Ranking Methodology
How MapleRank evaluates and ranks Canadian private schools
Five Core Criteria
Every school is evaluated across five data-driven criteria, each capturing a distinct dimension of academic quality and student experience.
University Matriculation Rate
Percentage of graduates accepted to QS World University Rankings Top 150 institutions within 12 months of graduation.
Read about why we use matriculation rate…Average IB Diploma Score
Mean score across all IB Diploma candidates; for non-IB schools, this does not negatively affect their ranking.
Read about why we use IB scores…Student Body Diversity Index
Distribution of international students by nationality, rewarding genuinely multinational student bodies over single-nationality pipelines.
Read about why we measure diversity…Faculty Subject Expertise
Percentage of teaching staff holding an advanced degree, masters or higher, in the subject they teach.
Read about why we value faculty subject expertise…Student-to-Teacher Ratio
Total enrolled students divided by full-time equivalent certified teaching staff; lower ratios score higher.
Read about why we use the Student-to-Teacher ratio…Data Integrity & Verification
All data is submitted directly by authorized school representatives through our secure portal. MapleRank reserves the right to request supporting documentation, audit submissions, and flag or remove schools that provide inaccurate data.
Weighting & Score Calculation
Each criterion is normalized to a 0–100 scale and combined using proprietary weights to produce a single overall score. The exact weights are proprietary and not published, ensuring structural independence — no school can reverse-engineer or game the ranking.
Structural Independence
MapleRank's independence is non-negotiable. No school can pay to improve their rank. Rankings are produced solely from verified data and our proprietary methodology. This structural guarantee is the foundation of trust that international families rely on.
Financial Viability Rating
Every school profile shows a Financial Viability Rating from A to F, or Not rated. It describes how sound a school's finances are on its own published figures. It is separate from the ranking and does not affect it.
Sources: the annual returns that registered charities file with the Canada Revenue Agency, taken from the agency's open data files and, for the newest year, from the same returns as published on charitydata.ca; and, where a school has no usable return, its own audited financial statements. Schools that are not registered charities usually publish no financial statements and are shown as Not rated.
The rating uses the two most recent years with usable figures. A school whose latest figures are more than 24 months old is shown as Not rated.
Where a campus or programme has no figures of its own and its registered charity files for the whole organisation, the profile shows the charity's rating and names the charity.
Ratings are recalculated each month as new returns are published, and updated here after review.
The rating is information for families, not financial advice and not an audit.