UNBC admissions show gradual growth in enrollment

As of mid-September, UNBC has 58 more students walking the campus since last year.

While it’s not the school’s highest number of enrollment, it’s shown a gradual climb from the past few years.

The general topic of admissions has been circulating recently, especially following the news of a Surrey woman being charged in connection to the admissions scandal that took place in the United States.

The Department of Justice in the United States has stated that Xiaoning Sui was arrested in Spain following an indictment alleging that she paid $400,000 US to an admissions consultant to have her son admitted to UCLA as a purported soccer recruit in 2018. The allegations against Sui have not yet been tested in court.

Despite that, Dan Ryan, Provost and Vice President of Academic, said that it would be much more difficult for that sort of thing to happen here in Canada.

“This is maybe where it’s a little bit different from the States, where we depend more closely on the official transcripts. It’s a more numeric calculation relative to the GPA, rather than the GPA plus other items where it may be more difficult to determine whether they’re accurate.”

Ryan said he’s not aware of any such incident of a fraudulent admissions application to UNBC. Part of that is due to the decisions being based on official transcripts, rather than having any third-party being involved when the application process. However, there are cases where UNBC may receive an application of an international student who might be coming from an institution that their office is not familiar with. In that case, Ryan said that the Registrar at UNBC will then take measures to ensure the authenticity of that institution before admitting a student.

On the day that UNBC ranked highly in Maclean’s University rankings for the sixth straight year, the school is also gradually increasing its enrollment. In an interview with MyPGNow, Ryan explained a bit of what goes into the admissions process.

When applying to UNBC, Ryan said that students actually end up enrolling in general studies for their first year. It’s not until their second year that they then determine their program.

“At UNBC, we actually admit them to UNBC in a general holding pattern. They actually request their program by the time that they get into their second year. We don’t actually admit directly to programs, except in a few very specific cased. They tend to be the more competitive programs. For example, Engineering, and that would be one that they would enter directly to and that would be based upon the GPA of the transcript from the institution that they are coming from.”

For the Fall Semester, 3,570 students are studying at UNBC.