Methodology

Every number, explained.

A recommendation you can’t interrogate is just marketing. Here is the whole model, where each rating comes from, and what we won’t pretend to know.

Fit. Out of 100

How well a program suits you. Four weighted dimensions, shown below.

Entering average

The estimated entering range or published academic minimum, with its source in the details. We do not display percentage chances of admission.

What builds the fit score

Interest fit40

Does it teach what you care about?

Your chosen interests matched against the program's fields.
The program's core field counts double.
Shared-entry degrees use the strongest interest match among their listed study choices. The explanation names that choice; later major entry is not guaranteed.
Your strongest subjects matched against catalogue subject tags. These are not prerequisites.
Career-goal classifications need a source and a stated rule. Missing evidence stays neutral at 2.5 of 5 points.
Choose career paths and 10 of these 40 points use published career examples: 10 for any match, 5 neutral when none is held. The other inputs scale to 30. No selection keeps the original split.
Career categories use wording matches in university-published roles and career fields. Specific jobs use role wording only and take precedence over categories. They are not university classifications, job guarantees or professional qualifications; further study or registration may be needed.

Academic path20

Is the admission range realistic from where you stand?

Full points above the estimated entering range.
Scaled points inside it.
A steep but gradual falloff below it.
A benchmark without a dedicated, checked admission source stays neutral and produces no admission likelihood.
Your saved average is used for every program. Course entry uses the mean of the marks entered, including zero. Subject tags never select an admission average.
Meeting an eligibility minimum earns a neutral 10/20, not full academic fit. Below it, points fall from 10 to 0 over eight average points. No range also earns 10/20.

Learning style20

Will the way it teaches suit the way you learn?

Co-op, against how much you actually want it.
Must have starts Results with verified co-op programs only. Turn off Co-op only to broaden the list.
How applied the teaching is, against how hands-on you want to be.
Typical class sizes, against your preference.
Co-op needs a specific source. Teaching style and class size need sourced classifications with a stated rule. Unsupported legacy values do not affect fit.
Missing evidence earns 5/8 for co-op, 3.5/7 for teaching style and 4/5 for class size.

Life fit20

Will you want to live there for four years?

City type and distance from home, against how far you want to go. Any city type earns full city points.
Anywhere gives every location the same distance points. Close and away use provinces and broad regions, not travel time. A shared province cannot establish a commute, so housing costs are not removed.
With preferred provinces, location uses 4 points for any province match and up to 3 for distance. No province preference keeps the original distance scoring.
Sourced tuition and residence costs, against your budget sensitivity. An annual tuition budget compares published domestic tuition: within budget earns 5.5 cost points, otherwise 5.5 times budget divided by the tuition midpoint. Housing stays separate. Missing or route-specific tuition earns a neutral 2.75.
Budget not a factor gives every school the full 5.5 cost points.
For identified alternate campuses, local comparisons stay neutral until we hold campus-specific evidence. Province preferences still apply.
Campus preferences use counted clubs, sports, venues, residence, dining and study facilities. Quiet, social scene, spirit, nature access, city activities and transit stay neutral where we lack a comparable measure. Ranks use exact counts and exclude conflicting figures. Tied counts share a rank.
No campus-life preference earns full campus points. No preference is different from missing research for something you selected, which stays neutral.

40 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 100. Every match card shows your actual points in each of the four.

Major fit recalculates interest fit using published evidence for the selected major. Academic, learning style and life fit come from the parent program.

Those four numbers are a default, and you can move them

The final question asks what matters most to you. Name up to two of the four and ten points move onto each, taken proportionally from the rest. Name nothing and you get the split above, which is what every score here used before 2026-08-18.
It exists because 40 / 20 / 20 / 20 asserts that what you study matters exactly twice as much as where you live and what it costs, for everyone in the country. That is a reasonable default and a bad universal.
Nothing is ever weighted to zero, so no program can win on a single dimension, and the four always total 100. The weighting that produced any score is printed beside it.
It changes the ORDER of your list, never the facts on a program page and never your admission estimate. Those two are computed the same way for everybody.

