Canada's Top Three (Canadian universities)

Canada's Top Three (also known as Canada's Big Three) is a term used often used in Canada to refer to UBC, UofT, and McGill. The three universities are generally mentioned in tandem in the context of rankings. 2016 article by Karen Seidman of the Montreal Gazette writes:

She believes that the ability of Canada’s top three — the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and McGill — to remain in the reputation ranking’s top 40 despite comparatively meagre resources is evidence of their tenacity and quality.

In addition to Montreal Gazette, references have been made by Japan Times, Huffington Post, Globe & Mail, publications.

International applicants seeking to apply to post-secondary education often consider these three Canadian schools due to their lower tuition and fees compared to universities elsewhere. This name is most widely used on student forums, such as College Confidential, Quora, Reddit, YConic, among others.

History

Benefactor of McGill University.

Established in 1801, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning was established to meet the growing demand demands for public education. Around the same time, Merchant James McGill, having passed away in 1813 left in his will his Montréal estate and a £10,000 endowment for the creation of a college, to be trusteed by the Royal Institution. The university formally came into being in 1821 after acquiring a charter for "the University of McGill College". The nondenominational McGill College was later built on the James McGill's farm and in 1852, the Royal Institution formally merged with McGill College.

A painting by Sir Edmund Walker of University College in 1858.

Six years after the founding of McGill University, University of Toronto was founded as King's College by royal charter in 1827, making it the oldest university in Ontario. Initially controlled by the Church of England, the university was secularized in the reorganisation of the 1850s. In addition to becoming the nondenominational University of Toronto, it created University College as U of T's teaching arm and resulted in the abolishment of the faculties of law and medicine.

Prior to 1908, there were several attempts at creating a degree-granting university in British Columbia with help from the Universities of Toronto and McGill, but none were successful. In 1885, William Peterson, principal of the McGill, encouraged Henry Marshall Tory to found McGill College in Vancouver. After the passing of British Columbia University Act of 1908, a university was formally created in British Columbia, merely three decades after the province joined Canada.

This new university was to have the governance modeled after the provincial University of Toronto Act of 1906. This system involved a bicameral system of institutional government consisting of senate, consisting of faculty, and a board of governors, consisting of citizens. Building on the affiliation with McGill University, Henry Marshall Tory founded the McGill University College of British Columbia. The university initially was run as private institution granting degrees at McGill University. University Endowment Act in 1907 and the University Act in 1908 eventually led to the creation of a new independent university that absorbed McGill University College becoming the The University of British Columbia.

Research

The three universities command among the largest individual shares of federal research funding offered by NSERC, NRC, and CIHR. According to the latest CWTS Leiden Ranking, bibliographic data on publications and citations compiled by Centre for Science and Technology Studies, in 2012-2015 all three universities ranked in top 25 in North America by number of publications. By proportions of top 10% publications, UBC holds the lead at 13.9%, followed by UofT at 13.7%, and McGill at 13.0%.:

Institution	City	Total studentsa	Sponsored research income (thousands)c
University of British Columbia	Vancouver	60,560	$532,143
McGill University	Montreal	38,580	$547,458
University of Toronto	Toronto	89,540 (includes colleges)	$1,008,256

Notes: ^a Based on the AUCC's 2017 full-time and part-time enrollment figures. ^b Established date is given as the year in which the institution was founded, and not when degree-granting powers were granted. ^c For the 2016 fiscal year. Figures are in Canadian dollars. The data was obtained from Statistics Canada through Research Infosource

Rankings

The three universities are unanimously ranked above all other Canadian post-secondary institutions by all major publications.

University	2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities	2018 Times Higher Education World University Ranking	2018 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking	2017 Maclean's Medical/Doctoral universities rankings
University of British Columbia	31 (2)	34 (2)	27 (2)	3
McGill University	67 (4)	42 (3)	49 (3)	1
University of Toronto	23 (1)	22 (1)	20 (1)	2

Notes and references

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