Registrarial Procedures

Admission requirements vary depending on an applicant’s academic background. Full information on our criteria is available online. It’s important to remember that we consider many of our applicants on the strength of both their academic standing and their personal profile.

The personal profile is part of the application for admission to UBC. Depending on an applicant’s academic background or program of interest, he or she may be prompted to complete the personal profile which involves responding to questions with short essay responses. Applicants are asked to reflect on their experiences and provide thoughtful responses. Those responses are read and scored by trained readers, and that score is then reviewed in conjunction with an applicant’s academic achievement to determine overall admissibility.

High school applicants are held to a minimum average of admission of 67% for admission to all programs. However, due to limited enrolment, a higher average is required in most programs. For transfer applicants, the minimum average of admission needed to qualify for admission is a C average (60% where 50% is a passing grade), or grade point average of 2.0 (calculated on a 4.0-point scale), over a minimum of 24 transferable credits. Applicants presenting fewer than 24 credits are evaluated on the basis of both final high school grades and the partial post-secondary studies completed.

The online application for admission normally becomes available in the late summer or early fall and remains open until the application deadline of January 15. Certain degree programs may accept late applications, but applicants are advised to submit an application for admission by the deadline.

Offers of admission are usually extended to students starting in January and they continue to go out into the spring. BC high school applicants make up our largest applicant pool and the majority of BC high school admits receive offers between March and April.

The majority of the Admissions team is located in Brock Hall on the Vancouver campus. Most of the processing and evaluating of applications happens in Vancouver, but there is a small Admissions team on the Okanagan campus located in the University Centre, UNC 322.

Please contact your local Admissions team at admissions.ok@ubc.ca.

If you receive and open an envelope containing an academic transcript, retain the envelope(s) and forward both the envelope(s) and the transcript to Enrolment Services, UNC 322, with the following information:

• Your name and department or unit
• Sealed or not sealed – Please indicate if the envelope was sealed or not when received
• Direct from institution or provided by student – Please indicate if you received the envelope by mail from the institution or from the student

Why are these details important? For admission and added transfer credit purposes, students must arrange for UBC to receive an official transcript. The information you provide assists us in determining if the transcript can be considered official or not. If we receive a transcript that has been opened elsewhere on campus and we cannot confirm whether or not the envelope was sealed or who sent the document, we will consider the transcript to be unofficial.

If you receive a transcript via fax or email, please forward the cover sheet and transcript to admissions.ok@ubc.ca with the following information:

• Your name and department or unit
• Requested or not requested – Please indicate if the transcript was received as a result of a request from your department or unit
• Direct from institution or provided by student – Please indicate if you received the email or fax from the institution or from the student

If the transcript was requested by a UBC staff member and was received directly from the issuing institution, the transcript will be considered official.

Official versus unofficial:

High school transcript: official only if it is received in a sealed envelope that has the school’s address on it. The student can receive the transcript in the sealed envelope and provide it to us, but the envelope must be sealed and not tampered with.

Post-secondary transcript: official depending on the sending institution:

• Canadian and American institutions: the transcript is only official if received in a sealed envelope sent directly from the institution
• Non-American international institutions: the transcript must be in the international institution’s untampered, sealed envelope, but the student can bring the institution’s sealed envelope to us.

Why the difference? Some international institutions will not mail transcripts for their students; the student must be issued the transcript, and we will accept what the student then provides to us.

All transcripts are uploaded to the student’s SISC docket for review and future reference.

For more information contact admissions.ok@ubc.ca.

Students can order their official UBC transcript by logging into their SSC account, highlighting the Grades and Records tab, and then selecting Order Transcripts. Alternatively, they can visit Student Services & Financial Support (UNC 214) and have it printed while they wait. Students can find more information on ordering a transcript.

Transfer credit articulation is the process of determining what UBC Okanagan transfer credit will be awarded for coursework completed at another institution.

A database of UBC articulation decisions is maintained and searchable through a SISC Admin Lookup search. See the FAQs for information on performing this search.

Articulations are always done with a review of a course outline.

