Summary

The University of Toronto is a public institution that was founded in 1827. Around 80 percent of its students study at the undergraduate level. The school has three campuses – St. George, Mississauga and Scarborough – located in and around Toronto. Roughly 95 percent of the university’s graduate students study at the downtown St. George campus, as do upward of 60 percent of its undergraduates. Thousands of foreign students from more than 160 countries and regions attend the University of Toronto. In a recent year, the top countries of origin for non-Canadian students were China, India and the U.S. Tuition is higher for international students. 

The university comprises academic divisions focused on a range of disciplines, such as applied science and engineering, management and public health. All told, the university offers some 700 undergraduate programs and more than 200 master’s and doctoral programs. The primary language of instruction is English. The academic calendar varies between the three campuses. Student housing is available on each campus, and accommodations are guaranteed for all first-year undergraduate students. The university has more than 44 libraries that house 19 million-plus physical volumes. One major innovation that came out of the University of Toronto is insulin, which researchers discovered in the early 1920s. The university’s Banting & Best Diabetes Centre is named after two of these researchers, one of whom eventually went on to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for this work.