In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada’s leading comprehensive universities with more than 30,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs.

For 19 years in a row, Waterloo has been named Canada’s most innovative university in the Maclean’s annual university reputational rankings. Waterloo also topped the Most Likely to Produce the Leaders of Tomorrow category in 13 of the last 19 years, and was named Best Overall in 17 of 19 years — including in 2010 in all three categories.

Among comprehensive universities — that is, those without a medical school — Waterloo has ranked No. 1 in all categories – Most Innovative, Most Likely to Produce the Leaders of Tomorrow, Highest Quality, and Best overall — every year since the Maclean’s reputational rankings were introduced 19 years ago.

In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow.

Waterloo, as home to the world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research, and discovery.

What’s new

The university’s newest campus, in nearby Stratford, brings undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, businesses, and entrepreneurs together to create, study, and commercialize opportunities in digital media. The Stratford Campus is a partnership between the City of Stratford and the University of Waterloo.

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is the site of a new Waterloo satellite campus offering programs in chemical and civil engineering that started in 2009; programs in information technology management and finance and risk management started in 2010.

The Balsillie School of International Affairs, founded in 2007, is a collaborative initiative of the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, with the support and involvement of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Construction of the school’s new building in uptown Waterloo began in 2009.

The School of Pharmacy (left) opened in 2008, anchoring a new Kitchener health sciences campus that will include a facility for McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Students began classes in the new building in 2009.

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What sets us apart

We're enterprising and practical

• world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program
• “creator owns it” intellectual property policy helps move ideas into the economy
• R&T Park transfers technology and ideas to the marketplace
• Accelerator Centre helps business start-ups grow

We're world leaders

• world-renowned computer science and engineering programs
• world’s most advanced quantum computing device
• Bill Gates (right) names Waterloo a top source of Microsoft’s student and grad hires
• leader in water quality research, home to the Canadian Water Network

We're creative and risk-taking

• world’s first and largest faculty of mathematics
• world’s first department of kinesiology
• Canada’s first co-op school of pharmacy
• Canada’s first stand-alone undergraduate nanotechnology engineering program
• Canada’s first environment faculty
• unique Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology program

We're innovative and relevant

• created software to put the Oxford English Dictionary online
• WATFOR compiler let scientists fully exploit computational power
• first multi-point theatre performance
• Engineers Without Borders, founded by Waterloo grads, helps build prosperous communities in developing nations
• Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing brings math excitement to school kids worldwide