While the year begins in January and ends in December on the Gergorian calendar, the undergraduate admissions cycle within Enrolment Services follows a slightly different timeline. The cycle begins when new sessional staff are hired in November, with the height of activity throughout December and May, and taper off in June and July. As the 2019/2020 admissions cycle comes to an end, so too are the sessional admissions staff for this season.

Permanent staff will be working throughout the summer, the sessional staff whose contracts ended June 30th have gone their separate ways. Some have gone off on fantastical adventures, traversing the globe. One has moved to another country in an epic new chapter of her life. One will be increasing her knowledge in a bid to become the next great sage and taking courses over the summer. Several have found new jobs either on campus or elsewhere. However, all leave (or stay) with the knowledge that this year, admissions has had another successful cycle.

This 2019/2020 admissions cycle saw 47,425 applications received, with 27,464 of them from domestic applicants, and 19,961 from international applicants. 37,495 applications were to Year 1, and 9,930 were to Year 2 or higher. By this time, the admissions team has offered admission to 22,772 applicants for their Choice 1 and 8,530 offers have been made for Choice 2 programs.

While most of the process has been transferred to be done electronically over the years, admissions still receives thousands of paper documents in support of student applications. This year, admissions processed over 100,000 documents. These include both official and unofficial transcripts, certificates, test scores, and more.

Over the entirety of the cycle up to today, the admissions team has responded to over 55,000 email inquiries regarding student applications. And there have been over 75,000 Personal Profile reads (as all Personal Profiles are read at least 2 times, this number does not indicate how many Personal Profiles were received).

The remaining admissions team will be continuing to work on wrapping up applications as students ultimately make decisions for their future and step into a new chapter of their life at UBC.

Note: This post was updated to correct the number of documents admissions processed. They processed over 100,000 this year – not 1,000,000 (although it might have felt like it!)