UFV markets itself very well international with a purely international area of their website explaining everything a prospective or current international student would need to know! There are international ambassadors and current international students you are able to email directly and find out first hand information about the university. The website is very positive giving many good reasons why studying at UFV would be beneficial and there are lots of happy smiling photos of current international students! There is a link informing prospective students that UFV have a partnership with Panjab University in India and the Business that is taught there. You can also see the long list of universities around the world that are linked with UFV usually through exchange programs; I counted 19 countries in total!
I’m not sure if UFV actively attempt to recruit students from less privileged parts of the world, as I couldn’t really identify anything that specific on the website, there was a page on funding available to international students and it mainly gave links to other pages that dealt with funding issues. While I’m sure UFV does give a lot of funding to those students who need it, it is a well-known fact that universities across the world gain a lot of their finances from international students and I’m sure this is the case at UFV as well, so I believe that they receive more money from international students than they give away.
UFV makes an excellent job at making their international students feel at home. The international office is always very friendly and dedicating to making new (and old) students feel at ease, they organize a lot of event for students, incorporating Canadian students too so international students are able to form friendships with Canadians. There is also the chance to live at Baker House the house of residence on campus, Baker House is an extremely friendly and welcoming place to live and it has an International Floor where many international students live but also mixed with Canadian students living on campus. Because I live on the International Floor I have been able to meet students from many different countries and that has been really interesting for me, as I have learnt a lot about the world I wouldn’t have known before! I have felt very at home here as the community is very tight knit and I feel I have made a lot of friends in Baker House.
Overall I think UFV markets itself internationally in a very positive manner it gives lots of information to prospective students on its website and for current students the international office and Baker House are brilliant places to go for information and friends! Even if it doesn’t purely try to recruit students who have less money than others it is still a very constructive, encouraging and friendly place to study.
Link:
www.ufv.ca/international.htm
I find this to be very interesting! As another student from Ontario, I did not realize UFV has such a large international student population. Truth be told, I had not heard about UFV before participating in this exchange program.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that such a small university has such a large and diverse international population is truly amazing! It is wonderful that they have arranged a hall that allows for both international and domestic students to live in. I can imagine this has really heightened your exchange experience!
Thank you for this wonderful and informative blog Sophie. Just like Diaspora in Northampton says I am pretty surprised that the UFV has such a large international student body as well. When I was able to choose between York University, Toronto and UFV, I thought that York’s campus might be more multicultural, multireligious and multilinguistic as it is located in Canada’s centre of diversity - Toronto. But it is great to see that those big 3-M’s cannot be limited to a single university or location in Canada but are rather an outstanding phenomena around Canada.
ReplyDeleteIt is so interesting to see how similar our experiences have actually been with regard to an “international campus”. York University is a very diverse and multicultural university as well, arguably the most multicultural campus in Canada. Actually, there are more than 155 countries represented by York Students. Most of them have their own student clubs and organize on-campus events and information desks where they tackle issues concerning their country or ethnicity. There were cultural galas and evenings held during the term that celebrated York’s internationality. Just like UFV the university puts a lot of effort into marketing itself internationally and attracting students from all over the world. In our term I suppose we were more than 40 exchange students, plus a large number of international students that started their studies back when we arrived in January. From my point of view an international campus is a great chance to actually “meet the globe in a university setting”. It was the first time in my life that I met students from so many different parts of the world and actually got the chance to find out more about their countries, cultures and traditions. Looking for commonalities and discovering the unfamiliar has been such a great and valuable experience to me. I think our experiences in Canada might in fact be very unique, as I suppose there are not too many universities and countries in other parts of the world that actually succeed in attracting such an international student body.