Hypothetical: How highly regarded are Canadian universities?

[StatGuy2000]

Hi everyone. I wanted to pose an hypothetical question. Suppose we have a student who is a graduate from a physics program in a Canadian university (e.g. University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, McGill University, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, etc.)

Suppose that the graduate had earned, say, the equivalent of a 3.8 or 3.9 (out of 4.0) GPA, and scored in the top 90th percentile in both the general and the PGRE. Suppose further that the said student had research experience (through the NSERC Undergraduate Research Award, the Canadian equivalent of the REU), and had what @Vanadium 50 would describe as good or strong letters of recommendation.

What would you estimate would be the probability of that student being accepted into a top 25 graduate program in physics in the US? (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.)

 

[ZapperZ]

Hi everyone. I wanted to pose an hypothetical question. Suppose we have a student who is a graduate from a physics program in a Canadian university (e.g. University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, McGill University, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, etc.)

Suppose that the graduate had earned, say, the equivalent of a 3.8 or 3.9 (out of 4.0) GPA, and scored in the top 90th percentile in both the general and the PGRE. Suppose further that the said student had research experience (through the NSERC Undergraduate Research Award, the Canadian equivalent of the REU), and had what @Vanadium 50 would describe as good or strong letters of recommendation.

What would you estimate would be the probability of that student being accepted into a top 25 graduate program in physics in the US? (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.)

Now, you DO know that the question:

"How highly regarded are Canadian universities"

is different than the question of:

"the probability of that student being accepted into a top 25 graduate program in physics in the US"

.. don't you?

A student from Yale or Berkeley, for example, having the same credentials that you describe, will have an equally challenging probability of being accepted at similar schools. Acceptance probability has so many varying and different factors, and can be different for each of the top echelon schools, that trying to decipher something like this is akin to voodoo science.

All you can say is that students from such Canadian schools, and even others, have been accepted to these top US schools. Trying to give a quantitative evaluation of such a complex process is rather meaningless.

Zz.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Now, you DO know that the question:

"How highly regarded are Canadian universities"

is different than the question of:

"the probability of that student being accepted into a top 25 graduate program in physics in the US"

.. don't you?

A student from Yale or Berkeley, for example, having the same credentials that you describe, will have an equally challenging probability of being accepted at similar schools. Acceptance probability has so many varying and different factors, and can be different for each of the top echelon schools, that trying to decipher something like this is akin to voodoo science.

All you can say is that students from such Canadian schools, and even others, have been accepted to these top US schools. Trying to give a quantitative evaluation of such a complex process is rather meaningless.

Zz.

Hi @ZapperZ . I do recognize that the title question is different than the question I posed (I couldn't think of a better way of compressing my actual question in the title).

The point of my question was to determine where Canadian universities fair in comparison to American universities. After all, there are many discussions in PF about top 25, 50 or 100 schools in the US (@Dr. Courtney and @Vanadium 50 , among others, have brought this up in various threads), and that graduating from a top 100 school in the US can make the difference when applying to graduate programs. My question was to determine how Canadian schools factor into this calculation.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I would say that Canadian schools have no advantage or disadvantage with respect to their peers, and as Zz points out, lots of Canadian students are accepted into US institutions. That said, I think Canadian schools and their students tend to have inflated ideas of who their peers are: Toronto and UBC think their peers are Harvard and Princeton (One visit to Toronto I was told, in all seriousness, that it was universally regarded as the best university in the world), but I would put them more in line with Michigan and Illinois.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I appreciate the discussion and the ideas. My experience with assessment of the Canadian schools is more anecdotal and probably specific to AMO physics. My view is there are no Harvards or Oxfords in Canada. There are some schools on par with Ga Tech, Ohio St, and Texas A&M, which is high praise.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I would say that Canadian schools have no advantage or disadvantage with respect to their peers, and as Zz points out, lots of Canadian students are accepted into US institutions. That said, I think Canadian schools and their students tend to have inflated ideas of who their peers are: Toronto and UBC think their peers are Harvard and Princeton (One visit to Toronto I was told, in all seriousness, that it was universally regarded as the best university in the world), but I would put them more in line with Michigan and Illinois.

