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Your university might have a reputation as an elite institution that only accepts the best of the best — or as a party school with overcrowded halls.

Maclean’s put together a list of the nation’s best comprehensive universities in 2021, based on high research activity, grants and scholarships, student satisfaction and services and reputation.

The magazine defines comprehensive universities as schools with "a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate level, including professional degrees."

Some of the rankings may come as a surprise. Many famous names — including the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and McGill University — didn't even make the cut.

For this list, we focused on the top 15 schools' reputation rankings and delved into what drives these institutions’ popularity or notoriety. While each school is a gem, according to Maclean's, they don't all have the rep to match.

See whether your alma mater is a top school, and whether it gets the respect it deserves. Here are Canada’s top 15 comprehensive universities ranked by reputation, starting with the school with the best reputation:

Comments from Reddit and Quora have been edited for clarity.

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