Dalhousie has advanced into seventh place in Maclean’s ranking of Canada’s best Medical Doctoral universities — an improvement over its eighth place ranking last year.

The Maclean's University Rankings are the main Canada-exclusive university ranking. They've been an annual feature in the current affairs magazine since 1991.

One advantage of the national scope of the rankings is the ability for Maclean’s to recognize institutional differences in funding and program offerings. The 49 participating universities are segmented into three categories: Medical Doctoral, Comprehensive and Primarily Undergraduate.

Dalhousie’s competes in the Medical Doctoral category as one of the 15 Canadian universities that provide a broad range of PhD programs, focus on research depth and include medical schools.

The improvement to seventh place moves Dal into the top half of this competitive set. McGill University, University of Toronto and University of British Columbia placed in the top three spots in the category this year.

Within each category, Maclean’s ranks universities based on 12 performance indicators with varying weighting. This year, Dalhousie placed in the top five among its cohort for three indicators: third place for the percentage of total operating expenditures devoted to funding scholarships and bursaries, third place for student/faculty ratio and fourth place for the number of students who win national awards.