UBC staff have been working hard to welcome the Class of 2017
After months of planning and organizing, they’re ready. A host of UBC staff have been preparing to welcome thousands of first-year students from B.C., Canada and the world since…well, since they finished last year’s welcome duties.
The cycle for recruiting this year’s class began more than a year ago, and enrolment service professionals like Jeannine Cairns are eager to greet her assigned students and help them through the process of paying tuition, registering for class, arranging finances and any other enrolment matters they encounter (story here) .
The UBC class of 2017 is as strong as ever academically, as well as in the school of life – this is the first time all first-year students on both campuses have been admitted based on grades and a personal profile. It’s called broad-based admissions, and helps assess what students learn outside of school. UBC is the largest university in Canada to use such a system.
Incoming first-years are also the most social media savvy class to date. Many had their initial discussions with UBC on the University’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube channels. UBC’s prospective student Twitter following nearly doubled to 4,000 in the last year, and Instagram photos tagged with #UBC grew from 2,000 last fall to more than 45,000 today.
While projected fall enrolment numbers will be announced soon, the University continues to completely fill all of its funded spaces for domestic students. This year UBC will serve thousands of incoming first-year students from high schools in every corner of B.C. UBC’s reputation for academic excellence has also attracted top students from beyond Canada. First-year international students – who pay the full cost of their education, and do not take away any provincially funded spaces for domestic students – are attending both campuses and bringing international perspectives to many important areas of study.
For all students moving into student housing, teams led by residence life managers like Amy Stewart are whipping student suites into shape for August 31 move-in day (story here).
And a small army of energetic student volunteers, guided by Shannon Sterling, have been planning what might be North America’s largest one-day orientation for many months for Tuesday, Sept. 3 (story here).
It’s been a lot of hard work by these and many, many more to prepare for the next four weeks. And the staff on our campuses wouldn’t miss it for the world.