Grade comparisons

At or above range

Your average meets or clears the top of the estimated range.

Within range

Your average sits inside the estimated range.

Below range

Within four points below the estimated range.

Well below range

More than four points below the estimated range.

Programs admitting by audition, portfolio or supplementary application are flagged. Grades alone cannot establish admission.

Shortlist planning bands

Dream, Realistic and Safety retain the existing planning index: Safety starts at 80 points, Realistic at 45, and Dream is below 45. These are planning conventions, not acceptance probabilities. Meeting a published minimum alone produces no planning band.

The index uses 85–95 points at or above an estimated range, 45–85 within it and 20–45 up to four average points below it. Further below, it falls 2.5 points per average point, with a floor of 3. Audition, portfolio and supplementary routes move the index toward 50 by multiplying its distance from 50 by 0.55. This convention has not been calibrated against admission outcomes.

Why there is no overall school score

Until August 2026 every school here carried one, a single number out of ten, the average of seven rated aspects: residence, food, social scene, clubs, campus, city and nightlife. It was the most confident thing on the site and the least earned. Nobody had measured any of those seven. We had written them.

All eight ratings are gone, and nothing replaced the average, because a university does not have one score. What replaced the parts is a list of things we can count. Registered clubs, residence beds, the published guarantee and its deadline. Each carrying the page it was read from and the date it was checked. Averaging those back into a new headline number would measure nothing, so we don’t.

What we count, and what we refuse to

One kind of input now: things a university, a government or a students’ union publishes, which you could go and check yourself. Every figure on a school page names the page it came from and the date we last read it.

Clubs

The count of registered student groups, from the students' union directory.

A registry number counts what exists on paper. It cannot tell you which clubs are actually active, and we do not pretend it can.

Residence

Beds, buildings, and the guarantee as the university publishes it. Including the deadline the guarantee depends on.

We name every building and link to the university's page for each. We hold almost no fees or capacities, because the version of this dataset that had them had invented them.

Campus

Libraries, dining halls, athletic facilities, campus area, and building coordinates from OpenStreetMap.

Counting buildings is not rating them. There is no score here.

The city

Population, distance from campus to downtown, whether a transit pass is bundled into your fees, and the provincial drinking age.

A bigger city is not a better one. These facts never move a fit score. They are here for you to weigh, not for us to.

Cost

University fee tables where verified, plus our stated books and supplies allowance.

Tuition varies by program. Missing or route-specific costs score neutral; shown bands are estimates, not quotes.

What we won't count

How good the food is. Whether the campus is beautiful. How hard the school feels. How good a night out is.

These matter enormously and we have no way to measure them. Until students who actually go there tell you. With their names attached. This site says nothing about them.

How much is filled in right now

50: universities profiled
2435: programs scored
50: with counted facts researched
0: still to research

Coverage varies by program and school. Missing admission ranges, comparable costs and fit evidence are identified in each score breakdown.

What we won’t do

Fit includes academic readiness

Academic fit compares your marks with the sourced entering range or minimum. Admission information stays separate. Priorities change fit weights, never admission information.

Averages are estimates, and we say so every time

Entering averages move every cycle. Ours are compiled from recently published admission data, labelled as estimates, and never presented as cutoffs.

Entering averages are not admission odds

We show estimated entering ranges or published minima. They do not verify prerequisites, language requirements or applicant eligibility. Shortlist planning bands are not probabilities.

We leave gaps as gaps

Missing evidence receives the stated neutral contribution and an explanation. It does not establish that a program lacks an opportunity.

Nobody pays to rank higher

There is no sponsored placement and no advertising. Every school is scored by the same model on the same data.

Found something wrong? The whole point is that you can check it. Every number on this site traces back to a source you can open yourself.

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