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1.) Don't even think about going to UBC. I don't care how well you did in school, it's nowhere near enough. Read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". Twice.
2.) Only visit in July or August. The rest of the year it will rain. When it's not raining, it will be overcast. You will need antidepressants to get through the rainy season.
3.) No one wants to go out much during the monsoon season. It's somehow easier to leave the house when it's -10 and sunny. The rest of the entire country is -10 and sunny. Vancouver is 10 above, cloudy, and no one speaks English as a first language.
4.) Don't even think about attending UBC. The grade point average has been artificially higher than usual due to a large number of foreign, mostly Chinese students whose parents make them study day and night.
(The Asians haven't yet figured out that people get hired for plum jobs based on something called social intelligence not just good grades, so in the end, they'll lose out. In the meantime, don't waste your efforts going to overpriced Vancouver universities. Go to smaller ones, get better grades and make far more contacts.)
5.) You will be charged a small fortune for an underground basement suite filled with mould, no natural light and tegenaria duellica, a non-poisonous hunting spider the size of your palm that moves at the speed of sound.
6.) Because it's too cold to sleep outside in most of the country, Vancouver has most of the country's street people and homeless. Remember how I told you it would rain endlessly most of the year? Well, this makes the air on the skytrain and buses seem heavy, moist, close, as the English say. So sometimes, you'll be in a closed-in crowded bus and with about 4 street people it will smell like ...well..there's a sickly sweet and sour, sort of rank combination that's hard to describe but..just get used to that, because it's going to happen often.
7.) The Asians here do not want to know you. You just wouldn't fit in with their culture, so they'll be polite but never friendly. Everyone is in their own ethnic groups that way, it's not a true Canadian city for that reason (you'd have to go back east for that).
Other than that, it's beautiful there-only 4 months of the year though...sorry about the bad news but someone has to tell you the truth!
1.) Don't even think about going to UBC. I don't care how well you did in school, it's nowhere near enough. Read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". Twice.
2.) Only visit in July or August. The rest of the year it will rain. When it's not raining, it will be overcast. You will need antidepressants to get through the rainy season.
3.) No one wants to go out much during the monsoon season. It's somehow easier to leave the house when it's -10 and sunny. The rest of the entire country is -10 and sunny. Vancouver is 10 above, cloudy, and no one speaks English as a first language.
4.) Don't even think about attending UBC. The grade point average has been artificially higher than usual due to a large number of foreign, mostly Chinese students whose parents make them study day and night.
(The Asians haven't yet figured out that people get hired for plum jobs based on something called social intelligence not just good grades, so in the end, they'll lose out. In the meantime, don't waste your efforts going to overpriced Vancouver universities. Go to smaller ones, get better grades and make far more contacts.)
5.) You will be charged a small fortune for an underground basement suite filled with mould, no natural light and tegenaria duellica, a non-poisonous hunting spider the size of your palm that moves at the speed of sound.
6.) Because it's too cold to sleep outside in most of the country, Vancouver has most of the country's street people and homeless. Remember how I told you it would rain endlessly most of the year? Well, this makes the air on the skytrain and buses seem heavy, moist, close, as the English say. So sometimes, you'll be in a closed-in crowded bus and with about 4 street people it will smell like ...well..there's a sickly sweet and sour, sort of rank combination that's hard to describe but..just get used to that, because it's going to happen often.
7.) The Asians here do not want to know you. You just wouldn't fit in with their culture, so they'll be polite but never friendly. Everyone is in their own ethnic groups that way, it's not a true Canadian city for that reason (you'd have to go back east for that).
Other than that, it's beautiful there-only 4 months of the year though...sorry about the bad news but someone has to tell you the truth!
Answers ro:
#1 I read the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother once and the treatment Dr. Chua gives to her daughters aren't really as harsh as I originally thought. No, not everyone who goes to a high ranking university is an overworking, overachieving, "got to get everything right" nut with an overarching parent. I don't know where else you're going with this.
