The University of British Columbia - Okanagan Campus - Kelowna, British Columbia

Loveraj Grewal

What a great vibe! I was there for a meeting; I wish I could go back to university and study at UBC Okanagan:) beautiful location and awesome people.

Fiffs

UBCO is an amazing institution that offers a high a standard of education , the staff are friendly, the campus is beautiful and it has wide variety of amenities for students to aid in their learning and relaxation . The location of the campus also makes it easy for students to focus on their studies, it is free of distractions and it has lots of recreational facilities for students to enjoy, additionally it has lots of delicious food options available on campus. I recommend UBCO.

M

The campus is beautiful and the people are nice. However, I do not see UBC (Okanagan) as a true UBC that ranks among the top 30 universities in the world.

I am a graduate student, and I can say that graduate courses in Engineering (at least in my discipline) are scarce. In fact, most of the offered courses are cross-listed between undergraduate and graduate students. Therefore, the materials are mainly structured for undergraduates.

Many professors are young, which might be a good thing in some cases, but they are actually too young and lack significant academic or industry milestones before joining UBC-O. Moreover, many come from noticeably lower-ranked universities. In contrast, many professors at UBC-V are graduates from Stanford, UC Berkeley, U of T, and other European/North American prestigious institutions.

Overall, and from the bottom of my heart, it is difficult for me to recommend UBC-O to any of my friends who are interested in graduate studies.

Seeing other people's comments, I can see that UBC-O does not even care much about their Google reviews. However, I am posting this for others to know more about my experience.

Anonymous Browser

I have a lot of complaints, here are some: You are just a number, you will be basically invisible. I received a 92% overall average for my degree and received 99% as a final grade in a class, yet I received no honour, no awards, no recognition. My double bachelor came as one generic certificate which is very disappointing for twice the work for two separate disciplines. I am also not receiving any timely support as an alumni. Highly suggest looking for a smaller campus where you might mean something. It is hard to ignore that campus processes highly favour persons who come from a wealthy background and not persons who have to work 1-3 jobs to fund their schooling.

Westbank Harvest Pure Fruit Juice

An important space for learning. Lots of room for improvement. Nice to see some innovation but room for plenty more!

Eric Estrada

Friendly people here and the architecture is amazing as well as the top notch parking and ease of directions within UBC. A beautiful place!

K

Undermines international students’ achievement as “just being here is privileged” by taking away a limited opportunity for getting small awards at the end of the term in order to allocate money to new vending machines and useless clubs. And not enough study space, it’s always packed and hard to find a place to sit down. Any kinds of the administration process is always slow and limited. Food is expensive. There’s no housing support and need to pay at least $1000 to get a safe and study-able environment with 5 other roommates. No affordable housing and they will reject you to apply for whatever reason they don’t like. I was WORRIED about me being homeless in all my academic years I spent here. This severely affects your mental health, which makes you disadvantaged in terms of finance and academic in comparison to your peers who can afford or access to better accommodation. Not enough courses and flexibility. For undergrad level, course material is uncompetitive for other colleges (including community colleges). You can transfer if you’re in the first or second year, they don’t really care. And always sky train wins, the public transportation system here is undeniably the worst I’ve ever seen in Canada.

C

Beautiful location, however, as an international student, I did not realise how isolated it would be. Coming from Switzerland, and growing up in Singapore, public transport was a thing, but do not count on that here, unless you want to be stuck on campus 24/7. If you come from a big city overseas, please realise, you may feel super super isolated!

Campus lifestyle was fun, good parties, nice people. I find it had a decent mix of local / international students. Great Gym!

Fees are fees, you chose to pay these before attending any institution, so do your research.

Now, Value... To be completely honest, I found that the classes I attended were uninspiring. The professors were OK, but none of them really inspired me to learn more. It was just super bland and vanilla. To be honest, I slowly stopped attending some of my classes, as I found it to be a waste of time. Each to their own, and I do have to admit, I was never in love with the idea of school (however I did pursue this as its pretty much a rule of life if you want to make a living). I ended up dropping out of this school, and moving to another institution, where I completed my Bachelor's.

Maybe it has changed since I attended. But big point was the uninspiring classes, and the isolation. If you get accepted into the UBC Vancouver campus, I would recommend choosing that instead.