All Posts Tagged With: "2013 University Rankings"
Campus life at the University of Guelph
A photographic tour of the campus in Guelph, Ont.
This fall, Maclean’s photographed 24 of the 49 institutions featured in the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings. Below, Jessica Darmanin shows you around the University of Guelph. Click on each photo to make it larger. Then check out the other 23 galleries by clicking here.
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- Crossing campus
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- Students congregate at the Bullring pub
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- Katie Holmes, fine art student, replicates a photo on canvas
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- Students sprawl out in the library
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- Prof. Jeremy Balka’s business mathematics class
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- Johnston Hall behind evergreens at the centre of campus
Maclean’s ranking indicators
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE TOOL The annual Maclean’s rankings assess Canadian universities on a range of performance indicators in six broad areas. The Maclean’s ranking tool lets you create a customized ranking by selecting whichever indicators matter most to you, and deciding how much weight to give to each indicator to contribute to the [...]
The annual Maclean’s rankings assess Canadian universities on a range of performance indicators in six broad areas. The Maclean’s ranking tool lets you create a customized ranking by selecting whichever indicators matter most to you, and deciding how much weight to give to each indicator to contribute to the final score.
Here is a description of each indicator used in the Maclean’s ranking tool.
STUDENTS/CLASSES
Student Awards
Maclean’s calculates the number of students over the past five years who have won national academic awards. The list includes 40 fellowship and prize programs, encompassing more than 18,000 individual awards. Each university’s total of student awards is divided by its number of full-time students, yielding a per student count.
Student/Faculty Ratio
To gauge students’ access to professors, Maclean’s measures the number of full-time-equivalent students per full-time faculty member. This student/faculty ratio includes all students, graduate as well as undergraduate.
FACULTY
Awards per Full-time Faculty
Maclean’s calculates the number of faculty over the past five years who have won major national awards from more than 40 awards programs covering a total of 860 awards. To scale for institution size, the award count for each university is divided by each school’s number of full-time faculty.
Social Sciences and Humanities Grants
Maclean’s measures the success of faculty in securing research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), taking into account both the number and the dollar value received in the previous year, and dividing the totals by each institution’s full-time faculty count.
Medical/Science Grants
Maclean’s measures the success of faculty in securing research grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), taking into account both the number and the dollar value received in the previous year, and dividing the totals by each institution’s full-time faculty count.
RESOURCES
Total Research Dollars
Maclean’s measures total research dollars, including income from sponsored research, such as grants and contracts, federal, provincial and foreign government funding, and funding from non-governmental organizations. This figure is calculated relative to the size of each institution’s full-time faculty.
Operating Budget
This section examines the amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student. Students are weighted according to their level of study—bachelor, master’s or doctorate—and their program of study.
STUDENT SUPPORT
Scholarships & Bursaries
This indicator calculates the percentage of a university’s operating budget spent on scholarships and bursaries.
Student Services
This indicator calculates the percentage of a university’s operating budget spent on student services.
LIBRARY
Expenses
This indicator calculates the percentage of a university’s operating budget allocated to library services.
Acquisitions
This indicator calculates the percentage of the library budget spent on updating the collection. In acknowledging a shift from the traditional library model—books on shelves—to an electronic access model, this measure includes spending on electronic resources.
Holdings per Students
This indicator calculates the number of volumes and volume equivalents per number of full-time-equivalent students.
REPUTATION
Reputational Survey
Maclean’s solicits the views of university officials at each ranked institution, high school guidance counsellors from every province and territory, the heads of a wide variety of national and regional organizations, and CEOs and recruiters at corporations large and small. Respondents rated the universities on quality and innovation.
The Maclean’s Personalized University Ranking Tool
The Maclean’s ranking tool lets you mix and match data from the most recent edition of the Maclean’s University Rankings to build your own, customized university ranking.
Maclean’s ranks Canadian universities on a range of performance indicators in six broad areas, assigning a weight to each indicator that determines how much it contributes to the final score. The ranking tool lets you select whichever indicators matter most to you and lets you decide how much weight you want to give to each indicator.
For example, Maclean’s weights the Student/Faculty Ratio indicator at 10%. That means each university’s performance on this indicator contributes 10% to their final score. If you place a high value on access to your professors, you can weight this indicator at a higher percentage. You can customize a ranking based on this indicator and just two or three others but give 50% of the weight to Student/Faculty Ratio. Or you could choose this indicator along with up to six others, but still give Student/Faculty Ratio the heaviest weight. You decide.