#2 I was just in Vancouver this past Monday and Tuesday (see my recent thread on this forum) and it was sunny 21-24 degrees (low to mid 70's Fahrenheit). It is still June if you didn't notice. I suppose you have never experienced an East Coast winter before. Rain and grey skies alone will not depress a hardy Northeasterner because we've seen it all, When all the leaves in Stanley Park fall off the trees, the streets are slicked with ice and sleet, and the temps hover around 0 degrees, then come back and tell me who needs antidepressants.
#3 No one speaks English as a first language? The O.P. is coming to Vancouver, not Montreal or Quebec City. Next ...
#4 Get real! If the young well educated Asian population in Vancouver didn't know how to have fun, then the city ought to be socially dead and lifeless. I've studied abroad for one semester in Hong Kong during my own college days and I know more than one way how hard working Asian students have fun. Sure if you're looking to get wasted at a pub or block party, then I suppose you should look somewhere else.
#5 At least you didn't mention bedbugs. Boston's college apartments have plenty of those. Too expensive? Where do you suggest the O.P. move to then? Thunder Bay, Ontario?
#6 When it gets cold in a Northeastern city like Philadelphia, the homeless are going to swarm the subway stations and do the same thing. It is nasty but it's pretty much like that throughout every major North American city with a continental climate. As long as the O.P. steers clear of the Lower East Side ...
#7 There's this thing called "immersion" which is a great thing to learn about. If you're going to Vancouver or any other place and hold to your own culture, then you deserve not to make friends. Most other people make attempts to break cultural barriers and very soon they will end up making friends. It's just like staying in Montreal and refusing to speak a little French but if you do, you'll get that much further in associating with the locals who appreciate you in return. Besides, all major university campuses are diverse. There's no way anyone cannot make friends in a university campus unless they're social recluses.
1.) Don't even think about going to UBC. I don't care how well you did in school, it's nowhere near enough. Read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". Twice.
2.) Only visit in July or August. The rest of the year it will rain. When it's not raining, it will be overcast. You will need antidepressants to get through the rainy season.
3.) No one wants to go out much during the monsoon season. It's somehow easier to leave the house when it's -10 and sunny. The rest of the entire country is -10 and sunny. Vancouver is 10 above, cloudy, and no one speaks English as a first language.
4.) Don't even think about attending UBC. The grade point average has been artificially higher than usual due to a large number of foreign, mostly Chinese students whose parents make them study day and night.
(The Asians haven't yet figured out that people get hired for plum jobs based on something called social intelligence not just good grades, so in the end, they'll lose out. In the meantime, don't waste your efforts going to overpriced Vancouver universities. Go to smaller ones, get better grades and make far more contacts.)
5.) You will be charged a small fortune for an underground basement suite filled with mould, no natural light and tegenaria duellica, a non-poisonous hunting spider the size of your palm that moves at the speed of sound.
6.) Because it's too cold to sleep outside in most of the country, Vancouver has most of the country's street people and homeless. Remember how I told you it would rain endlessly most of the year? Well, this makes the air on the skytrain and buses seem heavy, moist, close, as the English say. So sometimes, you'll be in a closed-in crowded bus and with about 4 street people it will smell like ...well..there's a sickly sweet and sour, sort of rank combination that's hard to describe but..just get used to that, because it's going to happen often.
7.) The Asians here do not want to know you. You just wouldn't fit in with their culture, so they'll be polite but never friendly. Everyone is in their own ethnic groups that way, it's not a true Canadian city for that reason (you'd have to go back east for that).
Other than that, it's beautiful there-only 4 months of the year though...sorry about the bad news but someone has to tell you the truth!
Glad I ignored people like you and came to Vancouver and attended UBC anyway. No regrets.
1.) Don't even think about going to UBC. I don't care how well you did in school, it's nowhere near enough. Read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". Twice.
2.) Only visit in July or August. The rest of the year it will rain. When it's not raining, it will be overcast. You will need antidepressants to get through the rainy season.
3.) No one wants to go out much during the monsoon season. It's somehow easier to leave the house when it's -10 and sunny. The rest of the entire country is -10 and sunny. Vancouver is 10 above, cloudy, and no one speaks English as a first language.
4.) Don't even think about attending UBC. The grade point average has been artificially higher than usual due to a large number of foreign, mostly Chinese students whose parents make them study day and night.
