Spotlight on McGill: Canada’s Top Medical Doctoral School
What do artificial blood cells, search engines and atomic physics have in common? They were all born at McGill University, a 200-year-old institution well-regarded for its safe and accessible downtown Montreal location and diverse student body. Roughly one-third of its students hail from 150 countries around the world, the highest percentage of international students at a medical doctoral university in the country.
Exactly who should be a student at McGill became a hot political topic last year, when the Quebec government announced a tuition increase for out-of-province students. The move was an effort to decrease the number of English-speaking students at the school—and in the province as a whole. McGill was quick to fight back, reiterating that English-speaking Canadians were an important part of McGill’s student body and suing the provincial government over the planned hike. An increase (smaller than originally proposed) went ahead this fall anyway. To offset the increased cost, McGill now automatically grants $3,000 “Canada Award” scholarships to affected applicants.
Students from across Canada—and the world—who set their sights on McGill do so because of its excellence, which helped it clinch the top spot in the Medical Doctoral category for the 20th straight year. The school consistently pulls in significant research funding and attracts high-calibre faculty and students. Its students disproportionately win national and international awards for their achievements and, on average, students from the school win more accolades than those at any other Canadian university. This includes the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which has been awarded to 147 McGill students. Recently, Ph.D. student Jessica Royer won the Canadian Association for Neuroscience’s Brain Star Award for her research on strengthening memory networks in epilepsy patients. Royer is one of more than 10,000 McGill grad students who receive funding for their work, which totalled more than $184 million in the 2022–23 academic year.
The school’s academic offerings are similarly extensive. There are 400 Ph.D. and master’s programs, including the interdisciplinary quantitative life sciences program, which brings together 90 researchers across 20 departments to train as leaders in the fields of biology, medicine and biotechnology. Another innovative offering: a master’s degree in sustainability in engineering and design that trains forward-thinking architects and urban planners focused on environmental responsibility and sustainability. The integrated program in neuroscience currently has more than 600 grad students who are conducting innovative research about the human brain.
At the undergraduate level, McGill offers more than 300 programs across 11 categories, including a new global engineering degree in partnership with the CentraleSupélec school in France, and a new bachelor of education in global contexts that applies concepts of classroom teaching in non-profit, government, business and other environments.
McGill might be best known for its medical school, which has played a significant role in the history of health care in this country. The first degree McGill awarded was a doctorate in medicine and surgery, which also happened to be Canada’s very first medical degree. (It went to Montreal-born William Leslie Logie in 1833.) McGill has since produced an impressive cohort of Nobel Prize laureates, among them Andrew Schally (for his work isolating three hormones produced in the hypothalamus), David H. Hubel (whose research contributed to our understanding of the vision system) and Jack W. Szostak (who discovered how chromosomes’ ends are protected by telomeres). Other big names in science and tech who have McGill on their resumé include astrophysicist Hubert Reeves and nuclear physicist Val Fitch.
McGill has a vibrant campus, with plenty of customizable residence options
—apartment, shared, all-women’s and all-men’s. The “all you care to eat” meal plan has unlimited dining hall meals that include an expansive choice of vegetarian, vegan, kosher and gluten-free food. McGill’s sustainability goals have led to a food partnership with local Quebec farmers (all within a 500-kilometre radius) and its on-campus Macdonald Farm initiative known as “McGill Feeding McGill.” Food offerings and other services are also available to students living off-campus, as later-year and grad students often do (housing in the city is generally more affordable than in other big Canadian cities). Wherever they choose to live, students at McGill earn an internationally regarded degree while enjoying a city infused with art, culture and history. ■