As a graduate of the University of Toronto, I can see why some of my fellow classmates/graduates may state this. Part of the reason the students tend to react this way is that, within Canada, the U of T (for short), along with schools like McGill and UBC, are among the most highly ranked schools in Canada, and thus believe that the quality of their schools would be on par with the best schools in the US.

That being said, you state that U of T or UBC would be in line with Michigan (I presume you mean University of Michigan) or Illinois (again, I presume you mean UIUC), rather than Harvard or Princeton. How would you think they would compare versus, say, Berkeley or Stanford?

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't think I want to get into the details of rankings at the level of individual universities. At that level, global rankings are not helpful, because different schools have different strengths. For experimental nuclear physics, the best schools are Michigan State and Stony Brook University, for example, even though they end up ranked around 100 and 200 on world university ranking tables. At some level, it doesn't matter how strong the other programs at the same university are; it only matters how your program is.

Canada's population is an order of magnitude smaller than that of the US. For that reason alone, I would expect that Canada's Top 5 programs (in any subject) fall within the US Top 50, with on average one of them comparable to the US Top 10. I would also expect the same if I looked at the bottom programs instead of the top programs.

 

[George Jones]

I think that this thread is silly, but I'll join in the silliness. First, a statistically insignificant sample of one: Nima Arkani-Hamed.

Next, from the 2016-17 world university rankings for Physical Sciences by The Time Higher Education:

25 U of T
45 UBC
69 McGill
96 Waterloo

1 Harvard
2 Stanford
3 Princeton
5 MIT
9 Berkeley
21 Illinois
23 Michigan
36 Ga Tech
94 Ohio St
not on list: Texas A&M (but, 29 U of Texas at Austin)

 

[George Jones]

More anecdotal evidence involving lower ranked Canadian universities: 1) I know of three people who did Physics BScs at Windsor who went on to Physics Phd programs at Princeton (2) and MIT, and I have a friend who did a Physics BSc at UVic and who did a PhD at Cambridge.

 

[CrysPhys]

At some level, it doesn't matter how strong the other programs at the same university are; it only matters how your program is.

Your statement is primarily relevant for a grad student who completed a PhD at a particular university and is now seeking a position in academia, industry, or government. I don't think it's on point for the OP's hypo (with one exception): an undergrad student who completed a BS at a particular university and is now seeking admission to a top US grad school. Following your example, if the undergrad university happens to have an exceptionally strong program in experimental nuclear physics (but somewhat mediocre otherwise), and if a student performs undergrad research in experimental nuclear physics, gets letters of recommendation from well-regarded researchers in the field, and applies to another university with the intent of continuing a PhD in the field, then OK. Otherwise, not.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't think it's on point for the OP's hypo (with one exception): an undergrad student who completed a BS at a particular university and is now seeking admission to a top US grad school.

What I am saying is the strength of the physics program matters for admission to graduate school, not the strength of the English program. Overall rankings factor in the strength of both, but only one is really relevant.

 

[PetSounds]

Somebody on Reddit compiled data on math graduate students at several top US universities. Admittedly, it's hardly a source to cite on an academic paper, and it deals with math rather than physics, but for the purposes of a hypothetical discussion, it's interesting to note that as of these posts, at Harvard, there were as many math graduate students who'd studied at U of T as as who'd studied at Princeton. But it's also worth considering that U of T has 80,000 students compared to Princeton's 8000.

 

[Vanadium 50]

But it's also worth considering that U of T has 80,000 students compared to Princeton's 8000.

And that we are talking about 3 admits each, so Poisson statistics matters. Maybe also that Toronto is regarded more highly in math than in physics.

Have we adequately answered the OP's question? Nobody has provided any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that Canadian students have an unusually high hurdle to jump over.

 

[StatGuy2000]

My overall point of this discussion is to what extent hurdles (if any) do Canadian undergraduate physics students face in applying and being admitted to the top physics graduate programs around the world (of which many are in the US, e.g. Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.)

It was my understanding that Canadian students have about as good a chance as any American physics students (all else being equal). So yes, my question has been answered.