Calgary among the top 10 Canadian cities to be a student
By Luis Armando Sanchez Diaz, May 18 2021—
Recently, the British-based organization Studee published their “Best city to be a student in Canada 2021” list in which Calgary landed in the tenth spot.
The organization aims to serve as a platform that guides students across Canada and around the world and provides them with information when choosing a post-secondary institution to enroll in.
“We help international students find their dream university online… [by] providing advice and guidance to help reach a decision about where to study,” notes their official webpage. “We help busy university admissions teams by consulting with high volumes of students to make sure they meet all the requirements of the university before making an introduction.”
The list presents 45 Canadian cities that were ranked by a final score which was the sum of the different points obtained individually by each city in various issues that Studee looked into — 0 to 1 being the score range that was used. However, each category has a different value for the lower and upper quantiles, as some had the former as the highest value while the latter having the lower and vice versa.
The organization assessed ten categories in the build-up of the ranking which are crime, the cost of a beer, sustainability, percentage of graduates, distance to a National Park, percentage of non-Canadian citizens, housing, percentage of young people, veggie options and the cost of tuition fees. It is worth noting that the figures used for the last category are the amount paid by Canadian students even though Studee mainly focuses on aiding foreign students.
Of the cities that reached the top five list, the first three are located in Quebec. Beginning with the city of Montreal obtaining an overall score of 7.34 points reaching the top spot, Rouyn-Noranda came in second with 6.7 points and Trois-Rivières followed closely at 6.64 points. The fourth and fifth places went to Charlottetown and Québec City, respectively.
The only two prairies cities that made it to the top ten list were Edmonton which got 6.34 points, landing at seventh place, while Calgary racked up 5.92 points — securing the tenth spot of the list. Also, the largest cities in Alberta are part of the only three cities of Western Canada to reach the top ten best cities to be a student, along with Vancouver.
One of the categories where Calgary stood out was “the percentage of non-Canadians” — also labeled as “diversity” — in which it was reported to have 12.02 per cent of its population being foreigners living in the city, according to the 2016 census. This puts YYC in fourth place out of 45 cities with the highest share of non-Canadian citizens.
To view the entire ranking click here.