How's Res Life At Ubc?

[MillerGenuineDraft]

Hey CDC how are ya?

I've finally made the decision on going to the University of British Columbia, attending the Sauder School of Business. I'm pretty excited and I wanted to hear about your experiences with res life, particularly during your first year.

Also, any other comments or insight would be great (maybe some insight on Sauder and what it's like)

I live in North Delta so moving to an actual city is something I'm totally up for!

Thank you!

[The Brahma Bull]

Absolutely loved first/2nd year living in the dorms at ubc. I lived in Totem Park and I met some of the best friends I will ever have on my floor. Kicked ass being on a coed floor too, but they aren't all like that.

Enjoy it!

[The Situation]

Did you win in the residence lottery? Which residence are you going to be living in? I didn't bother applying this time because I found a nice studio in Kitsilano and I only have another term left before graduating.

I spent two years in Place Vanier and it was awesome getting to know everyone on my floor. Try to get into a co-ed floor building unless you want a sausage fest. Vanier and Totem are meant for 1st and 2nd year students who are looking to live in a place with minimal work (no cleaning washrooms or cooking). I spent another year in Fairview Crescent and its kind of old and worn down but it was still fun to getting to know the people I lived with. Fairview, Gage, and Thunderbird are more mature and there is more responsibilities.

[Denguin]

Just finished my first year at UBC... I had a room in Totem Park. First off, congrats in getting admitted...

Overall, I am extremely happy with my decision to live on residence, and it was a sure sad day to have to move out.

The Pros:

- Obviously living with a bunch of people your age year-round allows you to make a lot of friends. There are all sorts of crowds, so chances are you'll find the one you're looking for.

- It's FUN! There's always someone blasting loud music hoping to attract people to have a good time!

- Convinience: Having early morning classes and then late evening classes takes it's toll... it's nice to be able to come back during a break for a quick recharge/nap. Also, food is always 2 minutes away. Obviously you can also wake up a little later to get to class. Since you're always on campus, it's a lot easier to get involved in things like intramural sports too!

- You get a LOT of stories to tell...

The Cons:

- Cafeteria food... Sure, it's great to begin with, but after a while, you get SICK of the rotation. Plus, you probably put on weight from all the crap you'll be eating.

- Noise levels: sometimes it can be loud up until 3-4 AM on let's say a Monday night! It absolutely sucks to get minimal sleep with an exam or long day the next day.

- Fire alarms: my building had upwards of 30 fire alarms this year... anywhere from 2 AM, to 4 AM, to 8 AM, to 5 PM! They come in waves and get REALLY annoying.

- Counter-productivity: naturally being surrounded by a bunch of party freaks can make you a little unfocused... causing the grades to go down. If you're the type to get persuaded into doing illicit activities, watch out!

- Small rooms: you get used to them, but they can be a shock for some people. They also have hideous painted cement walls (if you get an old building)... Cover them up and you'll be fine. It's also tough to keep the room neat (if you're that type of person) since there's just simply no where to put everything!

- If you get a shared bathroom, prepare to have crappy showers for the entire year... Every time someone flushes a toilet or turns on the sink, prepare to be burned. Oh, also people like to piss everywhere and on everything. Also, nasty stuff can go down in the showers (use your imagination)...

- People who live on residence tend to skip class a lot more as well...

- Bike theft is RAMPANT.

- Laundry is annoying to do and extremely expensive.

- Residence is expensive. MAKE SURE YOU GO FOR THE MINIMUM MEAL PLAN. You get charged an overhead fee (proportional to your meal plan rate)... so if you just top-up your meal dollars later, you can escape paying an extra ~$500.

While it may look like I felt there were a lot more cons to living on residence, I feel that those are mostly small things and are a minor sacrifice for convenience and bonding with probable life-long friends. In first-term, I used to go back home every weekend or so. That changed in second term, and I'm glad I spent a lot more time on residence (although it's nice to go home every once in a while). I HIGHLY recommend living in residence, and would do it again in a heartbeat. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask!

I wasn't in Sauder, so I can't comment on your experience... However, I heard they had a kick-ass frosh, and they have a LOT of money. They have an amazing building... which I study in all the time since there's sometimes free food and it's just so beautiful . We hijacked conference rooms and projected the Canucks games for every playoff game this year... UBC Security even came in to join us for a bit! In your 2nd/3rd/4th+ years, you won't have any Sauder-related classes on Fridays too! As for the people, a lot of them fit the Sauder stereotype (rich kid in a suit with a tonne of gel in their hair)... but overall, they're pretty cool people.

Edit: since you're from the Vancouver area, be wary of taking too many things over to your room every now and then... You'll regret it when you have to move out like I did!

[iinteenseee]

First of all.... CONGRATS on getting into Sauder! I'm in Sauder too . I think we only accept 500-600 students a year, out of like 7000 applicants? You'll hear that a lot during your first week and any type of orientation event haha.

Res life is pretty awesome because you'll meet a ton of new friends and I can't stress the convenience of living 10 minutes from your classes enough. You'll be living in either Totem or Vanier since you're in 1st year. Totem has some brand new buildings that were built last summer.. they're REALLY nice (personal bathroom shared with one person), but slightly more expensive. Vanier has a couple of single sex buildings, some same-sex alternating floor buildings, and two relatively newer buildings that have coed floors. Unless you get one of the nicer buildings, don't expect too much .. some of the older buildings are supper ghetto. Oh andm Vanier's cafeteria is infinitely better than Totem's.