How it works:
Select the performance indicators that most interest you. You can select up to seven at a time.
Then click NEXT.
Assign a weight to each of the indicators that you have chosen based on how much you want each to contribute to the final score. The total must add up to 100 per cent.
Then click NEXT.
Select the universities you wish to compare. You can choose all universities, or select by region, such as universities in the West, Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic region. Or you can create your own list of up to 49 individual institutions.
Then click NEXT.
Our ranking tool will perform the calculations using the indicators, weights and schools that you have chosen. Voila! Your own personalized ranking of Canadian universities.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO A DESCRIPTION OF THE INDICATORS
Note: Ranking for the Personalized University Ranking Tool is not calculated in the same way as the annual Maclean’s university rankings. Though the two use common data, the rankings use a statistical percentile method and are three separate rankings, one for each of the three categories of universities: Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive and Medical-Doctoral. As such, results obtained from this online tool may not agree with the Maclean’s annual rankings, even if the same set of weights are applied to the indicators.
The 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings
Our 132-page guide to Canada’s top schools is out now
Masters student Theo Mlynowski examines core samples at the University of Northern British Columbia (Photo by Simon Hayter)
The 22nd annual Maclean’s University Rankings issue—the holy book for anyone planning their education in Canada—is now available on newsstands and tablets.
The 2013 issue, our biggest-ever, features 132 pages of charts, stories and advice designed to help future students choose the right school, while sparking conversations on the quality of the post-secondary experience from the size of classes to the cost of textbooks.
The issue also offers a peek inside campus life from coast to coast, including an examination of the viral videos phenomenon, a deeper look at the scourge of drinking, Emma Teitel on fraternities, the college advantage and pages more. There are online extras, too, like photo tours of life at 24 campuses.
And, of course, the issue features the 22nd annual rankings.
2013 Medical Doctoral University Ranking
Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and have medical schools
For the other two categories, click here.
| 2013 Ranking | University | Last Year |
| 1 | McGill | (1) |
| 2 | UBC | (3) |
| 3 | Toronto | (2) |
| 4 | Queen’s | (4) |
| 5 | Alberta | (5) |
| 6 | McMaster | (6*) |
| 7 | Dalhousie | (6*) |
| 8 | Calgary | (8) |
| 9 | Saskatchewan | (10*) |
| 10 | Ottawa | (10*) |
| 11 | Western | (9) |
| 12 | Montréal | (12*) |
| 13 | Laval | (12*) |
| 14 | Sherbrooke | (14) |
| 15 | Manitoba | (15) |
* Indicates a tie
2013 Primarily Undergraduate University Ranking
Primarily Undergraduate universities are largely focused on undergraduate education with fewer graduate programs
For the other categories, click here.
| 2013 Ranking | School | Last Year |
| 1 | Mount Allison | (1) |
| 2 | UNBC | (3) |
| 3 | Lethbridge | (4*) |
| 4 | Acadia | (2) |
| 5* | UPEI | (4*) |
| 5* | Trent | (7) |
| 7 | St. Francis Xavier | (6) |
| *8 | Bishop’s | (8) |
| *8 | Saint Mary’s | (9) |
| 10 | Moncton | (15*) |
| 11 | St. Thomas | (14) |
| 12 | Lakehead | (11*) |
| 13* | Laurentian | (11*) |
| 13* | Winnipeg | (10) |
| 15 | UOIT | (11*) |
| 16 | Brandon | (15*) |
| 17 | Mount Saint Vincent | (17) |
| 18 | Cape Breton | (18) |
| 19 | Nipissing | (19) |
* Indicates a tie
2013 Comprehensive University Ranking
Comprehensive universities have a significant degree of research activity and a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs, including professional degrees
For the other two rankings, click here.
