Queen’s ties for seventh place among Canada’s top universities for Medical Doctoral (MD) programs next year.
In Maclean’s 2025 ranking for Canadian universities with a broad range of PhD programs and research, as well as medical schools, Queen’s tied with Dalhousie University for seventh place. 15 universities made the list with Queen’s rising two spots from last year. The rankings were released on Oct. 10, with MD programs being evaluated in 12 different categories. Queen’s highest-ranked categories were in Scholarships & Bursaries, Faculty Awards, and Student Awards, ranking fifth in each category.
Maclean’s is a Canadian-based magazine publication. Each year, they publish a ranking of Canadian universities in three categories: MD and PhD, undergraduate, and comprehensive.
In an interview with The Journal, Dr. Eugenia Piliotis, associate dean of the MD program, discussed key factors contributing to the School of Medicine’s success, including the program’s size and the close relationships fostered within it.
According to Queen’s, the MD program received 5,227 applications for their incoming class of 2028. Out of the 5,227 applicants, 601 were interviewed and 138 students were accepted. The small class size is one of the program’s strengths, Piliotis said.
“There are a few things from the medical school that make us stand out—one is definitely our size. We’re in a really lovely, sweet spot where we’re not too big, we’re not too small. We have a very intimate relationship between our students and our program, between our students’ program and faculty,” Piliotis said.
In bonus data released from Maclean’s, Queen’s ranked third in student retention at the undergraduate level from first year to second year at 94.2 per cent. While the data isn’t directly related to the MD program, Piliotis emphasized the University’s focus on the community atmosphere that reverberates through the medical school.
“I think that people come and stay because they get the much more intimate community, that mentorship, that investment in people’s future, it’s just felt in a different way at Queen’s,” Piliotis said.
As for the academic and professional experience students receive, Piliotis referenced Queen’s placement of students in rural communities using organizations such as the Rural Ontario Medical Program (ROMP), a program placing medical students from each of the six medical schools in Ontario in rural placements, allowing students to get a deeper understanding of different healthcare environments
“It’s important to see patients in different settings. If someone has a heart attack in Northern Ontario versus in a downtown hospital in Toronto, it doesn’t mean the person is any less or more sick, but how you manage it can be very different,” Piliotis said.
Piliotis also mentioned the importance of diversifying the student body, adding the ission policies and practices of all schools are very biased towards privilege. She elaborated by explaining how it’s more difficult for less privileged individuals to build up their relevant experience on a resume.
READ MORE: News in Brief: Queen’s Medical School moving to lottery ission system
She explained this current ission cycle is the first one using their new lottery system where students will be randomly selected for an interview before the rest of their file is reviewed, allowing students with less stacked resumes the opportunity to be accepted. Currently, the School of Medicine’s GPA acceptance threshold is 3.0 out of a 4.0 scale according to the Ontario Medical School Application Service (OMSAS) table.
Maclean’s also ranked universities on different programs offered in the sciences and social sciences. Among Canadian universities, Queen’s placed fifth in Business and in Education, seventh in Nursing, and eighth in both Engineering and Computer Science.
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