When trying to decide where to go to school for your MBA, many factors come into play: the quality of the program, school rankings, research, faculty and academic quality, among others. But have you ever thought about its location? Maybe you should. According to the annual QS Best Student Cities ranking, Toronto is one of the best cities in the world for students, ranking 11th overall and first overall in the Most Desirable City category—reflecting its all-around high quality of life and status as an in-demand destination for students worldwide.
The ranking considered multiple factors to determine its results. For “Desirability,” QS reviewed the Economist Liveability Index, the Globalization and World Cities Index, Safety Score, Pollution Score, Corruption Score and Student Desirability. For all of these categories except the last, the ranking used international indexes. For “student desirability,” QS released a student survey, which collected over 18,000 responses worldwide and asked students to identify their “dream student city” if they could study anywhere. Toronto came out on top.
Toronto also ranked highly in the “Student Mix” category, which looked at the student make-up of the city. It reviewed students from both an overall and international perspective in order to determine if the city is hospitable to students from a variety of cultures, lifestyles, and identities. Overall, Toronto ranked sixth. One respondent commented, “it’s a very inclusive, multicultural and diverse city,” while another spoke about “the diverse quality of people that you meet.”
And this is not the first or only time that Toronto has been ranked as a top destination in the world.
- The Economist ranked Toronto as the Best Place to Live.
- Metropolis Magazine claimed it was the world’s Most Livable City.
- PwC placed it as the Best City to Live and Do Business.
The University of Toronto earned the top-rated academic institution at 32nd overall. However, they weren’t the only university on the list, both York University and Ryerson University were also internationally ranked by QC.