Rankings and reputation are interrelated, but not the same thing. For example, rankings punish large class sizes, but well known professors like Larry Smith command 500+ person classes; simultaneously reducing rankings while improving reputation.
I would argue that McGill hits the right numbers, and certainly has a great law program, but it is middle of the road in terms of reputation.
There are three [0] "America"s -- North, South, and United States of. Clarification is only required when context is inadequate to distinguish between them.
Similarly, "star" can refer to a shape, a celestial body, or a talented/lead performer or athlete. You wouldn't interrupt a conversation about sports to say "stars aren't just guys like LeBron James; Aldebaran is also a star." That would be asinine and obnoxious.
So please, out of respect for everyone's time and sanity, learn how to use contextual clues and stop trying to argue that "America isn't the US".
[0] OK, there are actually even more "America"s -- a band, multiple cities, ships, movies, etc. But the contextual clues in this post suggested we had "large regions of land" in mind, so I left the other forms of "America" for the footnote.
that's not context, that's because USA is the biggest power in the Americas, so powerful that it overshadows all the other regions/countries, and that's why some people living in the Americas feel belittled by that.
I know you were not replying to my post directly, but to clarify my position: I'm european, I don't particularly care about the distinction, I just found that it was a very depressing message to put on a university t-shirt from outside USA.
Ah, and please, out of respect for everyone's time and sanity, stop patronizing other people.
There is also the point that the United States of America was the first state to incorporate "America" in its name. It was an independent state when the rest of the Americas were at least nominally colonized by European powers. Much of the rest of the world got used to calling the USA "America".
For that matter, the official title of Mexico included "United States"--should I apologize when using "United States" or disambiguate in case somebody wants to mention the United Mexican States?
Please don't mistake confidently arguing for patronizing.
"The USA is the biggest power" is a form of context. "The speaker is from [country X]" is a form of context (Churchill, definitely not from the USA, once famously said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.") There was adequate context for the original t-shirt to make it clear what "America" was referring to.
Which makes the "not just the US" argument come across as similar to if you argued that "LeBron isn't the only star, Aldebaran is also a star". Virtually everybody knows there are multiple meanings of the word "America"; we don't need to be told that every time we use it to refer to the US. The appropriate standard for word usage is "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions" [Noah Webster], that is, popular usage. And in popular usage, "America" can be used to refer to the US, or to the landmass as a whole; arguing against that is like arguing that we should stop calling famous actors "stars" because they're not luminous spheres of plasma. It's incorrect, and also annoying.
Depends whom I'm talking to. When I talk to you and others like you, I'll be careful to note that unqualified "America" to you almost always means "the United States". It never meant that to me growing up, nor to a bunch of other people. However, due to the global influence of the US, most of the world considers "America" to be the "US".
It's not really about context or anything that could be called objective. It just means different things to different people. And because for me "America" has very emotional meanings (such as for example, Morelos' proclamation that "... so Americans may only be distinguished by vice or virtue"[1] or Luis Miguel's song "América"[2], or Las Águilas del América [3]), I will never personally accept the meaning of "US" for "America".
You may have other emotional attachments to the meaning of "America", so I will try to respect those when I use the word around you or others like you.
> "It's not really about context ... [it] means different things to different people."
The identities of the speaker and audience are part of context. As you correctly inferred, if I'm speaking, an unqualified "America" probably means "the United States". If you're speaking, it probably means "the largest landmass in the western hemisphere". If we're quoting Obama speaking to the Senate, or Morelos during the revolution, we can infer what they mean by "America".
Accept the meaning the speaker intends, when it's communicated clearly enough that you can infer it. That's how communication works.
It still ranks pretty high:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_University#Rankings_and...
and they still sell those "Harvard: The McGill of America" sweatshirts every year.
https://glasgowuniversityabroad0910.wordpress.com/2009/10/16...
That B. Ed. students are coming so unprepared from McGill is quite sad.
Its liberal arts programme is also much bigger than Waterloo's, but comparable to UofT's.