Physics GRE Discussion Forums

For personal reasons, I am only applying to BC schools. I just wonder how different is Uvic from UBC in terms of its particle physics program. It is amazing that a city can have two schools of almost even reputation.

Secondly, is there a huge difference in cost of living for areas like victoria and west vancouver? The city I am living have ridiculously different lifestyle in a radius of less than 30 miles.

Thanks for your time

Last time I checked, UBC was in Vancouver and UVic was in Victoria, not the same city. In addition, they certainly do not have the same reputation, I think UBC is much stronger overall and in particle physics as well.

I see what you mean. Well, i was trying to say that they are close to each other.

Well, it's like a 3 hours ride which includes taking the boat, so I wouldn't say they're next door to one another ...

I'd also tend to agree that UBC has a much stronger reputation that UVic, and also that there's significant distance between them. For particle theory, UBC is heavily biased towards string theory, and is one of the (only) major centres for it in the country. In experiment, there is participation in a large number of collaborations, from neutrino experiments in Japan to ATLAS at CERN, and also R&D for the ILC. Another plus is that the campus has its own cyclotron and associated (large) facility, TRIUMF, which brings in particle experimentalists from around the world to conduct research, and has a large number of research opportunities both on its own and in conjunction with the UBC physics department.

The only thing I know about UVic is that they are also active in various collaborations—any other info I could give you would just be from their website, so I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

Have you considered SFU as well? They have (at last count) three faculty working on ATLAS, if that's where your interests lie.

As far as cost of living is concerned, it's rather high in Vancouver, but I can't speak for Victoria. There is reasonably-priced student housing on the UBC campus, though. Keep an important semantic distinction in mind: "West Vancouver" is a separate town, a suburb of Vancouver mainly populated by the wealthy elite, while the "West End" of Vancouver is likely what you're thinking of.

I agree with signminus. Overall UBC has a stronger reputation in physics than UVic. As well, like mentioned, UBC has many faculty directly associated with TRIUMF. UVic is, however, one of the member universities of TRIUMF as well so there are many faculty associated with UVic at TRIUMF.

In terms of experimental particle physics, UVic has quite a strong ATLAS group. At UBC the experimental particle physics faculty are a little more scattered. As far as I know there is one faculty member that works on ATLAS, there are several that work on T2K (a neutrino experiment in Japan), and several others that work on various other experiments.

The cities are quite different as well. Victoria is a very popular place to for retirees so the demographic there is heavily weighed towards the seniors. That being said, there still are a number of young adults there as UVic is there too. I don't actually go there though, so perhaps it would be more helpful to get input from someone who actually goes there.

My friend,

UBC definitely has a better reputation in the physics side of things, HOWEVER, my friend, the girl to guy ratio at UVic is almost 2 to 1 - No lie. Both cities are very beautiful but if you're single, good luck finding a lady in sausage-fest-stuck-up Vancouver. Just saying..

lol