Canada’s Best Universities 2024: Student Retention
Maclean's tracks how many first-year students return to a university in the second year
These numbers show the percentage of full-time, first-year students enrolled in the fall of 2021 who returned to the university the following year. Many factors can affect a student's choice not to return, but on the whole, retention reflects a university's success in keeping its students on track.
| University | Per cent |
|---|---|
| Mount Saint Vincent | 67.3 |
| Brandon | 68.1 |
| Winnipeg | 72.8 |
| Lethbridge | 74.5 |
| Memorial | 74.8 |
| St. Thomas | 76.6 |
| Cape Breton | 77.1 |
| Acadia | 77.5 |
| Saint Mary's | 77.8 |
| UNBC | 79.5 |
| Moncton | 80.4 |
| Nipissing | 81.1 |
| Regina | 81.6 |
| Lakehead | 81.9 |
| Trent | 82.5 |
| New Brunswick | 82.6 |
| Ontario Tech | 83.1 |
| Windsor | 83.3 |
| Saskatchewan | 84.0 |
| Montréal | 84.7 |
| UPEI | 84.7 |
| UQAM | 85.0 |
| Wilfrid Laurier | 85.0 |
| Victoria | 85.1 |
| Laurentian | 85.2 |
| York | 85.2 |
| Mount Allison | 85.4 |
| Dalhousie | 85.5 |
| Ottawa | 85.6 |
| St. Francis Xavier | 85.6 |
| Manitoba | 85.9 |
| Concordia | 86.3 |
| Simon Fraser | 86.4 |
| Brock | 87.8 |
| Bishop's | 88.3 |
| Toronto Metropolitan | 88.3 |
| Laval | 89.6 |
| Carleton | 90.1 |
| Guelph | 90.7 |
| Toronto | 91.4 |
| McMaster | 91.5 |
| UBC | 91.9 |
| Western | 92.0 |
| Alberta | 92.5 |
| Waterloo | 92.5 |
| McGill | 93.0 |
| Queen's | 93.2 |
| Sherbrooke | 93.5 |
| Calgary | 93.9 |
* Algoma did not provide a figure.