Toronto’s the ninth-best city in the world for students, says a London-based publisher

You may not have heard of England’s Quacquarelli Symonds (or QS), but they’ve heard of us: the company, which ranks universities and the places they’re in, just anointed Toronto the ninth-best city in the world for post-secondary students. “Canada’s largest city,” they write, “combines all the best the country has to offer: a diverse community, vibrant cultural scene and nightlife, stunning natural surrounds, and of course world-leading universities.” That all adds up to a perfect score for our “Desirability”—100/100—that we’re sure has Paris awfully jealous. (The French capital was #1 overall in the QS list, but got a mere 83 on that particular measure.) In what won’t come as a surprise to anyone who lives here, it’s our lack of affordability, “based on a combination of factors reflecting tuition fees and general living expenses,” that prevented us from being put even higher.

Who’d we beat? Seoul (at #10, its student body is less diverse), New York City (at #17, it’s too costly) and Vancouver (at #12, it has too few schools), to name a few.

Who beat us? No-brainers like Boston (#6) and London (#3), but it’s Montreal (#8) that really smarts. “As a French-speaking city in a largely English-speaking nation that has experienced mass immigration from all over the world in the past decades, Montréal has a distinctly hybrid culture,” QS notes. Must be nice!