No average university

By Brian Platt  February 9, 2012

We can all agree that to get into a university, you should be smart. That seems pretty straightforward.

There should be some allowance for students with disabilities, sure. There should also be some allowance made for refugees and other internationally focused exchange programs. But in general, you should have to be pretty smart to go to a university.

I think most of us can also agree that it’s good to have a few “elite” higher education institutions. Canada won’t ever have universities with the cachet of Oxford or Harvard — and given the financial barriers to those institutions, that’s not necessarily a bad thing — but it’s good for smart young high school students to be able to set their goals high without having to leave the country.

But here’s the real question: What makes a university elite?

I’m enrolled at UBC’s Vancouver campus, which can reasonably be described as one of Canada’s top universities. Within the past couple of years, UBC-V’s average admissions level has topped out near 90 percent, and if you have a high school average of lower than 86 percent, it is very unlikely you’ll be able to get into UBC-V at all. (The standards for UBC’s Okanagan campus are a bit lower.)

As a UBC administrator put it in 2010, “This is about as high as it’s ever been.”

But that’s changing — to a certain extent. UBC has just become the largest university in Canada to adopt broad-based admissions across all faculties. This means that prospective students will now answer four personal questions and be judged for admittance based on more than just their grades. It’s a big deal.

Why is UBC doing this? The Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason identified what is surely the biggest motivator: “As undergraduate admission standards [at UBC] have shot ever further skyward, the student body has been something of an intellectual — and some would say cultural — monolith. Yes, the students are unquestionably bright, but many are nerdy, high achievers consumed with one thing: marks. Consequently, the student body has become increasingly uni-dimensional, dominated by brainiacs void of any curiosity about all that university life can be.”

Take it from someone who has been involved at UBC at almost all levels: Mason’s right. Everyone who’s been here for a while will argue that the cultural vibrancy at UBC has noticeably dropped off over the past decade. This is why the move to broad-based admissions is fantastic.

Admitting students on standards other than just grades means the UBC administration has recognized something very important: a university without a vibrant, diverse student body cannot be called elite. Far from lowering the admissions standard, UBC is making it more challenging than ever.
A truly exceptional campus needs students with boundless creativity and relentless ambition, students who are unpredictable and free-spirited. Without that element, university life feels drained.

We’ve all known for a long time that high school marks don’t necessarily reflect such personal characteristics. It’s about time that universities caught on too.



Brian Platt is a history student at the University of British Columbia.