(The Asians haven't yet figured out that people get hired for plum jobs based on something called social intelligence not just good grades, so in the end, they'll lose out. In the meantime, don't waste your efforts going to overpriced Vancouver universities. Go to smaller ones, get better grades and make far more contacts.)
5.) You will be charged a small fortune for an underground basement suite filled with mould, no natural light and tegenaria duellica, a non-poisonous hunting spider the size of your palm that moves at the speed of sound.
6.) Because it's too cold to sleep outside in most of the country, Vancouver has most of the country's street people and homeless. Remember how I told you it would rain endlessly most of the year? Well, this makes the air on the skytrain and buses seem heavy, moist, close, as the English say. So sometimes, you'll be in a closed-in crowded bus and with about 4 street people it will smell like ...well..there's a sickly sweet and sour, sort of rank combination that's hard to describe but..just get used to that, because it's going to happen often.
7.) The Asians here do not want to know you. You just wouldn't fit in with their culture, so they'll be polite but never friendly. Everyone is in their own ethnic groups that way, it's not a true Canadian city for that reason (you'd have to go back east for that).
Other than that, it's beautiful there-only 4 months of the year though...sorry about the bad news but someone has to tell you the truth!
What a crock of racist and sour grape BS from someone who spent either too little, or too much time here.
1. UBC is not easy, but not hard to get into nor succeed. I'm no genius by any stretch of the imagination and did quite well there, in a scientific research program no less. You don't have to go in through the "normal" route - they take a huge intake of college transfer students, and other "easier" faculties are also options.
2. I don't know if you were here at all in May but it was pretty much sunny throughout the entire month, as well as through wide swaths of April. The idea that Vancouver rains outside of two months is a complete myth; it's top-down weather for much of late March to October, where you can get days or even weeks of straight sunshine and the high teens to 20s. Yes, bunker down for November to February where it just might be four months of pure overcast onslaught but hey, we're not exactly in California.
3. It's not easy to leave the house at -10 and sunny. I've lived in the Prairies for two years. -5 and calm winds, OK with a parka. -10 with a windchill element and I'd take 10 degrees and rain every day of the week. You ever wonder why our streets are so clean here relative to the rest of Canada?
4. See #1
5. This is true, but rental rates are not particularly high here and it's possible to find a room in the hundreds for a single person. I'm optimistically (naively?) hoping that the bubble will correct itself, even as a current homeowner.
6. Lol at complaining about the "dirtiness" of Vancouver's metro system. Ever ride the TTC? Or the New York MTA? Or the Paris Metro? London Tube? Non-existent LA transit system? They're all worse.
7. More racial profiling. Every city has its own ethnic groups, subdivisions and gated communities. It's up to you to figure out how and where you fit in.
It's not "bad news" when it's purely untruths, lies and bull****. I took the time to debunk all the myths here so the rest of the readers wouldn't have to
I'm visiting Vancouver this summer for a week and I'm not sure what to expect. I've never even been to the west coast. All I know about Vancouver is that it's really expensive, ha ha! Will it be hot and/or rainy? Is it crowded? Is it dirty? How dangerous is it? Do the people tend to be rude?
Thank you in advance!
It is really expensive to buy house in Vancouver it is lot like Los Angeles with being really costly where $600,000 will be small a really small tiny house and $1,000,000 will be nice middle class house not upper middle class house.
It rains lot and summers more like 16c to 22c or 62f to 72f
Major culture difference if you are moving from US or great lakes in terms of weather. A 16c to 22c in summer is not hot summer but colder summer.
If you are moving from the US or the great lakes you will not need all those shorts and tank tops in Vancouver you are use too. It does not get that hot and most of the time you will be cold in shorts and tank tops in the summer.
Unless you like walking around in t-shirt and shorts in 15c/ 59F to 20C/68F weather.
So most of the time in the summer you will not be in shorts and tank tops it not that hot and can get bit cold.
The winter is mild in Vancouver 6.3c/43F December, 6.9c/ 44F in January and 8.2c/46F in February.
Great and helpful information. I am planning a visit possibly in June.
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