McMaster University is a public institution that was founded in 1887. The Canadian university’s main campus is in a suburban neighborhood of Hamilton, Ontario, near the western edge of Lake Ontario and not far from the U.S. border. Other campuses are located in downtown Hamilton, Burlington, Kitchener-Waterloo and Niagara. The university’s international students hail from more than 75 countries, and its full-time faculty members come from more than 55. Tuition costs are higher for non-Canadian students. University-operated student housing is available, with options including themed living communities such as an all-female community, a healthy active living community and a global perspectives community.

The university has six main academic divisions – engineering, health sciences, humanities, science, social sciences and the DeGroote School of Business – and the primary language of instruction is English. McMaster University also has an arts and science program that enrolls around 60 students each year and offers a more interdisciplinary undergraduate experience. The academic calendar for McMaster undergraduates is semester-based and includes an optional spring/summer term. The graduate-level academic calendar has three terms: fall, winter and summer. Some of the university’s more than 60 research centers and institutes are the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, the McMaster eBusiness Research Centre and the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy. The university also has its own nuclear reactor, which is used for research. An interesting fact about the university is that one-fifth of Albert Einstein’s brain sits in a jar in one of the school’s labs where a McMaster neuroscientist studies it and other specimens.