Popular Elective Courses for First Years

What are electives? 

• Electives are simply courses that are not explicitly stated in your degree program. They can be courses related to your field or courses in a different faculty. Some students prefer taking "easy" electives while some students choose harder ones. 

What are popular electives for Science students (with little/no pre-reqs)? Useful = red

Arts

• CLST 301: The Technical Terms of Medicine and Biological Science
• ECON 101/102: Micro & Macro Economics
• ENGL 110: Approaches to Literature
• ENGL 112: Strategies for University Writing
• MUSC 103: Intro to Music Theory
• MUSC 119: Intro to Music Technology
• MUSC 326A: Music Appreciation
• PHIL 120: Introduction to Critical Thinking (cannot take if you have 90+ credits)
• PHIL 125: Introduction to Scientific Reasoning
• PHIL 220: Symbolic Logic I
• PHIL 433A: Bio-Medical Ethics
• PHIL 435A: Environmental Ethics
• PHIL 460A: Philosophy of Science
• PHIL 464: Philosophy of Biology
• PSYC 101/102: Intro to Biological & Cognitive Psych + Developmental, Social, Personality, and Clinical Psychology

Science

• BIOL 300: Fundamentals of Biostatistics
• CPSC 110: Computation, Programs, and Programming
• EOSC 110: The Solid Earth: A Dynamic Planet
• EOSC 114: The Catastrophic Earth: Natural Disasters
• STAT 200: Elementary Statistics for Applications

Read More

Survival Guide for Incoming UBC Students

Congratulations! You are accepted to UBC. Now what...

Home for the next 4+ years

Summer Survival Tips #1 - 5

(textbooks, choosing residence, course registration, popular UBC unofficial sites, preparing this summer)

Popular First Year Electives

How do I ___? 
As I receive questions, I will do my best to post answers here

Read More

Summer Survival Guide (#1-5) for Incoming UBC Students

1. DO NOT buy your textbooks until the first day of class, and definitely not from UBC Bookstore
•  Even if you are extremely eager, ask a friend who has previously taken the course if it is worth buying the textbook. Often on the first day of class the professor will emphasis whether or not the textbook will be essential for the course. Be sure to ask if previous textbook editions will be compatible with the course. 
• For cheap places to buy textbooks, Discount Textbooks is on campus and has good selection or there are multiple Facebook groups where students buy/sell their textbooks. 
2. I want to live in residence, but should I choose Place Vanier, Totem Park or Walter Gage? 
• Location:



• Vanier and Totem are traditionally for first years. There are residence advisors (RA) on each floor and they work hard to create a great community within the residence. Since Vanier and Totem are typically full of first years, it may be difficult to study in your dorm sometimes despite quiet hours especially if you are in the upper years. However, if you want to meet new people your own age, these are definitely residence to choose. It can a bit noisy especially if you live on the first floor of the residence, but typically during finals it is pretty quiet.
• Walter Gage is typically for second years and up since it requires students to cook their own meals (or eat out a lot). Students have their own room, but share a bathroom & kitchen with 5 other roommates. The noise level depends on your roommates, but most people are quite understanding. It is harder to meet people outside your "quad". 
• Proximity to Classes: 
• Unless you are in Sauder (light blue) or Pharmacy (fuschia), be prepared for some walking around
• First year chemistry, biology, physics are typically in the blue rectangle area (regardless of faculty, so yes including APSC); however, math and English are often in MATH or BUCH
• A lot of arts courses are taught at BUCH (purple rectangle), but there are other arts buildings including geography, asian studies, and psychology. 

• Bus Stop: 
• The main bus loop (yellow star) is quite far away from Totem or Vanier; however, there are community shuttles that go to the other UBC residences. 
• If you are coming home late or have a lot of things to carry (ie. groceries), make sure you bring a friend if you live at Totem or Vanier!
• If you do not feel safe on campus, call AMS Safewalk (free walking or shuttle around campus until 2am daily). 
• Rooms + Pricing (details available): 
• Vanier: Double ($5062), Single ($5800 or $6223 depending on building)
• Plus mandatory meal plan (minimum: $4,125.50)
• Totem: Double ($5062), Single ($5800 to $6962*) 
• Plus mandatory meal plan (minimum: $4,125.50)
• * with private bathroom
• Walter Gage: 6-Bedroom Suite ($6592 from September - April)
• No mandatory meal plan
1. What courses should I register for? 
• For Sciences, the official registration information is here (please always refer to this since rules are constantly changing)
• First Year Sciences have 3 options: 
• General, Coordinated Science Program (CSP), or Science One
• Both CSP and Science One have Standard Timetable (STT) where you do not need to choose individual courses
• An excellent post about registration by fellow UBC MICB alumni: https://idm04.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/transition-high-school-to-first-year/#Registration 
• Make sure you take the prerequisites required for second-year specialization, Law, Med, Dentistry etc...
• Details: http://science.ubc.ca/students/degree/apply/req 
2. What are popular UBC-related unofficial sites? 
• Syrup Trap (even though this has grown well beyond UBC now)
• #WHATWESHOULDCALLUBC
• Ubyssey: UBC's Official Student Newspaper
• If you like cars, University of Beautiful Cars
3. How can I prepare for university this summer? 
• I don't recommend reading ahead or any "academic" work because university is quite different than high school in terms of what exams are like and what professors expect. It is hard to prepare for something you don't understand.  
• Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone! Meet new people! Enjoy your last free summer because chances are you will be working full-time for the rest of your summers until you graduate.

Read More

MICB 322 & MICB 323

MICB 322 (with Jennifer Sibley)

• Course Taken: M 1pm, W Lab (September, 2014 - December, 2014)
• Format: The course is pretty relaxed, and Ms. Sibley is more concerned about everyone understanding concepts than getting "perfect" results. There are not a lot of lab reports except for the couple at the end. Be prepared to have to go in on one or two days after your lab day for simple things like moving your bacteria to the fridge, or counting colonies. 
• Grading Scheme:  Midterm, Lab Reports, Final
• Textbook: Lab Book from MISA (around $30)
• Class Average: 80%
• Personal Experience: The TAs and Ms. Sibley are great at making sure no one feels stressed. The final was surprisingly harder than expected, but other than that the course is quite low-stress. Labs typically do not take the entire 4 hour period especially if you work quickly. Make sure you have 30 min the day before and after your lab period to set up / finish your experiments (ie. inoculate bacteria, count colonies) or beg a friend. For MICB 322, the lab work is done in pairs (the person sitting next to you) and the lab reports are done alone. However, you share the data so you typically end up working together.

MICB 323 (with Ehleen Hinze)

• Course Taken: M 1pm, T Lab (January, 2015 - April, 2015)
• Format: The course involves lots of partner work especially for lab reports, so I suggest pick a partner beforehand to ensure you will be able to work well together. There is a weekly lecture beforehand with in-class assignment (for participation). Ms. Hinze is a bit pickier than Ms. Sibley, but overall the class is still relatively relaxed compared to the 1st and 2nd year CHEM labs. 
• Grading Scheme:  Midterm (10%), Lab Reports (43%), Lab Technique (5%), Data Quality (2%), Lab Book (3%), In-class participation (2%), Final (35%)
• Textbook: Lab Book from MISA (around $30)
• Class Average: 80%
• Personal Experience: Marking tends to be a bit inconsistent and it really depends on how nice your TA is. There are slightly different expectations between MICB 322 & MICB 323 especially in terms of figure captions. The final was also harder than expected, and the amount of work for lab reports is slightly greater than MICB 322. 

Read More

MICB 325

MICB 325 (with Dr. Thomas Beatty)

• Course Taken: MWF 10am (January, 2015 - April, 2015)
• Format: Flipped-classroom style where readings are posted beforehand and lectures are devoted to iClickers. The first half of the course is devoted to essentially understanding plasmid maps, cross-overs and blue-white screening. The second half of the course is a month and a half long case study on how one could determine the signalling pathway of a microbe (Cartenoid synthesis in R. capsulatus). Unfortunately, while the course content is extremely interesting, a lot of people did not feel prepared enough going into the exam because we only saw one case study and did not get a lot of practice. There is homework due twice a week online, but we did not get feedback even at the end of the course. 
• Grading Scheme:  35% Midterm, 50% Final (Note: if you miss the midterm even with an excuse, your final will be 85%), 2% Homework Participation, 7% Homework Accuracy, 6% iClicker Participation 90%+ and with up to 2% bonus if a certain percentage is correct
• Textbook: None
• Class Average: 78%
• Personal Experience: Overall, while the content is interesting I found the lecture style not conductive to learning. Dr. Beatty tends to get confused with his own iClicker questions or his questions are poorly worded, so in a 50 minute lecture you will only do about 4 questions. The way midterm marks are distributed was not ideal where 4 long-winded true and false questions were worth 40% of the midterm while a short answer was only worth 5%. However, this was fixed for our final despite the final being longer than expected. The final was difficult especially if students have not been exposed to cloning schemes before since most of the questions were "explain this unexpected result". 
• Advice: Practice problems are your friend especially the plasmid map questions. 

Read More

MICB 418

MICB 418 (with Dr. John Smit)

• Course Taken: T/Th 11am (January, 2015 - April, 2015)
• Format: Traditional lectures where he does not use slides or post notes, and he simply talks and students have to take notes. Dr. Smit does record all his lectures in case you miss a day or you missed a setence, and provide packages of all the diagrams he describes. Tutorials (optional) are used to review material and the TA is great. The exams are short answer, definitions, and T/F. People tend to find the T/F tricky because it is based on extremely detailed points, and if you get it wrong you get -1. Each T/F tends to be worth 3 points each. 
• Grading Scheme: Option 1 (Final-70%, Midterm 1-30%) or Option 2 (Final-50%, Midterm 1-25%, Midterm 2-25%) if you decide to hand in Midterm 2, your mark will count regardless if you did poorly or not
• Textbook: None
• Class Average: 73% 
• Personal Experience: Overall, I found this course very interesting, but it was also the most content dense course I have taken so far. The topics covered include classic biotechnology (beer, wine, bread making with sampling!) and modern biotechnology (antibiotics, drugs, antibody production, R&D methods, patent and clinical trial process). Be prepared to spend a lot of time with this material to do well. Dr. Smit is a great lecturer and he structures each of his lectures very well and simple to follow especially when you take notes. I would recommend taking this course, but only if you have time to study/ keep up with the material otherwise consider taking it as a Credit/D/Fail course. 
• Advice: Definitely an interesting course, but it is extremely content heavy and lots of memorizing. Do not take this course if you are looking for an easy elective. 

Read More

CPSC 301

CPSC 301 (with Dr. Ian Mitchell)

• Course Taken: T/Th 9:30am (January, 2015 - April, 2014)
• Format: Lectures are relatively slow-paced, and only goes through "tricky" aspects rather than teaching how to code. All his lecture slides are posted on his website. The course first uses Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and then uses Python 3 + BioPython. Lectures typically are used to only clarify concepts and not teach, and Dr. Mitchell expects students to read the textbook to get the basic concepts. There are a lot of iClicker and in-class group worksheets for participation marks. The labs are done in pairs, and are the most helpful part of the course. Often it will take the entire lab section to finish the lab, and some people need to finish the "after-lab" section later. The lab worksheet + the programs you write will be due the next Wednesday online, and the TAs typically mark and return the labs 1.5-2 weeks later. The TAs are extremely helpful. 
• Website: https://sites.google.com/site/ubccpsc301winter2014/
• Grading Scheme: Midterm (20%), Final (40%), Lab Exam (Must pass to pass course, 0%), Labs (20%), Class Participation (10%), Best Score among midterm, final, labs (10%)
• Textbook: Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3 (Paul Gries, Jennifer Campbell, Jason Montojo)
• Class Average: 82% 
• Personal Experience: Overall, I found this course relatively easy and fulfilled its purpose of introducing students to basic programming. Scratch is very intuitive to use and is a good introduction to students who have never programmed before. The course uses Python 3 with Anaconda distribution (which already has many packages including BioPython and PIL). In the lab, the goal is to get the same output as the problem set. However, in the midterms & exams, it is expected that you understand what each step does and what the computer will end up remembering. The in-class worksheets are a good reflection on what to expect on exams. Dr. Mitchell can be difficult to understand when he lectures especially if you are not up to date on the readings. 
• Advice: If deciding between CPSC 110 and CPSC 301, it depends on how much more CPSC you want to do. CPSC 301 primarily focuses on Python which is extremely useful and immediately applicable to many research fields. The course is a great introduction to programming for students with a biology background. CPSC 110 uses Dr. Racket which can be a tedious program and not directly applicable to use outside CPSC courses; however, it teaches good programming habits. You will need CPSC 110 to take more advanced computer science courses. 

Read More