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Any thoughts? I've heard of McGill being the "Harvard of the north"

By Tuannguyen (Tuannguyen) on Saturday, July 19, 2003 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Queens calls Harvard, "Queens of the south". And others call U of Toronto Canada's Harvard. So seriously, just by what each college/university calls itself, i have no idea.

Canadian Colleges/Universities are VERY different from American ones. Each place has its fortee. For example, McGill's one of the world's best for medicine (traditionally ranking around 3rd or so internationally, this includes all the Ivies and Oxbridge etc...). Waterloo is the best for engineering, and beats MIT and Harvard a few times for that Putnam contest (it's the university that discovered that new contact lense that can be kept on for about a month, sleeping in them and all too! without ruining your eyes), this is the contest where each university sends their BEST to compete. U of Alberta and U of Toronto are world leaders for nanotech (i think).

It's hard to say who's the best, because each Canadian school seem to specialize in one thing. American schools seem to be more well-rounded because of the huge endowments, while Canadian schools seem to focus more on just one area if possible, often having reknown professors for only one field.

So it's hard to say.

By Canadian_Idol (Canadian_Idol) on Saturday, July 19, 2003 - 10:50 pm: Edit

UToronto actually beat McGill in medical ranking in that Maclean's college rankings though.

But I agree McGill's a very nice school. Queen's is good too - kind of resembles ivy league schools down south.

By Futuretriton (Futuretriton) on Saturday, July 19, 2003 - 11:36 pm: Edit

UofT seems to be the best overall.

By Oracle (Oracle) on Sunday, July 20, 2003 - 02:25 am: Edit

Which 2 would be the most ideal choice for a stellar business degree (with a focus in information systems)

By Tuannguyen (Tuannguyen) on Sunday, July 20, 2003 - 02:38 am: Edit

Toronto is one, but right now i can't think of another.

By Oracle (Oracle) on Sunday, July 20, 2003 - 04:14 am: Edit

So McGill really isn't worth the effort for a business degree?

By Youngdude56 (Youngdude56) on Monday, July 21, 2003 - 01:06 am: Edit

McGill was ranked last year by a British magazine as a top ten university in the world. Not top ten in Canada but top ten in the world. Mcgill used to be an IVY league school but sometime in the last century, the American IVY's kicked it out because it was canadian. McgIll is defintly the best Canadian University.

By Ivyrules (Ivyrules) on Monday, July 21, 2003 - 05:20 am: Edit

WTF!!!!!

By Tuannguyen (Tuannguyen) on Monday, July 21, 2003 - 01:00 pm: Edit

McGill was an Ivy? Never heard that one before...

By Canadian_Idol (Canadian_Idol) on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 - 02:17 am: Edit

Hm...I doubt that...can u present any evidence? Everytime I read about the beginning of ivy league it was the original eight...harvard princeton yale penn brown cornell dartmouth columbia.

By Mrbobn1 (Mrbobn1) on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 - 02:22 pm: Edit

ivy league is related to sports and wasn't even invented until the 40's or 50's ( i think, i may be rong on the decade but it is definitly not over a century old) it would be imposible for a non-american school to be in the ivy league because they don't play against the american teams in any of their school sports. it's a nice story but it's far from true.

By Youngdude56 (Youngdude56) on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 - 07:29 pm: Edit

McGill used to be an IVY. The first ever college football game was played between Harvard and McGill, which McGill happened to win. The league was henceforth later created and subsequent northeastern (McGill is in the northeast) teams were inducted. And McGill regularly plays American teams. By the way, the first ever modern game of Hockey was played between two intramural clubs at McGill.

By Yaleeee (Yaleeee) on Wednesday, July 23, 2003 - 12:41 am: Edit

proove it

By Tuannguyen (Tuannguyen) on Wednesday, July 23, 2003 - 01:45 am: Edit

Well, i heard of McGill playing Harvard and winning, but i don't remember anyone saying they were Ivy League back then.

I don't doubt them playing eachother, but i seriously have doubts of McGill being part of the league (i seriously never heard of this before).

By Imran18 (Imran18) on Wednesday, July 23, 2003 - 03:14 am: Edit

anyone knows what is the best university in canada for studying business or economics?
by the way mcgill was never a part of ivy league. ivy was and is still made up of brown, columbia, cornell, princeton, dartmouth, harvard,yale and u penn

By Mrbobn1 (Mrbobn1) on Wednesday, July 23, 2003 - 01:20 pm: Edit

quote from web site:

"Ivy League
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Ivy League is a group of eight northeastern United States private universities. First coined informally to refer to these schools which compete in both scholastics and sports, the term also refers to the formal association of these schools in NCAA Division I athletic competition.

The members of the Ivy League are:


Brown University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University
The term has connotations of academic excellence and stuffy elitism.

History

Caswell Adams of the New York Tribune made a passing comment about the schools in 1937, referring to the ivy growing on their walls. Stanley Woodward, a fellow sportswriter, coined the phrase in a column soon thereafter, informally dubbing the eight competitive universities the Ivy League, in advance of any formal sports league involving the schools.

In 1945 the athletic directors of the schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams.

In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the agreement was extended to all sports.

An apocryphal etymology attributes to the Roman numerals for four (IV), incorrectly asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members.

The equivalent elite among British Universities is the Russell Group. "
External link
Ivy League Web Page http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/

so as you can see mcgill was never a member of the formal IVY league

now as for the original question
i personally think that Mcgill is the best canadian U but toronto comes in a close second

By Mike555 (Mike555) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:55 pm: Edit

There are so many topics on this board arguing whether McGill or UT is better...

Obviously they are two of the best overall universities in Canada according to opinion and Canadian published rankings.

Each school specializes in their own areas so you should research this. For example if you are going in to engineering, Toronto engineers are far more respected. Look on the faculty of top US universities. When I was browsing through Princeton's electrical engineering faculty and MIT's EE faculty, the only professors from Canada were those who graduated from UofT. Every engineering ranking I have seen up to date ranks U of T much higher than McGill. The only international one I have seen is Gourman's, which ranks U of T's engineering program to be one of the top 5 in north america.

McGill's med program is arguably one of the best in Canada.

If you want maths or sciences, consider UWaterloo, UT or another Canadian university.

By Ivyleaguer (Ivyleaguer) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 02:50 pm: Edit

Yes, like I've said before it's the Canadian equivalent of Harvard versus Princeton. Are the rankings correct? Perhaps, Perhaps they don't tell the whole picture. All I can say is that McGill right now is underfunded. If U.S students want to deal with this go ahead. Even if you're a McGill supporter you can't argue that U of T doesn't have FAR more money.

By Mike555 (Mike555) on Friday, July 02, 2004 - 11:27 pm: Edit

By the way, UofT actually did better than Waterloo in the Putnam contests. These are the number of times each University has taken the #1 spot for the Putnum competition between 1938 and up to 2003:

http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html

Harvard - 24
CalTech - 9
Toronto - 4
MIT - 4
Michigan State - 3
Washington St Louis - 3
Duke - 3
Brooklyn - 3
Polytechnic of Brooklyn - 2
Waterloo - 2
Cornell - 2
Case Western - 1
Chicago - 1
Berkley - 1
Queens - 1
California Davis - 1