University of Waterloo Speciality : Art & Design
programme: Global Business and Digital Arts

Overall, the University of Waterloo is great. The services the university offers, staff, and most of the professors (not all, most, and based on my experiences) are very understanding, caring, and passionate. And, you have a variety of clubs and events to attend to gain experience in your field of choice. Now, I will talk more about GBDA, so buckle up.

From a GBDA student standpoint, this program is amazing if you are considering entrepreneurship or UX/UI design and research, digital design, interactive media, etc, as your future career path. GBDA offers innovative classrooms with exciting topics, technologies, and resources for you to unleash your ideas in interactive design. You would be surprised at how easy the designing courses are, but you can only excel and shine if you put in the effort and time for the courses.

However, there are a few things to consider. First, the program is offered in Stratford, a hardly student-friendly city. With that said, the time you spend commuting to campus is a sacrifice of your sleep if you have 9 AM classes, or you will need to move to Stratford for 3 years if you cannot find car pool to school(after the first year, all GBDA courses will be offered in-person on the Stratford campus). Although there is a business aspect to it, the business courses in GBDA are very general. Most of them are offered in 3A and 3B terms, depending on what your cohort is. Hence, if you are considering to pursuit a more business-centric or marketing career path, I would recommend choosing a different program than GBDA.

Waterloo is a solid university with great professors and informative classes. It’s location in Waterloo also offers students access to a nice city full of young people also attending UW, or the surrounding schools.

The GBDA program also offered a wide variety of classes to teach everything from international business and project management, to digital media capture and user centric design. There are countless careers that can use GBDA as a starting point, which is a real advantage.

As a proud member of the Global Business and Digital Arts graduating class of 2023, I must admit that the program felt somewhat general in nature, and without the benefit of integrated co-op experiences, we were left with limited opportunities to apply our learnings in a practical setting. However, I am pleased to report that the new GBDA streams now include co-op, and I have every confidence that this addition will vastly enhance the program’s overall value and prepare future students for the demands of the industry.

University of Waterloo is a very nice and quiet place to study. There are a lot of resources to help students, especially international students, to feel welcomed and settle down. What I disliked about the university is that there is no way to travel to campuses after 1st year. Since I’m in the Stratford campus it’s a struggle to commute there. So I would recommend providing travel facilities.