| 2013 Ranking | School | Last Year |
| 1 | Simon Fraser | (1) |
| 2 | Victoria | (2) |
| 3 | Waterloo | (3) |
| 4 | New Brunswick | (6) |
| 5 | Guelph | (4) |
| 6* | Carleton | (7) |
| 6* | Memorial | (5) |
| 8 | York | (9) |
| 9 | Regina | (10) |
| 10 | Windsor | (8) |
| 11 | Wilfrid Laurier | (11) |
| 12 | Ryerson | (13*) |
| 13 | Concordia | (12) |
| 14 | UQAM | (13*) |
| 15 | Brock | (15) |
* Indicates a tie
Still going by the book
Textbooks remain costly in an increasingly electronic age
Studying at the University of Guelph (Jessica Darmanin)
From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings
It’s a textbook case in how to annoy students. This year, OCAD University in Toronto required students in its first-year visual culture course to purchase a “custom reader,” comprised of parts from two American text- books plus additional material on Canadian and Aboriginal art. Separately the items retail for over $300. The custom text was priced at $180. But there was a problem—this art book didn’t include any actual art.
Due to unexpected expenses in obtaining copyright, the publisher simply left large white boxes where the pictures were meant to go; students were told they could look at the art online. They got outraged instead—a petition was organized, parents began blogging and local media soon picked up the cause of the artless art book.
Don’t curb your enthusiasm
Students are doing extraordinary things with video cameras
School Spirit at Western University (Jessica Darmanin)
From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings
Andrew Cohen sat near the window of a south Vancouver coffee house, scribbling notes on flashcards to study for an urban geography mid-term. The fourth-year University of British Columbia student grew restive, so, naturally, he took to watching YouTube videos.
Before long, he came upon a video made by students at the University of Victoria. It was a so-called lip dub, a style of video in which students dance and mouth the words to a popular song in an enthusiastic show of school pride. Cohen put his books away within seconds.
“I stopped studying,” recalls Cohen more than a year later. Now 22 and done school, what he saw that day inspired him to become a filmmaker in Vancouver. “That totally changed my life.” He immediately started planning his own lip dub for UBC.
Measuring excellence
The methodology of ranking 49 Canadian universities
Philosophy student Ian Davis reads at Simon Fraser University (Photo by Simon Hayter)
Maclean’s places universities in one of three categories, recognizing the differences in types of institutions, levels of research funding, the diversity of offerings, and the breadth and depth of graduate and professional programs. Primarily Undergraduate universities tend to be smaller in size, and have fewer graduate programs and graduate students.Those in the Comprehensive category have a significant degree of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees. Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. pro- grams and research; all universities in this category have medical schools.
In each category, Maclean’s ranks the institutions in six broad areas based on performance indicators, allocating a weight to each indicator. Primarily Undergraduate and Comprehensive universities are ranked on 13 performance measures; Medical Doctoral universities are ranked on 14. Figures include data from all federated and affiliated institutions. The magazine does not rank schools with fewer than 1,000 full-time students, those that are restrictive due to a religious or specialized mission, newly designated universities or those that are not members of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).
Is big bad and small good?
Not always. Some things matter more than class size.
Jessica Darmanin
From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings
It’s 11:30 a.m. and this is how the morning has gone for the 71 students in Science One at the University of British Columbia—one of the rare small-class programs that brings big universities down to a more human scale. It started with a physics mid-term, which most of these high achievers feel good about. Then a quick, unscripted shift into biology. Projected on the classroom screens was a story from that morning’s headlines about a massive phytoplankton bloom off the B.C. coast caused by a program that seeded the ocean with iron sulphate in hopes of building a salmon food source. Chemistry instructor Chris Addison happily ceded time to biologist Celeste Leander so students could discuss what she called the “justifiable concerns” of messing with the ocean environment.
That diversion is what Addison calls a “typical Science One moment.” Seated at the back of the room were other instructors in this holistic program—a physicist, a couple of biologists and a mathematician—all welcome to contribute. Instructors try to sit in on as many other classes as possible, said Addison. “That’s where you get the interplay between the disciplines.” Addison then waded into a mini-lecture on energy levels in multi-electron atoms, before the class split into groups of about six to work through a series of questions. They debated the answers among themselves, knowing they’d have to justify their reasons before the full class, if called upon. Amir Ashtari, 17, prefers the small class size to the usual first-year prospect of packed lecture halls. “Here you are amongst a group of friends who are respectful to you and also who are smart,” he said. “Even if you ask a stupid question they come and help you.” Hanne Collins, 18, said she likes the accessibility of instructors, and that they know her name. “Their doors are open and if you have a question, you just walk in,” she said. “They’re not bogged down with 500 students.”
