Tuition, Fees & Cost of Living – Graduate School – University of British Columbia – Vancouver – Canada (ubc.ca)
Students pay their fees online through the Student Service Centre. All graduate students are responsible for keeping up-to-date in paying tuition and student fees until the completion of their program.GRADUATE TUITION FEES
Tuition at UBC is one of the lowest in Canada and lower than most international universities. More…GRADUATE STUDENT FEES
All UBC students pay mandatory fees related to student facilities, student governments, the UPASS transit pass and health insurance. More…COST OF LIVING
Anticipating and managing your living expenses is an important part of student success. More…“GRAs are generally supported by the student's supervisors' research grants. The duties usually constitute part of the students’ graduate degree requirements. The entire stipend is considered to be a scholarship, the conditions of which may be specified by the granting agency. GRA appointments may be for any specified period satisfactory to the grantee. The stipend must be paid monthly or for a specific period.”
https://www.grad.ubc.ca/current-students/managing-your-program/graduate-research-assistant-gra
Please discuss GRA funding availability with your potential supervisor.
Teaching and Research Assistantships are intended to provide students with an opportunity to learn and develop skills in a classroom setting. Student appointments may involve part-time duties in teaching, research, or other academic activities. The online application for available TA positions is open from March to April 30th each year. Successful applicants are appointed during the summer for the following Winter Session.
The Faculty offers various TA, Tutor and Marker positions - check the Job Postings for details.
"The objective of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral (CGS D) Program is to promote continued excellence in Canadian research by rewarding and retaining high-calibre doctoral students at Canadian institutions. By providing support for a high-quality research training experience to awardees, the CGS D program strives to foster impacts within and beyond the research environment.”
Annual Value: $35,000
Citizenship: Canadian, Permanent Resident
Deadline: Applicants – 12 September 2023 at 12:00 noon PT
Note: In addition to the CGS D, each agency has its own doctoral awards. Refer to the appropriate literature for CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC for further details. Meritorious CGS D applicants may also be eligible for agency-specific doctoral awards. Applicants complete and submit one application to be considered for both a CGS D scholarship and an agency doctoral award (exception: CIHR DFSA). CGS D scholarships are offered to top-ranked eligible applicants. Some eligibility requirements for CGS D differ from those of the agency-specific doctoral awards.
CIHR: Online application system | application instructions
Annual Value: $35,000 (stipend per year)
Deadline: 12 September 2023 at 12:00 noon PT
Further information: CIHR health research training award programs page
NSERC: Online application system | application instructions | application tutorials
Annual Value: $21,000
Deadline: 12 September 2023 at 12:00 noon PT
Further information: NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships – Doctoral program
- NSERC: Transcripts are now uploaded by applicants themselves directly into their NSERC online application; university staff do not upload transcripts into the online application system on behalf of applicants. Previously, applicants selected a "university designate" staff member at UBC to upload their transcripts, but now applicants upload their own transcripts.
SSHRC: Online application system | application instructions
Annual Value: $20,000
Deadline: 12 September 2023 at 12:00 noon PT
Further information: SSHRC Doctoral Fellowships
The deadline for students to submit their CGS-Master's applications via the Research Portal is before 5 PM (PST) on Friday, 1 December 2023. This deadline is set nationally and is not flexible; UBC has no administrative authority/means to extend the deadline for applicants.
“The objective of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master's (CGS M) Program is to help develop research skills and assist in the training of highly qualified personnel by supporting students who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in undergraduate and early graduate studies. The CGS M Program provides financial support to high-calibre scholars who are engaged in eligible master's or, in some cases, doctoral programs in Canada.”
Annual Value: $17,500
Citizenship: Canadian, Permanent Resident
Deadline: Applicants – December 1, 2023
Eligibility, Evaluation Criteria, Application Procedures, Nomination Procedures, Adjudication Procedures, Profiles of Award Holders
Further information: Tri-Agency Harmonized CGS M website
“The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies offers approximately 50 Affiliated Fellowships each year to meritorious students for full-time study and/or research leading to a graduate degree. Awards are made on the basis of academic excellence, with applications open to current and prospective full-time UBC graduate students regardless of citizenship or visa status. ”
Affiliated Fellowships Doctoral Program - Graduate School - University of British Columbia - Vancouver - Canada (ubc.ca)
The UBC Affiliated Fellowships Doctoral Program competition runs in concert with the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral (CGS D) Program.
Annual value: $175 - $30,000
Eligibility: Canadian, Permanent Resident, International student
Deadline: Applicants – 12 September 2023 at 12:00 noon PT
Eligibility, Evaluation Criteria, Application Procedures, Nomination Procedures, Adjudication Procedures, Profiles of Award Holders
Further information: Affiliated Fellowships Doctoral Program - Graduate School - University of British Columbia - Vancouver - Canada (ubc.ca)
Affiliated Fellowships Master's Program
The UBC Affiliated Fellowships Master's competition runs in concert with the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master's (CGS M) Program.
