Methodology v2.3
How we rank: the exact calculation
A ranking is only as trustworthy as its method. So we don't just tell you our weights. We show the actual figures, where each one is published, and the arithmetic, worked end-to-end on a real school.
Principles
- Outcomes first. Our rankings lead with verifiable student outcomes (retention, graduation and graduate employment), published by the institution or government, each linked to its official source.
- Cite everything; never fabricate. Every outcome figure links to the page it came from. Where a school hasn't published a figure, we leave it blank rather than estimate one.
- Cohort-relative. Universities are compared to universities and colleges to colleges; each metric is normalized within its cohort.
- No pay-to-rank. Rankings are independent of any commercial relationship. We never sell placement.
- Transparent & versioned. The weights below are the live weights. Any change bumps the version and is dated in the changelog.
- Our own scale. These grades and weights are ours. We do not reuse any third-party aggregator's data, grades or rankings.
Two ranking tracks
We publish rankings on two deliberately different lenses, because families ask two different questions. A school can be strong on one and weak on the other. That contrast is the point.
A · Editorial
Who is strongest, per experts and real students? A reputation-leaning standing (academic strength, selectivity and research intensity), blended 50/50 with verified student reviews once a school reaches 3 reviews (100% editorial until then). We never fabricate reviews; this track deliberately excludes graduate outcomes, which are the other track's job.
B · Transparency & objective data
Who actually proves their results? First we score how openly each school publishes its data, sources its links and keeps them current; then we rank the transparent schools by their verified outcomes. A school that publishes nothing simply isn't ranked here, however strong its reputation.
Program-level rankings
Families don't choose a school in the abstract. They choose a program. So every program has its own page and a program score, letting you compare one program at one school against another program at another. Because no Canadian institution yet publishes uniform program-level outcomes, a program honestly inherits its school's verified figures. We label that plainly and never invent a per-program number.
Program score
A 0-100 blend of verified school-wide outcomes (40%), recognized strength in the program's field (25%), program-level data transparency (20%) and value (15%), with a small co-op bump where work-integrated learning matters.
Program transparency
The one genuinely program-level signal we hold today: whether the program's existence is sourced to the school's official programs page (rendered as a link). The rest is the school's own transparency rubric, inherited and tagged school-level.
Compare on a single attribute
Any score on this site is a drill-down: click a school's value on a ranking, its report card, or a program page, and we show exactly where it sits among every other school on that attribute alone (transparency, value, entering grade, tuition, graduate employment and more), so a single number is never a dead end. Cost attributes rank cheapest-first; everything else highest-first.
The transparency score: what we check
Stage one of the objective-data track scores each school on whether it publishes the data families need, keeps it current, and links it to an official source. It scores higher when the data exists and is recent, lower when it's missing or stale. Here is University of Toronto's rubric, computed live:
| Signal | Status | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publishes student outcomes | 3 of 3 outcome metrics sourced · 2 via official government dataset (2/2) | 35% | source ↗ |
| Keeps published data current | latest figure as of 2023 (1/2) | 20% | source ↗ |
| Sources its competitive entry average | publishes no admitted average. Our entering grade is an editorial estimate, not sourced (0/1) | 20% | - |
| Backs facts with verified official links | 2 verified source links (2/2) | 25% | source ↗ |
| Transparency | Strong | 70/100 |
v1 uses these objective, automatically-checkable signals. Editorial assessments of admission-rubric, website and policy clarity, grounded in each school's own pages and human-reviewed before publishing, are being added as further signals.
The verifiable outcomes we use
These are the published student outcomes behind the outcome rankings and the Outcomes category. Each is sourced per school (see any school's “Verified student outcomes” section). Weights are renormalized over whatever a school has published, and a school is ranked on outcomes only when it has at least 2 of 3 (universities) verified.
| Outcome | What it measures | Univ. weight |
|---|---|---|
| First-year retention | Share of first-year students who return for second year, a strong signal of student experience and support. | 30% |
| Graduation rate | Share of students who finish their credential, the clearest sign students reach the finish line. | 35% |
| Graduate employment | Share of graduates employed after finishing: does the credential lead to work. | 35% |
Colleges are scored on graduate employment (55%), graduation (25%) and graduate satisfaction (20%), from the provincial KPI / student-outcomes surveys. Sources include each university's institutional-research / performance-indicator reports, the Ontario University Graduate Survey, Ontario College KPIs, BC Student Outcomes and provincial graduate-outcome surveys. Employment horizons (6 months vs 2 years) and graduation definitions vary by source. We show the exact horizon, definition and year on every figure.
Worked example: University of Toronto
Here is the whole calculation, with this school's real, sourced figures. (Computed live, so it always matches the live data.)
