Assuming that you avoid arts academies, music conservatories, and naval academies, mostly anything in the top 100 or probably top 200 would be fine. I did attempt to provide a bit more detail below.
Just about four years ago I got to listen in (on-line) to the welcome reception for incoming DVM students at a highly ranked program. They said where each incoming student got their bachelor’s degree. It was rare to hear the same school mentioned twice. I do recall one single school being mentioned twice, but it was only twice, and it was NOT a “top 100” ranked university.
One daughter is getting a PhD in a biomedical field. I can see where every student in their PhD program got their bachelor’s degree. There are a couple of universities nearby that happen to have two students in the same program. However, once again the students come from a huge range of colleges and universities. In this case the schools where the students got their bachelor’s include Harvard, Bowdoin, U.Mass Lowell, I think there was someone from U.Mass Dartmouth, and there are students from at least two different colleges and one university that I had never heard of. Students come from highly ranked programs and from lower ranked programs. I am pretty sure that the ones that came from lower ranked programs did very well in those programs, but being near the top of the class is probably easier at U.Mass Lowell than it is at Harvard.
At one point one daughter (the one who is getting a PhD in a biomedical field) thought briefly about getting an MD instead. I happened to be talking to two different doctors at the time and chatted about where other students in their MD program got their bachelor’s. I got the same story. One said “all over the place”. The other said essentially the same thing but I do not recall his exact words.
The point is that students in very good MD programs get their bachelor’s degrees at a very, very wide range of universities.
Personally if I were premed, or if I had a child who was premed (and I did have a child who was pre-vet, and another who briefly though of being premed) I would most likely recommend avoiding Caltech, MIT, McGill, and Toronto due to the perception that they tend towards grade deflation. Otherwise I would look for a good fit. For one daughter this might mean a relatively small school (such as in the US we would call a liberal arts college, or in Canada we would call a small primarily undergraduate university). For the other daughter this might mean a mid-sized university near mountains and in an attractive small city. I would probably be a bit nervous about anything ranked lower than about 200 in the US news ranking, although apparently this does not keep students out of highly ranked DVM or biomedical PhD programs and it probably would not keep a student out of very good MD programs.
I understand that Harvard and Princeton get a higher percentage of their undergraduate students into MD programs compared to U.Mass Lowell and Seton Hall. However, a LOT of this is due to the consistent high quality and high academic skills of the students who start off at Harvard and Princeton in the first place. Someone coming out of high school with an unweighted 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT might be average as a freshman at Harvard or MIT or Stanford, or might be in the top 10% of incoming students at U.Mass Lowell. Their chances of getting into a good MD program probably will not differ much compared to whether they attend Harvard as an average student or U.Mass Lowell as a top 10% student. Premed classes will be challenging at either school. The student is going to matter a lot more than the school.
On the other hand, getting a doctorate is a very long and difficult and challenging path. This will wear on students to some extent. I saw this a bit a couple of months ago when I attended the graduation ceremony of a highly ranked DVM program. The students were thrilled to have gotten their doctorates. Some of them were also clearly tired and had been under stress that was just released. I think that it will help if students can take the first four years of this path at a college or university where they feel comfortable.
Which means that looking for a good fit is very important.
Just out of curiosity I just took at look at the US News top 20 schools, with a thought regarding where I might have recommended that a daughter go if she were premed and cost was no option.
Harvard and Princeton are high reaches for essentially all students. Personally I like Harvard Square as a place to spend four years, and four years in suburban NJ seems likely to be pleasant also. I used to know two people who got a bachelor’s at MIT and a graduate degree at Harvard, and both said that Harvard was a bit easier than MIT (and presumably a bit easier to maintain a medical-school-worthy GPA compared to MIT). Either would seem fine, but are high reaches.
MIT is where I actually got my bachelor’s degree. It is high stress. I do not think that I would personally recommend this much stress for someone starting on a tough 8 year path unless a student really, really wants to do it. The desire to do it needs to come from inside the student. You should do it because you want to do it and to prove to yourself that you can. I think of Caltech as being a lot like MIT but a bit smaller and with better weather.
Stanford I personally loved (I got a master’s there). It is also a lot of work. It is on the quarter system which means that the end of the quarter and final exams comes up faster than you expected. You better be ready. I happened to be there during a drought which meant that the weather was always nice. However, this did mean that when (not if) you spend 6 hours on a Saturday doing one homework problem then you just missed a sunny Saturday inside doing homework (which at the time was fine for me – I wanted to do it).
Yale I do not know much about but I doubt that it is much different from Harvard and Princeton. Ditto for Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern and U.Penn. I would look closely at the location in each case. There are some cases where large US cities are not as safe compared to large Canadian cities. I did know someone who got mugged at MIT. I knew someone else at MIT who had a black belt in two different martial arts, was jumped by two large men, and left them both semi-concious and walked back to his dorm unharmed.
Cornell is in a beautiful location. It and Chicago will both be academically very challenging. One daughter had a good friend in high school who was academically one of the very smartest people we knew (both parents are MDs) and who went to U.Chicago. He came back for Christmas vacation looking exhausted and saying that “Chicago is where fun goes to die”. Again not necessarily where I personally would start an 8 year marathon.
I have heard good things about Brown, including that it has a flexible curriculum. Universities in the US seem to have more general requirements compared to universities in Canada. I personally would rather avoiding having to take a large number of courses in areas where I personally have neither talent nor interest. I think that for me Brown might have an edge here (as would schools in Canada).
Columbia is in the middle of New York City, which is not where I personally would want to be. Dartmouth has the opposite problem, being in a very small town.
Getting into any medical school in the US as an international student is a HUGE, HUGE reach. It is definitely possible to get a bachelor’s in the US with a high GPA and good medical experience and not get into any medical school in the US, and this is more likely for an international student (such as a Canadian). I am dubious regarding whether getting a bachelor’s degree in the US, even at Harvard or Princeton or Stanford, would help a student get into medical school in Canada. To me it seems that if a Canadian who is NOT also a US citizen wants to get into medical school, their best bet is to get their bachelor’s degree at one of the very good schools in Canada.
And with straight A’s in high school and a 1550 SAT, I think that a Canadian can pretty much just pick whatever university in Canada they want to attend, send in an application, and plan to be there in September. Then they should expect premed classes to be challenging.
One other thing to think about is that most students who start university thinking “premed” end up doing something else. Some are unable to maintain a medical school worthy GPA. Many just decide that they want to do something else. However we are only talking about schools which are very good for a wide range of something else.
And at least the students I knew who ended up in any sort of medical related graduate program all had a lot of very good related experience, and associated very good references. I think that this helped them quite a bit. In some cases this experience, plus references, plus a strong determination to succeed, seemed to matter more than the difference between an academically very good student versus an exceptional student.