My wife is a couple months away from completing her medical undergrad and has spent the last few weeks traveling across the country to various med schools to interview for residency. She will be entered into a residency matching program, where students rank schools and schools rank students, and the matching then follows a somewhat confusing algorithm. Confusing in that I don't know if the school's preference or the students preference governs or in what order.
The bottom line is that whatever school she matches to, she is legally obligated to become a resident there for the next five years. Residency programs of her choice vary in strength across the country, cities vary in appeal. And thus, we have to rank cities in Canada on where we want to go.
I'm a couple months away (plus a few odd credits) from my degree in civil engineering. Generally speaking, I have good employment prospects, but what I will end up doing (work, post grad school, alternate school in architecture or a MBA, stay at home dad, etc) does factor into the equation. I don't really know what my prospects are outside of Alberta. I know which schools offer programs I could see myself attending but I'm not sold on more school since I'm already an adult student. It is very likely that we will try and have our first kid during her residency. We are both Alberta born and raised, our friends and more importantly her family is here in Alberta, so we would like to stay.
The rank as of now:
1- Edmonton. One of the top programs. Excellent prospects for me. Where our current home is.
2- Calgary. One of the lower programs. Excellent careers for me. Still in Alberta.
3/4- London and Hamilton. Both top programs, equal to Edmonton. Likable towns.
5- Winnipeg. Great program, good city.
6- Halifax. Good program (less 'respected' but highest 'happiness' rating), we both really like the city. Suspect weaker employment for me.
7- Vancouver. Lower program. Nice climate. We're split on the city. Still in the west.
8- St.Johns/Toronto/Montreal/Kingston/Ottawa/Saskatoon - all of these cities had some sort of deal breaker. She missed her Toronto interview due to circumstances outside of her control and they wouldn't let her reschedule.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=112920 Memorial University has refused to let me take my 6 missing credits. Her passable bilingualism was quite an issue in Montreal. She didn't like Kingston. She hated Saskatoon. She was pretty much told that she wouldn't be ranked by Ottawa. Etc.
This thread was inspired by another thread asking about Winnipeg. I know we have a fair number of Canadians on here, so there should be some extra insight. Does anyone think we should change our rank? Is it worth putting BC higher? Whats the economy like for a bright young engineer in southern Ontario?