Step 1: its verified outcomes (cited)
| Outcome | Published | vs cohort (0-100) | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-year retention | 92.7% | 85 | 30% | University of Toronto, Performance Indicators Report 2023 (Planning & Budget Office) ↗Source: University of Toronto, Performance Indicators Report 2023 (Planning & Budget Office) |
| Graduation rate | 81.5% | 69 | 35% | Government of Ontario · dataset ↗Government of Ontario (Ministry of Colleges & Universities), Ontario University Graduate Survey: graduation & graduate-employment rates, all institutions, 2022-23 (2020 graduates) · 2022-23. Per-institution figures are retrieved through the province's official lookup tool. The number isn't printed on the linked page, so we cite the dataset rather than imply it's shown there. |
| Graduate employment | 94.1% | 76 | 35% | Government of Ontario · dataset ↗Government of Ontario (Ministry of Colleges & Universities), Ontario University Graduate Survey: graduation & graduate-employment rates, all institutions, 2022-23 (2020 graduates) · 2022-23. Per-institution figures are retrieved through the province's official lookup tool. The number isn't printed on the linked page, so we cite the dataset rather than imply it's shown there. |
Each outcome is scored 0-100 against the other universities, then averaged using the weights above (renormalized over the 3 published here): (30%×85 + 35%×69 + 35%×76) ÷ 100% = Outcomes score 76/100 (B).
Step 2: blend the five categories into the overall
| Category | Score | × Weight | = Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| academics | 98 | 25% | 24.5 |
| outcomes | 76 | 35% | 26.6 |
| value | 44 | 15% | 6.6 |
| breadth | 83 | 10% | 8.3 |
| Campus & community | 100 | 15% | 15.0 |
| Overall | 81 → B+ |
The Outcomes category above uses the verified-outcomes score from Step 1 (it falls back to an indicative employment estimate only for schools that haven't published a verifiable outcome yet).
Category weights (overall score)
Each category is scored 0-100 within the cohort, then combined using these weights. v2.0 leads with outcomes.
| Category | What feeds it | Univ. | College |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academics | Admission selectivity band, typical entering grade (universities), research intensity, program depth. | 25% | 10% |
| Outcomes | Verified student outcomes (first-year retention, graduation rate, graduate employment), each cited to its official source; falls back to an indicative employment figure only where none is published yet. | 35% | 45% |
| Value | Domestic tuition, normalized within cohort (inverted). | 15% | 20% |
| Breadth | Count of broad program areas offered. | 10% | 10% |
| Campus & Community | Enrollment size, on-campus residence availability, campus setting. | 15% | 15% |
Letter-grade scale
The 0-100 score maps to a letter grade on this fixed scale:
Best-value, field & career rankings
Best value is quality-adjusted-for-cost: we scale a school's overall score by an affordability multiplier (tuition below the cohort median lifts it, above it trims it, within bounds so cost can't overturn a large quality gap). In-province-restricted rates (Quebec, Newfoundland) are floored to a comparable national figure so a restricted rate can't game the ranking.
“Best for <field>” rankings first gate the list to schools the data flags as recognized for that field, taken from each school's own published flagship programs, never a fabricated program-specific number, then rank that cohort by their verified school-wide student outcomes. Because we don't yet publish program-level outcomes, these are not a claim about a single program, and we only publish a field where enough schools are clearly recognized for it (so a field list is a genuinely different cohort, not the overall order relabelled). Career-goal lists (“become a software developer / engineer / doctor / skilled tradesperson”) use the same method, aliased to one recognized field, with co-op breaking ties where work-integrated learning is a real hiring edge.
Reviews & integrity
- Reviews are gated behind a verified account: one review per person per school, moderated before display.
- We publish an aggregate review rating only once a school reaches 3 verified reviews; below that we show counts honestly and never an averaged grade.
- We never fabricate reviews, ratings, or source citations to fill gaps.
Keeping it current
A source crawler re-checks every cited page on a schedule and snapshots its content. If an official page goes dead, or its content materially changes (say a program is paused or a figure is restated), that fact is flagged for review and temporarily drops out of the ranking until we re-verify it, rather than being trusted blindly. Figures are dated per school; the dataset stamp is June 2026.
Changelog
- v2.3 (June 2026): added program-level rankings: every program has its own page and a program score (verified school-wide outcomes + recognized strength + program transparency + value), so one program can be compared against another across schools; programs honestly inherit their school's verified figures. Added a single-attribute comparison reachable from any score, ranking or program page.
- v2.2 (June 2026): “best for <field>” rankings gated to schools recognized for the field, then ranked by verified school-wide outcomes; added plain-language career-goal lists.
- v2.1 (June 2026): introduced two ranking tracks: an Editorial standing (reputation, blended 50/50 with verified reviews as they accrue) and a Transparency & objective-data track (a per-school transparency score that gates the verified-outcomes ranking). Added editorial, most-transparent and by-outcomes ranking views, and a per-school transparency rubric.
- v2.0 (June 2026): rankings re-based on verifiable student outcomes: a new outcomes score (retention, graduation, graduate employment) sourced per school; outcomes became the largest weight; added “by student outcomes” rankings and per-school outcome citations; added content-change detection to the source crawler.
- v1.1: “best value” became quality-adjusted-for-cost; program rankings weight recognized strength + outcomes; in-province tuition flagged.
- v1.0: initial published methodology: five categories, cohort-relative, objective inputs only.