Annual Value: $175 - $16,000
Citizenship: Canadian, Permanent Resident, International
Deadline: Applicants – 1 December 2023 deadline
Eligibility, Evaluation Criteria, Application Procedures, Nomination Procedures, Adjudication Procedures, Profiles of Award Holders
Further information: Affiliated Fellowships Application Form, Application Instructions
“The Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF) program will ensure UBC's best PhD, DMA, and MDPhD students are provided with financial support of at least $18,200 per year plus tuition for up to four years of their Doctoral studies. This program allows UBC to continue to attract and support outstanding domestic and international Doctoral students, and provide those students with stable, base-level funding for their Doctoral studies and research.”
Annual value: $18,200 plus full tuition. The Faculty of Land and Food Systems awards up to four new 4YF’s a year to top-ranking PhD students.
Eligibility: Canadian, Permanent Resident, International student
Degree Level/Application Status: Doctoral / Incoming & continuing students*
UPDATE April 13, 2023. Results of the 4YF competition have been finalized. All winners and supervisors have been notified. Regrets notifications will be sent to unsuccessful applicants by end of day April 14th.
“The Graduate Support Initiative is a system for funding graduate students through entrance scholarships, multi-year funding packages, tuition awards and scholarship top-ups.”
Program Advisors in LFS are responsible for selecting and nominating graduate students within their programs. Criteria for eligibility include, but are not limited to, academic merit and student financial need. Awards appear as “Faculty of Land and Food Systems Graduate Award” on student’s transcript.
Annual value: Award amounts are determined by Program Graduate Advisors.
Eligibility: Canadian, Permanent Resident, International student
Degree Level/Application Status: Master’s and Doctoral / Incoming & continuing students.
Application deadline: Students do not apply for this award; they are nominated by their supervisor and/or Program Graduate Advisor.
Up to 15 Trudeau Scholarships are awarded each year to support doctoral students pursuing research in one or more of the four themes: human rights and social justice, responsible citizenship, Canada and the world, and humans and their natural environment. Trudeau Scholars are highly gifted individuals who are actively engaged in their fields and expected to become leading national and international figures.
Trudeau website: Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation webpage.
Annual value: Up to $40,000 stipend plus up to $20,000 research and travel allowance per year for three years
Eligibility: Canadian, Permanent Resident, International students
Degree Level/Application Status: Doctoral / Incoming & continuing students
Application deadline: Likely in December 2023
“The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) program is designed to attract and retain world-class doctoral students by offering them a significant financial award to assist them during their studies at Canadian universities. Vanier Scholars demonstrate leadership skills and a high standard of scholarly achievement in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health-related fields. Canadian and international students are eligible to be nominated for a Vanier Scholarship, which is valued at $50,000 per year for up to three years.”
Vanier website: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships
Annual value: $50,000/year for up to 3 years
Eligibility: Canadian citizens, landed immigrants (permanent residents), and international students are all eligible for Vanier Scholarships. Please see the Vanier CGS website for complete eligibility criteria.
Degree Level/Application Status: Doctoral / Incoming & continuing students
Application deadline: 12 noon (PT - Vancouver time) on Thursday, August 31 2023
Please note that the Indigenous Graduate Fellowship was known as the Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship until 2023.
The University of British Columbia offers multi-year fellowships to Master's and doctoral Indigenous students. Award winners are selected on the basis of academic merit through an annual competition administered by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
Each fellowship provides a stipend of $18,200 per year for doctoral students or a stipend of $16,175 per year for Master’s students. Additionally, IGF recipients are eligible to receive tuition funding. Tuition funding will not exceed the current value of standard doctoral or Master's degree tuition fees. Applicants for Master's funding will receive fellowship funding until the end of their second year of Master’s studies; applicants for doctoral funding will receive fellowship funding for four years or until the end of their fifth year of doctoral studies, whichever comes first. In all cases, continued fellowship support is conditional on satisfactory academic progress. Recipients of Master’s fellowship funding must re-apply to be considered for doctoral funding.
NEW! Effective the 2023-2024 academic year, the IGF will also offer opportunities for (i) Indigenous PhD students in their fourth year to apply for a fifth year of funding and (ii) research Master’s and PhD students to apply for research funding. Details of these programs and application procedures to be finalized in January 2023 and will be provided here at that time.
Annual value: $16,175 stipend plus tuition per year for Master's students; $18,200 stipend plus tuition per year for doctoral students
Eligibility: All Indigenous students are eligible to apply, but priority is given to Indigenous students whose traditional territory falls, at least in part, within Canada. This includes Canadian First Nations, Métis or Inuit students and may include Indigenous students from Alaska and other states of the USA. The university may request further information to confirm Indigenous eligibility.