Sauder is awesome and I'm sure you'll meet a lot of great friends. Can't stress this enough: MAKE SURE YOU GO TO SAUDER FROSH!! It's a huge first year orientation right before school starts in September. It's really fun and you'll meet a ton of friends there.. btw, LOTS of crazy partying and random hookups if you're into that, lol.

CUS (Commerce Undergraduate Society) really encourages students to get involved some way. CUS has a ton of business clubs that provide events and networking sessions for certain options (Accounting, Finance). Outside of CUS, UBC in general has a ton of clubs that you can get yourself involved with. It's a great way to meet people - honestly, you rarely ever meet people that will be more than an acquaintance during lectures because everyone's trying to focus on the actual class.

Oh and one awesome thing.. CUS is EXTREMELY damn rich. Not to brag or anything :D, but we have more money than any other undergraduate society at UBC, and our building is probably one of the nicest on campus. The entire building just finished renovations last year. CUS subsidizes a lot of events and dances so they always turn out to be a blast.

In first year, you're basically taking prereq's and electives. Comm 101 is really the only taste of business you will face until second year. Core average (Econ 101+102, Math 184/104, Eng) required to promote to second year is 65%.

Econ 101

Econ 102

Math 184 or 104 - 184 for no calculus background, 104 for calc background - i'd recommend 184 either way

Comm 101 - KILLER course haha

Comm 292

English 110/111/112 - I'd recommend 112, it's the easiest.

5 Electives - you can take electives from any faculty but they'll most likely end up being Arts courses

If you do live on res, don't get too caught up with partying and drinking and lose track of your studies. University is a lot harder (material wise/expectations) than high school is, and Sauder especially is VERY competitive due to the nature of business students, even though we don't have any type of a bell curve. Pre-reading for lectures is a 100% must.

I feel like I'm starting to ramble a bit now so just PM me for any more questions. Good luck!

[The Brahma Bull]

^^^^I found Eng 110 easier than Eng 112, but I had to take both so whatever. It also didn't help that my English 112 prof. was a complete crackpot. She kinda reminded me of Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter. My TA for Eng 110 was a cutie though so maybe that helped. ^ In terms of studying, just do a bit each day. If you do that, you'll be ahead of the majority that just cram right at the last second. haha. All things in moderation and you will be fine. If you do badly on one thing, it's not the end of the world. Just keep your head up and keep going.

There are sooooo many smokin' hot, smart and friendly young ladies in rez. I love UBC. If you play sports, you can sign up for intramural sports or you can just do free Drop-in at the rec centre (basketball, futsol, etc. They let you sign out a b-ball if you give them your ID.)

[NoShowWilly]

don't skip out on a chance of being on res. every one of my friends that lived on res at either ubc or sfu had a great time. i went to college and completely missed out on that experience. you can always go home and study for an exam if necessary.

[MillerGenuineDraft]

Wow! Thanks for all of the amazing input! This is really making me feel good about my decision with UBC, so thank you very much.

Some other questions though:

-How is the dorm life? Having a roommate and what not. Any bad experiences?

-Also, are dorm parties really as fun as people say? We throw some mad house parties here in Delta and I don't really see how dorm parties could work lol.

-What is exactly is Frosh everyone talks about?

[Denguin]

Wow! Thanks for all of the amazing input! This is really making me feel good about my decision with UBC, so thank you very much.

Some other questions though:

-How is the dorm life? Having a roommate and what not. Any bad experiences?

-Also, are dorm parties really as fun as people say? We throw some mad house parties here in Delta and I don't really see how dorm parties could work lol.

-What is exactly is Frosh everyone talks about?

[CamTheCanucksFan]

I live in North Delta too lol

[MillerGenuineDraft]

I can't quite give you a first hand account about having a roommate... But from what I've heard from multiple people that it's MUCH better to have your own room. Even if your roommate is your best friend, you'll still find something you just can't stand about him/her. Also, in university, your bedtime will be quite erratic from time to time... You may be pulling all nighters studying, or your roommate might be. Pretty much, you never dictate your own bedtime, and that on it's own seems like it would be a huge pain. Furthermore, if your schedules don't match, and your roommate has to be up at 7 AM while you don't have class until 1 PM... you can see where that goes. I've also had to see some guy sleep in our lounge a bunch of times because he's come home to find a sock on his doorknob .

There aren't really "dorm parties"... There's a rule in residence where you can't have 7 or more people in a room at any one time if there's open alcohol. That said, it's not really enforced too strictly (depending on your RA, who will most likely just ask you to take it somewhere else)... but keep in mind these rooms are TINY, so accomodating 7 people is already a stretch. Alcohol itself is not controlled at all by higher powers at residence, but you're just not allowed to have an open bottle/can in a common area (hallways, lounges, commonsblock). Usually what happens is you sort of jump from floor to floor with a small group of people, spend some time with the people there, then move on. Larger gatherings usually take place outside of residence.

Frosh, you could say, is a sort of break-in/bonding time for each faculty... think about it as a chance to meet people while being drunk for a whole weekend. It usually occurs within the first week or two of university, and involves the student commitee of the respective faculty planning activities for everyone. I'll tell you one thing, the end result is the same for every faculty: getting drunk. For instance, my FROSH weekend consisted of camping up in Squamish at a near-empty camp site. You can probably guess how that turned out... In some Ontario universities, frosh can last for an entire week, and are generally much "better" than what we get at UBC.

[ckamo]

^^^^I found Eng 110 easier than Eng 112, but I had to take both so whatever. It also didn't help that my English 112 prof. was a complete crackpot. She kinda reminded me of Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter.