I’ve always looked for a city to live in. It is for life – to slowly ride in a clean park on a bicycle with a wicker basket, to breathe cool air in the morning and not feel this heaviness of something oppressive that flows through your fingers and gives a feeling of anxiety. I always felt a kind of ironiness of the Russian air when I returned from another trip. The schoolgirl from Volgograd had many such trips. England, America, France – in these countries I became mine for the summer months, while I studied at all kinds of college programs for foreigners.

I confess: I was haunted by the idea of ​​education abroad. Abroad, people do not paint, but look for real. How is school life usually built in small towns in our country? First, you pass the screenings into one of the large groups – favorites and outcasts in the eyes of the class teacher. Then you carefully make tables and answer the questions under the paragraph, so that in a fluffy dress it is not clear why you should become a medalist. No one will ever take an interest in your inner world, or ask about exciting problems. In an English college, for example, I couldn’t find friends right away.

We have a teacher in Volgograd, noticing that some gloomy student, without delving into the situation, indifferently offers a glass of water and activated carbon.

I saw another life and with all my might I wanted to make mine the same. After the tenth grade, my parents and I sat down at a large table, scoured the ratings of universities and thought: “Vancouver is a cool city in Canada. It is quiet and safe there, in the winter you can ride in the mountains, and in the summer break the waves on the surf. UBC is one of the first universities in Canada. Why not try to enter a place where it is comfortable to study and work? ” There was an even more mundane reason: after three years of study in Canada, the country grants the student a residence permit and automatically the possibility of a visa-free visit to almost any country in the world.

How to proceed

After receiving a Russian secondary education, it is impossible to enter a Canadian university. I began to think about workarounds. It turned out that there are two options – to look for a special international program or to unlearn a year at any Vancouver college. I chose the latter, and began to collect documents for admission to Columbia College. All that was needed was a translated school certificate and a good IELTS exam result.

I could speak English fairly well, but I spent a year preparing with a tutor – methodically filling out tests in glossy American textbooks. I really wanted to go to the faculty of business, so I had to additionally prepare for the mathematics exam. To be honest, algebra in Canada is no more difficult than the Russian exam in mathematics.

To pick up youth slang, I deliberately got hooked on the TV series “Gossip Girl”. I advise everyone who has an international exam to choose a TV show they like – by the end of the fifth season of “Gossip Girl” I could already parody the tone of Sirena van der Woodsen. Naturally, the experience of communicating with foreigners helped me a lot. But don’t pull your hair out if you don’t have the opportunity to travel abroad frequently. Get in the habit of chatting with Americans on facebook, composing greeting cards for Christmas. As a result, such a complex of preparation gives good results – by the way, I got a seven on the IELTS test.

In addition to excellent grades, college doors can open up your track record of extracurricular work in college. Savvy students quickly go to sports clubs and enroll in hobby groups – they need to submit a rich and colorful autobiography to the admissions committee. Do you think that girls in American colleges fight for the title of captain of the cheerleading team because of their mad love for the sport? No, everyone just calculates their benefits.

If there is a threat of death of guinea pigs or sphinx cats, the world community can count on the sincere help of hundreds of Columbia College students.

There are no admissions tests at UBC. To become a university student, you need to put in a daddy the results of college graduation exams (usually eight to nine subjects, depending on the profile you choose) and an autobiography. Your extracurricular life will be considered in the most careful way and can play a decisive role. If you dare to embellish your merits even a little, the entrance to the university will be closed for you forever.

How they teach at UBC

Studying at a Canadian university is like a big spider web that envelops you. At UBC, attendance is checked in this way: if a student is within the walls of the university, then he must press a certain button, which will immediately confirm the fact of his attending a lecture. Sometimes you realize that you will never be recognized in person by the teacher who taught the macroeconomics course for six months. This will only happen because you were one of the two hundred and fifty students who neatly emailed the professor by the deadline indicated. To find out the grade, you will click on the browser window again and find your last name in the spreadsheet. And only the mathematics exam evokes almost nostalgic feelings – it is traditionally taken at UBC in writing, on paper.

The University of British Columbia is renowned for its tight academic controls. Everyone who comes here should keep in mind that no one owes him anything. The UBC professor is confident that the student gets exactly what he deserves. They can be expelled from the university because of the cheat sheet noticed by the curator, the slightest plagiarism in the work. The screening out is great!

Cost of education

Canadian prices are close to Moscow ones, but higher education costs are higher. One semester and four subjects at Columbia College costs 1600 Canadian dollars. I got about 6,500 for my course. When I was in college, I lived with a Filipino family – many foreigners in search of cheap housing do this. By the way, they were extraordinarily nice, but they only ate rice and seafood. The hostel for students of many universities is provided free of charge. But then as luck would have it – rooms in hostels are distributed by lot. Renting an apartment in the city center will cost $ 1,600, the suburb will cost $ 500. About $ 20 a day is enough for three modest meals, and for $ 10 in Vancouver, you can go to the movies. Tuition for one semester at UBC – 8000 per semester. The educational year will be 20-30 thousand dollars.

Life in Vancouver

Despite the fact that adult Canadians tend to work hard and their children study hard, they all find time to roller-skate through the park. In Vancouver, it has recently been very fashionable to ride the green paths with friends on a Sunday afternoon. The largest city in the province of British Columbia is surprisingly small and calm – only 600 thousand people live here. A significant portion of them are avid hockey fans.

Future views

My immediate plans are to obtain a residence permit in Canada and an MBA at a strong American university. The biggest dream is to live and work in the USA. I understand that it is difficult for foreigners to find work in a foreign country. But why not give it a try, if life gives you such an opportunity? In the end, if it’s boring and nothing comes of it, you can always rush to Moscow.