People mostly just call it U of T Medicine for short. It is genuinely one of the oldest medical faculties in Canada, founded in 1843 as Rolph's School of Medicine. Its name has changed four separate times since then. It became the Toronto School of Medicine in 1851, the Faculty of Medicine in 1887, and finally, in 2020, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, its current name. So, if older material refers to it simply as U of T's Faculty of Medicine, it is describing this same institution before its most recent renaming.

Here is a fact most guides skip entirely, and it is genuinely remarkable. In September 2020, philanthropists James and Louise Temerty made a $250 million gift to the Faculty, the single largest individual donation in Canadian history, made through the Temerty Foundation, which they established in 1997. The gift itself included an earlier $10 million allocation, advanced in April of that same year, specifically to establish the Dean's COVID-19 Priority Fund, supporting front-line clinical faculty and trainees during the pandemic. In gratitude, the university renamed the Faculty in the Temertys' honour. So, this Faculty's current name traces to a specific, dated, independently verifiable act of philanthropy, not a historical or honorary naming convention.

The Faculty carries a genuinely significant legacy of medical discovery, including the discovery of insulin, the identification of stem cells, and the identification of genes responsible for early-onset Alzheimer's disease, alongside the world's first artificial pacemaker. It is consistently ranked among the world's best medical faculties. In 2024, U of T ranked first in Canada for Medicine in the QS Rankings, and among the world's top three universities for Clinical Medicine by both the National Taiwan University Rankings and the U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities rankings. As of the most recent QS World University Rankings 2026, U of T Medicine is ranked 12th globally, a genuinely elite standing shared by very few medical schools anywhere in the world.

Here is the single most important fact to know about applying here, and it genuinely sets this school apart from several other major Canadian medical schools. Unlike UBC and USask, both of which do not admit international students at all, the University of Toronto does admit a small number of international students to its MD program. This happens through what the university describes as supernumerary seats, places specifically allocated beyond the standard domestic intake. So, this is a genuine, real pathway for international applicants, including from India, though it comes at a considerably higher cost than the domestic rate, as covered fully below.

U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine operates across sites in both Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario. A major recent development is the James and Louise Temerty Building, a state-of-the-art education and research facility created through the redevelopment of the Faculty's west building at the corner of King's College Road and King's College Circle, prominently situated in the heart of U of T's downtown campus. This new facility was funded directly through the 2020 Temerty gift, giving students access to genuinely current teaching and research space rather than older, retrofitted buildings.

Clinical training runs through a genuinely extensive network of major Toronto teaching hospitals. These include Toronto General Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, Sinai Health, and St. Michael's Hospital, giving students exposure to one of the largest, most concentrated academic health science networks in North America, formally organised as the Toronto Academic Health Science Network. This concentration of major hospitals within one city gives students a genuinely wide range of clinical case exposure that few other Canadian cities can match, since Toronto is by a wide margin Canada's largest and most medically dense city.

Admission requires a competitive MCAT score and strong academic performance, evaluated alongside personal and professional attributes through the Faculty's own holistic review process. Since this is graduate-entry only, applicants need a completed undergraduate degree before they can apply. There is no direct-entry route straight from high school here, which is a real difference from many MBBS-style programs described elsewhere. The program itself runs four years, following completion of a prior undergraduate degree, as is standard across nearly all Canadian medical schools.

Toronto itself is genuinely Canada's largest and most diverse city, home to more than three million people within the city limits alone, and considerably more across the wider metropolitan area. This scale gives the Temerty Faculty of Medicine access to a genuinely enormous, varied patient population, spanning every kind of medical condition and background a future physician could realistically expect to encounter. Few other cities in Canada, or indeed North America, can offer medical students this same combination of an elite, research-intensive university sitting directly alongside one of the continent's largest concentrations of major teaching hospitals, all within a short walk or subway ride of one another.

The Faculty's research output matches its clinical scale. U of T's Medical Sciences researchers regularly publish in the world's leading medical journals, and the university's own affiliated hospitals run some of the largest clinical trial programs in the country. Students genuinely benefit from this research intensity throughout their degree, since many of their own teaching faculty are simultaneously active researchers, bringing genuinely current findings directly into the classroom rather than relying solely on textbook material that may already be somewhat dated by the time it reaches print.

Cost Breakdown

U of T genuinely offers both a domestic and an international fee structure, unlike UBC and USask. The gap between the two is considerable, so both are shown clearly below, rather than blended into a single average figure.

Note: figures are in Canadian dollars. No capitation fee and no donation is asked at any stage, for either domestic or international students. The international rate reflects U of T's genuine, published supernumerary seat structure, not an estimate.

Why U of T Deserves a Harder Look Than You've Given It

Most lists mention U of T as just another top-ranked Canadian medical school. However, they do not explain what actually makes it different from schools like UBC or USask. The reason is simple. It is one of the very few major Canadian medical schools genuinely open to international applicants at all.

U of T is not like most other Canadian medical schools when it comes to funding. In fact, its own name traces directly to the single largest individual donation in Canadian history, a real $250 million gift from James and Louise Temerty in 2020. Furthermore, this was not a vague, symbolic gesture. As a result, that gift directly funded a brand-new teaching and research building on campus. Graduates prove this investment is real by training in genuinely current, purpose-built facilities, not decades-old buildings simply relabelled.

The international admission pathway also matters more than most guides let on. For example, many major Canadian medical schools, including UBC and USask, simply do not admit international students under any circumstance. U of T does, through its supernumerary seat structure. Moreover, this comes at a real, considerable cost, roughly CAD 97,350 a year in tuition alone. So, any international applicant should budget carefully and realistically before applying here, since the total cost genuinely runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars over four years.

One thing most other blogs miss is the sheer concentration of major hospitals available for clinical training. In addition to Toronto General and Princess Margaret, students also train at Toronto Western, Sinai Health, and St. Michael's, all within one city. Since this genuinely dense hospital network gives students an unusually wide range of clinical case exposure, graduates leave with real, broad clinical experience most other Canadian cities simply cannot match.