University of British Columbia
speciality: Environmental Sciences

The University of British Columbia is an overall beautiful school. It has an abundance of green spaces to socialize and study, countless restaurants and coffee shops to relax and unwind as a student. Being a third year Urban Forestry student, also minoring in Landscape and Recreation Planning I have had the experience of being in a variety of design, science and forestry classes. I have found some classes super helpful such as the ones focusing on landscape design, urban green design, and human health. But there also have been some classes that I found to be a waste of money. Unfortunately you don’t get to choose your classes and you will always enjoy some and not so much the others. There definitely could be more money into helping students find job opportunities or practical experience, instead of wasting money on new buildings and other non-necessities. It also costs A LOT to live in Vancouver and a huge downfall is how much your expenses rack up to combining rent, groceries and other things you may have. Overall, it’s a beautiful school with tons of programs, but its wayyy too expensive and students aren’t always prioritized.

Living on campus has allowed me to significantly decrease my commute time to classes, while also giving me the luxury of sleeping an extra hour and a half – which is how long it would take if I lived off campus.

I majored in Urban Forestry as an undergraduate, and this program is one of the younger programs under the UBC Faculty of Forestry. Nevertheless, it has a strong faculty background. Some of the foundation classes in the first and second years are usually large classes, mostly with 70 to 200 students. However, the more specialized courses in the third and fourth years are taught in small classes, usually with only about 40 students. For the most part, the forestry classes are very interesting and give students plenty of opportunity to practice outdoors. UBC definitely deserves to be recommended to others for its use of the campus and Pacific Spirit Park as an outdoor classroom to learn about plant classification, soil environment, etc. The campus is also a very pleasant and convenient place for students to live. The dormitory buildings are usually connected to the cafeteria, which usually offers a variety of food to meet the needs of students from different countries. The campus is equipped with a gymnasium, a swimming pool and a stadium for students to use. It is a QS world ranked university with international students from all over the world, where you can make friends with people from different countries and experience different cultures. As a school that borrows from First Nations land, UBC also has a great respect for First Nations culture.