3 Canadian universities made a list of the best in the world — and 2 beat McGill by a lot

Montreal's very own McGill University made a new list of the world's top schools for research, but it turns out two other Canadian universities left it in the dust.

According to a new global ranking, the University of Toronto is the fourth-best university in the world for research, topped only by Harvard, Stanford and University College London. It even beat out research heavyweights like Oxford (5th), Johns Hopkins (6th), Cambridge (9th) and MIT (10th).

Meanwhile, McGill found itself ranked 57th, unchanged from its position last year and far behind both U of T and the University of British Columbia, which came in at 37th place.

The National Taiwan University (NTU) World University Rankings evaluate universities across the globe based on their research impact and output. These rankings focus on how much research a university produces, the quality of that research and how influential it is globally.

Beyond the overall list, the NTU rankings also assess schools on a wide variety of subjects and rank them in field- and subject-specific lists, and while McGill didn't crack the top 50 overall, it did perform well in several specific areas.

The university was ranked #37 in the field of life sciences and #47 in medicine. When you break it down by subject, McGill stood out in neuroscience and behaviour (#13), psychiatry and psychology (#31), social sciences (#46), and biology and biochemistry (#48). So while U of T might dominate globally, McGill is still holding its own in a few key fields.

Of the 1,561 schools ranked in this year's list, only three Canadian universities made the top 100, but here's where the rest of the top 10 in Canada place overall:

1. University of Toronto — #4 overall
2. University of British Columbia — #37 overall
3. McGill University — #57 overall
4. University of Alberta — #101 overall
5. McMaster University — #128 overall
6. Université de Montréal — #129 overall
7. University of Calgary — #148 overall
8. University of Ottawa — #150 overall
9. Western University — #213 overall
10. University of Waterloo — #214 overall

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