McGill University

McGill University is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec. It was established by royal charter in 1821 on a bequest from merchant James McGill. The downtown campus occupies the lower slope of Mount Royal; Macdonald Campus in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue houses agricultural and environmental sciences. McGill is a faculty-based comprehensive university, and it has long enrolled both Quebec students and a large non-Canadian cohort.

Faculties include arts, science, medicine, engineering, law, education, dentistry, management (Desautels), music, and agricultural and environmental sciences. Biomedical training is tied to the McGill University Health Centre and to the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. Fields of note for graduate students include medicine, neuroscience, engineering, law, and management.

Enrollment is about 40,000, including on the order of 10,000 graduate students. International students make up around 30 percent and come from more than 150 countries. Alumni and former students include writer Leonard Cohen, actor William Shatner, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Ernest Rutherford did the research years of his career at McGill before his Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Graduate degrees include thesis and non-thesis master's, the Ph.D., and professional programs in law, medicine, and management. Research faculties use advisor-led supervision; professional schools assign heavier coursework. The calendar is semester-based. Funding comes from federal tri-council awards, faculty studentships, and teaching assistantships; many taught master's students are self-funded. Students live in the dense neighborhoods around the main gates, including the Plateau and Cote-des-Neiges.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, McGill University lists 85 graduate programs across 38 subjects: 58 master's programs and 25 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, earth & environmental sciences and electrical engineering. McGill University holds rank 54 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.