UBC Vancouver coursework completed by a UBC Okanagan student, and vice versa, is considered UBC cross-campus registration, not transfer credit, as it does not involve coursework completed at another institution. To assist with student advising, the SISC database includes searchable UBCO <> UBCV course equivalencies.

If, at the time of admission, an applicant has completed a post-secondary course that has not yet been articulated and does not appear in our database, Undergraduate Admissions will determine the applicant’s admissibility and award unassigned transfer credit, if applicable. This admission process is based on, but is not exclusive to, UBC’s membership in the Pan-Canadian Consortium on Admissions and Transfer (PCCAT) agreement. The PCCAT agreement supports student mobility within Canadian provinces and territories by ensuring the transferability of first- and second-year university courses, the final year of studies leading to a diploma in college studies (DCS) in Quebec, and university transfer courses offered by community colleges and university colleges in British Columbia and Alberta.

• Unassigned Credit – Academic Calendar
• Pan-Canadian Protocol on the Transferability of University Credits

All Canadian institution articulations are recorded in the SISC database. BCCAT institution articulations are recorded both in the SISC database and in the BC Transfer Guide.

International articulations, with the exception of a few recognized American institutions (e.g., Harvard), are not recorded in the SISC database.  International articulation decisions remain in effect for four years—unless updated prior to the four-year end date—and are recorded on the UBC Okanagan Enrolment Services articulation tracking spreadsheet.  International articulations are redone at least every four years.

Transfer credit articulations are transfer credit decisions that will be applied to all UBC Okanagan students.

Degree Navigator approvals are approvals that identify how a transfer credit that has already been awarded should be applied to a student’s degree requirements through a Degree Navigator entry. For example, a student is awarded transfer credit for COSC 1st (3). The program advisor approves the use of COSC 1st (3) toward the student’s BSC-O Computer Science Major COSC 121 (3) requirement. A Degree Navigator entry is done to allow COSC 1st (3) TR to satisfy the COSC 121 (3) requirement.

One-off articulations are articulation decisions that are to be applied to one student only. For example, if a student was not awarded transfer credit for a course completed at another institution and a review of the student’s complete record reveals that an articulation decision should be applied to this student only, this one-off articulation would be applied to the student’s record, but not to all students.

These guides provide detailed information on articulation and transfer credit procedures. To gain access to this information, please submit your request to transfercredit.ok@ubc.ca.

1. Open SISC
2. Click Admin Lookup button
3. Choose Transfer Credit Equivalencies search query
4. Delete auto end date in End Date field
5. Enter the Institution Code where the course was taken
6. Enter the course information—without spaces, i.e. CHEM101 or CHEM*—in the Sending Inst Course field
7. Click Search to run the search

No, as this is defined as cross-campus registration beneath the UBC umbrella. These cross-campus courses should be reviewed by the student’s faculty advisor to see if they can be applied to the student’s degree requirements; decisions will be applied through a Degree Navigator entry.

If this is at the point of admission, then the student will be awarded the appropriate unassigned transfer credit. The only time no credit would be assigned is if an articulation exists stating “no credit if taken alone.”

For current student LOPs: the student must complete both courses to receive transfer credit. An articulation request can be done—prior to the student taking the course—to determine if any transfer credit can be awarded for the lone course, or not.

All transferable credit is granted to a student when they are admitted to UBC and that credit is recorded on the student’s SISC Transfer Credit screen. If the student is eligible for more than half of the total credit requirement for their degree, then the degree program transfer credit eligibility will be capped at that halfway maximum. The student’s advisor will then decide which transfer credits are most applicable to the student’s degree program.

Transfer credits are not awarded to these types of students. The faculty should review the student’s record and determine what degree requirements are already satisfied, and which remain to be completed. These decisions are recorded through entries applied to the student’s Degree Navigator degree screen.

Courses lacking sufficient rigour, content, scope, and performance measures are not granted transfer credit. Courses that are not deemed to be degree-appropriate or academic are also not granted transfer credit. These include non-academic courses in the following areas:

• Physical and social activity
• Academic or career preparation
• Personal development
• Religious or philosophical indoctrination
• Technical vocational courses
• English as a Second Language