Josh Tang

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada in 2005

I went on exchange during the second session of my second year to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada in 2005. As with everyone else who goes on exchange, I had the time of my life. On the academic side of things however, going on exchange was not as easy to plan as they make it sound. Especially as I went early on in my program, doing courses from UBC that corresponded to courses here was very hard as their second year has very few courses in common with the program at UNSW. I would think that going on exchange as late as possible would mean that you would be able to find more matching courses, especially in fourth year where you could do your electives there. It would surprise me if an engineering student could go on exchange and not fall behind in their degree because courses are roughly credited as 1 UNSW credit = 1 UBC credit. To do 24 credits at UBC would mean taking roughly 7 or 8 courses and I didn’t meet one exchange student who did more than 5 over there. Exchange students at UBC are expected to take between 9 and 15 UBC credits but it is OK to do more. Doing the majority of your gen ed courses there could help you achieve a full UNSW load but who wants to go on exchange and work as hard or even harder as they do at UNSW? Doing gen ed courses there is a good idea as they have courses that UNSW can’t offer and the workload is much less than that of an engineering course which is just what you want.

Being an exchange student means having as much fun as possible and doing things that you would never get to do back home. Living away from home for the first time and being in a group of other like minded exchange students was a blast! Vancouver is such a cool city with so much to do! There are tons of sports to do at UBC and come winter, Whistler is just a 2 hour bus ride from the campus.

There was never any time to feel bored while on exchange at UBC. There was something on pretty much everyday. Having friends from all over the world was unique and a lot of fun too. There are lots of cool places to go to on weekend trips or longer during long weekends and make sure you take advantage of this. Hiring a car usually works out well because it isn’t hard to get a group of people to do a trip together.

Although I am one year behind in my degree, I have no regrets whatsoever about my experience. Going on exchange is worth way more than any negative implications staying back at uni for an extra year can bring. This is the way every other exchange students I know thinks as well and believe me, there are a lot of students who fall behind because of exchange. Don’t ever hesitate about going on exchange because whatever worries you have about it will disappear once you get there and realise how awesome a time you’re going to have. If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to answer them or talk to you about anything to do with exchange at UBC. Contact me at jomingara@hotmail.com