(FIC) Fraser International College — Attraction in Burnaby

PROS: FIC is not a bad place for some international students who do not have a lot of experience studying abroad. The class size is small (20-ish) and all the students there are international students, so you rarely feel stress and pressure in your new academic life outside of your home country. You can meet new people from multiple different countries (The majority includes Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Korea, Japan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and so on), which allows you to expand your friend connection globally. I am actually still in good touch with people I met in FIC even after finishing studying there.

CONS: Location: They are located about a 10-15 minutes walk away from the main bus stop of SFU which is not that far, however, since it is down the hill in the forest, it gets very dark in the evening, especially during winter. You definitely do not feel safe walking there alone (because of bears), and walking up the hill after 4 hours of class is such a depressing thing to do, it can make you so tired. They have a shuttle bus so you may take that but the bus is small so it is usually full (many students need to be standing). I can never be happier that I no longer need to walk up that hill.

Academic: THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT PART. It is not easy. It almost makes me feel like they are manipulating something to make people fail the course at least once (just feel like). It does not mean you cannot pass courses, however, most friends around me failed at least one course in FIC (I did fail more than one course '-'). You definitely do not want to waste A LOT of money for failing courses you have been spending a lot of time on (you know the tuition is very expensive there). You might finish your study in FIC without failing any courses if you are a person who can spend a lot of time working very hard studying and completing assignments, but let me emphasize it again, it is not easy at all. Some instructors are very nice (turned out those I liked are also the ones who teach at SFU), but many were not a good fit for me + the lectures are all 4 hours long! (in SFU, most of them are 2 hours).

In addition, the courses you need to take for transferring to SFU are already decided depending on your selected major which is not good for those students who are motivated to study the field they are interested in. Many of the required courses will definitely be out of your area of interest, but you have to study and pass those courses (It is hard maintaining motivation for something you do not want to do). In the future SFU, most courses taken in FIC can only be used for the fulfillment of elective courses which could have been something you are interested in if you were in SFU from the first year or if you were in other local colleges. This actually limits you from taking interesting upper-division elective courses you can take in the future at SFU. (this does not mean it is impossible but you need to spend extra time and money to do that while you were not needed to if you were in other colleges).

Advisors: Even though the number of advisors is small, there was only one advisor I actually found helpful. I am not sure why they are very unaware of many things. I often went to see them to ask questions about something I do not know after personally searching on the internet (anything about courses, events, planning, etc.), however, I never got any helpful answer or feedback from them except the one I liked. So at one point, I stopped going there for advice because I can get almost nothing from there.

CONCLUSION:

Rate 1/5 -1 (location) -2 (academic) -1 (advisors)

If I were to go back to the past and make a decision again, I would choose to go to other local colleges for a better location (somewhere safe and close to stations), for better academics (for good instructors, and for freedom of course selection useful in SFU), and for better advisors (someone who can actually help you) with much affordable tuition! I hope this review can help you make the best decision for your first college/university...

Lost 2 years of my life here learning useless electives that I got from incompetent advisors instead of subject that you really need. No reading weeks before midterms, your grade depends not on your knowledge but on your attendance, especially if subject doesn't have any finals. And what about finals - you will never know what you have done wrong on your finals, you recieve just grade and that's all. If you don't like an instructor for example you can't understand his/her foreign accent at all - your problem, you can't do anything with it because it's only one instructor on REQUIRED subject. You are supposed to submit your assignments before deadline. Even if it's one second after - you are late, noone will accept your work, but profs are allowed to check your assignments for weeks or even month. Overpriced. Very low quality of education programs relatively to price. You have 1 class in a week that last 4 hours. They said: "We give you 20% in class, other 80% you should done at home", so maybe I should pay you 20%? In fact you can just go to piratebay, download all calculus, history, geography, business etc books and in exactly same way learn everything even better by urself at home without these awful late trips after classes in dark woods to reach the closest FIC bus stop. I never was so depressed as here, it's the worst place to study. Of course there are some advantages like there are some really good instructors but with this amount of disadvantages you almost can't remember positive sides. You will never meet here any Canadian student. Never. Only International students. For 2 years of studying in Canada I never saw here at least one Canadian student or who belongs to First Nations due to Fraser International College. Thank you. FIC is probably the worst start of your new life abroad. Marking system is unfair. They want you to fail courses, to take them again. And the thing is your class is on half of these guys who failed this class last term. So this half of the class already knew the program, they will pass, but another half will fail and retake that class on the next term with new students. Especially if you remember curved system of marking on some subjects like math it makes this problem even worse. For example on math you can see a lot of questions which have different weight on quizzes or midterms, so if question have 8 marks, you will get 8 if everything is correct and every step is precisely described or 0 if you made a mistake or If you missed some steps in your calculations on paper and anyway wrote correct answer - you will get 0. They don't know about numbers that exist between 0 and 8, just 0 and 8. I remember how I tried hard on Hist and got crazy low mark, with attending all classes and submitting all works except the days which I covered by Sick note from doc. This subject was "GPA booster" however prof decided to unfairly decrease grades to make it fit to usual FIC "Retake class" system. At the end of the term when I tried to figure out what happened - teacher forgot to properly cover days that I missed by health reason, but just because nobody control grading system, nobody care how teacher grade you and is it fair. In fact instructor can just give you an F without reason and you can't proof that he is unfair. This is the worst place to study and the best place to work without any...

I'm a former student of this college. Let me be honest, the advisers, administration, and the instructors are extremely nice, supportive, and friendly. They are the only reason why I didn't give this college 0 Star.

Advantages of attending this college: You can take university courses with 5 in IELTS so you don't have to spend so much time studying English to get 6.5 in IELTS ( please note other colleges have the same program u can take university course with 5 or 5.5 in IELTS. You will only attend classes with people like you international students no Canadian or native English (some people are uncomfortable speaking up in front of native English ppl) You can easily make friends unlike in sfu u will struggle to find anyone to talk to.

@disadvantage Limited course, and mostly not has alot of course. Here the problem come when you transfer to SFU limited elective credits to take other than what you need. Too long to get to SFU! 3 semesters or 4 semesters and you gave to achieve CGPA of 3.0 or 2.7(depdends on your major) to transfer to SFU. If you didn't get the gpa then you have to stay longer at FIC take more courses. hard to get good grades and sometimes marking isn't fair(the same for SFU) FIC location in SFU but too far from cafe, restaurants, bus stops... Etc. It's in remote area of the campus between the trees. You have to walk uphill and downhill. So scary to walk at night as there are many animals at sfu. If you have a car then u r good to go. Classes are long. 3 credits class is 4 hours class at fic (supposed to be 3 hours only in university/college stander) Tuition price are high (can't give you number as i was here from 2011 to 2012) so prices might changed. I ordered a transcript (student record and grades), this college price is 25$ per each transcript plus 2% fees if you will pay online + 5$ for regular mail per each transcript. While at SFU and other university you pay 10$ per transcript (including the regular mail price) so you don't have to pay anything more 10$!.

Last words, FIC fun place to have friends and great teachers, but not fun place to study due to time, price,..etc myth I been told I can't transfer this college credits anywhere than SFU. But I was successfully able to transfer this college credits to a university in BC without any problem. You can even find FIC name in bc transfer guide website, so if you are in fic and want to transfer before you finish all the courses. YES you can transfer to other universities in BC (you maybe asked to take special English test). Another tip about SFU, it's really not the best place for international students, so my advice to you is if really really want SFU and feel like you must go to it because you love SFU then yeah ok attend FIC. If not, go else...