many moons ago, as was my wife.
Actually, there isn’t officially, though the topic gives rise to a number of rumours about “unofficial” rankings. And naturally, what is rumoured about unofficial rankings tends to cause a lot of discussion and dissension among law students and professors and lawyers.
Still, I’d suggest that the majority of law students also don’t look too far afield when choosing schools to go to, though they will often widen their scope beyond what it was when they chose their undergrad school. There can be exceptions, of course; and undoubtedly, getting into Osgoode (or U of T or McGill) was the goal of some law school applicants from BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. But not all–certainly, in my law school class at the University of Alberta, the feeling was that if you’re going to practice in Alberta (or western Canada), you may as well get your law degree in Alberta (or western Canada). If you want to practice in Ontario, you go to an Ontario school. Most of my classmates–the vast majority of whom were from Alberta, with some from BC and Saskatchewan and perhaps one or two from each of the other common-law provinces–didn’t see the sense in going to Osgoode or any eastern Canadian school if they intended to practise in western Canada.
Osgoode is a good school, sure–but while it may carry a lot of weight in Ontario, it may not carry as much weight here in Alberta. By the same token, my law degree from the University of Alberta may not mean as much in Ontario as it does in Alberta. In the end, what really counts, regardless of the law school, are grades. Excellent grades can pretty much take you anywhere you want to go; less-than-excellent grades won’t.
Ah, interesting! I wonder if some of what I hear about law school rankings is more that people who are drawn to it are often high-achieving, competitive people who like to rank themselves. Because I really have gotten a strong impression that a person’s entire worth is based upon which law schools they were accepted at! (Why yes, I studied history and know a ton of people who went to law school. :p)
I knew some of those types. A month into first year, and we all knew where certain people had applied, and how many schools accepted them. It impressed some folks, I guess. Of course, once the readings and the work piled on, this topic of conversation was dropped in favour of worrying about more important things, like keeping up with the readings and the work.
But I think you make a good point: in my experience, law students tend to be driven, Type-A types who like competition and who want to see how they stack up against their peers. Hence the wish for “official” rankings for their schools.
This discussion of students going to regional schools is interesting, because while I agree that it’s probably the case for most students, I wonder if there is any interesting information to be obtained from looking at what anglophone Quebeckers do? There are only three English-language universities in Québec, two of which are in Montreal (McGill and Concordia) and one in Lennoxville (Bishop’s).
I’m not so curious about the motivations of the students that chose to go to those three schools, but rather what are the perceived reasons for going to schools outside of Québec?
Speaking for myself, I went to Guelph because I thought I might want to be a vet (only applied once and didn’t get in! I’m at McGill now because it’s down the road!), and my husband went to McMaster because at the time, it was the only university offering the degree he wanted (an accredited Software Eng program).
Our driving factor was availability of programs of interest, but I wonder if "prestige’ or “status” of schools is something that comes into play for a lot of students opting for school outside of Québec? And if so, what are they basing it on? Macleans?
I’ve never even heard of Osgoode before this. 
I’m not surprised. An Osgoode law degree isn’t as impressive in western Canada as one from U of A, UVic, UBC, USask, or U of Calgary. At least, not to hiring committes at law firms in western Canada, which tend to be composed of grads from U of A, UVic, UBC, USask, and U of Calgary. Oh, they’ll recognize it, sure, but I doubt that they would give just “Osgoode” any special weight. As I said previously, grades matter.
I’d suggest that the idea that hiring committees here in western Canada would bow in awe to an Osgoode degree just doesn’t fit the reality of the situation.
I would have thought that ‘not’ having a top tier is more a Canadian quirk – I’d always assumed that most countries have an equivalent to the US Ivy League. Obviously in the UK, we’ve got Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge Unis) which is pretty much a golden ticket to untold wealth and superstardom, followed closely by a second tier (including, Edinburgh, London School of Economics, Manchester, Durham, Bristol amongst others) - all of which will be viewed very positively by employers, almost regardless of the subject studied.
Speaking as someone with a McGill degree in the US-
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Top calibre employers know and are impressed (for example, when I interviewed at big firms, they knew I had gone to a good undegrad)
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Most people in New England, where I went to middle school and high school, seem to know
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Most top calibre grad school admissions departments know
However, the average person just thinks it’s just a random school. As an example, most of my private sector counsel/companies that I work with (from big banks like Deutsche and biglaw firms), act kind of impressed when they ask me and I tell them. However, my boss once asked me where it was and why I had seen fit to go there.
My undergrad degree is now largely irrelevant to any hiring decision as I have an American graduate degree in a professional field and that’s what I’m judged on. If people recognise my undergrad school, it’s mostly a conversation piece about whether I’m Canadian (answer is “Kinda”)
FTR, growing up in Quebec, my parents expected me to attend McGill or a prestigious university in the US.
My wife is Canadian. From a pretty remote part of the country. She went to undergrad and law school in the United States. Then qualified to practice in Canada (is the word “articled”? I can’t remember). She’s also admitted in a couple of U.S. states. Seems atypical. I haven’t heard much about Canadians coming to the U.S. for either undergrad or law school.