Degree Level/Application Status: Masters/Doctoral
Application deadline: CLOSED Internal Deadline: February 3, 2023
Recognizing Top Thesis and Dissertations
There are a number of annual awards that recognize outstanding Master’s of Science thesis and Doctoral dissertations, including the new LFS Top Thesis Award and LFS Top Dissertation Award. Please carefully read internal deadlines, and application processes.
MSc Thesis Awards
Deadline: Likely March 2024
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: n/a – Gold Medal
LFS Top Thesis Award - No separate application; students must submit a Governor General’s Gold Medal application. Recipient will be chosen from nominations to the Governor General’s Gold Medal competition.
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: $500.00; winners are recognized on a perpetual plaque located in the LFS Dean’s Office.
PhD Dissertation Awards
Deadline: Likely March 2024
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: n/a – Gold Medal
LFS Top Dissertation Award - No separate application; students must submit a Governor General’s Gold Medal application. Recipient will be chosen from nominations to the Governor General’s Gold Medal competition.
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: $750.00; winners are recognized on a perpetual plaque located in the LFS Dean’s Office.
CAGS/ProQuest-UMI Distinguished Dissertation Awards
Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS), with sponsorship support provided by ProQuest
Deadline: Likely February 2024
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: $1,500 plus travel expenses to CAGS conference in November
UBC Dissertation Prize – No separate application. Winners are chosen from applications submitted to the CAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards competition.
Deadline: Likely February 2024
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023
Award value: $1,000
CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award
Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and ProQuest Dissertations Publishing
Deadline: OPEN Internal LFS deadline for student to apply is May 31, 2023
Eligibility: Students must have submitted the final copy of their thesis to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies between July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2023
Subject fields are Biological Sciences/Life Sciences and Humanities & Fine Arts (a non-inclusive list can be found here).
Award value: $2,000.00, a certificate of recognition, and travel expenses to the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools in December 2023 in Washington, DC.
LFS Deadline: Faculty Deadline to submit nominations to G&PS is June 14, 2023.
Note: The CGS/ProQuest Award operates on a two-year cycle in regard to fields of competition. The fields of competition for 2024 will be Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering, and Social Sciences.
LFS Top Thesis Award and LFS Top Dissertation Award Winners have been selected! Updated April 3, 2023:
To recognize the outstanding contribution to research made by LFS graduate students, the Faculty has created two new annual awards. These run in conjunction with the annual Governor General Gold Medal and CAGS-ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award competitions; the students selected as the GG Gold Medal nominees are named winners in the newly created top LFS thesis and dissertation awards. Huiying (Amelie) Zhang (MSc Food Science 2022), won the LFS Top Thesis Award, which is presented to the master’s student with the top-ranked thesis. Zhang’s thesis was Identification of circuminoids in nutraceuticals and assessment of stability and bioactivity following pulsed light treatment. Ronit Mandal (PhD Food Science 2022), won the LFS Top Dissertation Award, given to the doctoral student with the highest-ranked dissertation for Design, development, and validation of continuous-flow pulsed UV light systems for liquid food processing.
Congratulations to our 2022 Winners!
The Faculty administers several scholarships and awards of varying values ($75 - $30,000). These scholarships and awards are generally awarded for academic achievement, but some may require achievement in other areas such as leadership, community service, performance in a specific course or area, or for some other specified characteristic. All students enrolled in LFS graduate programs are considered for these awards, as appropriate to their field and academic achievement. Funding for all LFS Awards is provided through endowments, annual funded awards, or program funding. In order to acknowledge the contributions of our many donors, we strongly encourage all award winners to write a thank you letter and send it to the Awards inbox (awards.development@ubc.ca). These messages will be forwarded on the student's behalf.
For the 2023-2024 academic year, there will not be a Major Award competition. Research-based graduate programs within LFS have been assigned a portion of LFS Major Award funding to allocate to students within their program (same as GSI funding). Awards will be assigned in late September/early October.
Available awards can be found on the UBC Award Search website.
Travelling outside of Canada: When students are planning travel outside of Canada for university purposes, they have obligations under UBC’s Student Safety Abroad Policy (SC12). Students are required to have adequate travel medical insurance, to register their travel on UBC’s Safety Abroad Registry, and to use the resources provided by UBC to support safe travel planning and risk management. In locations where the Government of Canada has official travel advisories in place, students are required to request High-Risk Authorization before travelling. For more information, see: https://safetyabroad.ubc.ca or email safety.abroad@ubc.ca.
Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies – Graduate Student Travel and Research Dissemination Fund
“Graduate students are eligible for reimbursement from the Graduate Student Travel and Research Dissemination Fund once per degree program. The Travel and Research Dissemination Fund provides funding support to a combined maximum of $500 per graduate student..”
Value: Maximum of $500 per graduate student per degree program
Deadline: Applications are accepted year-round
NOTE: In January 2023, G&PS announced changes to their Graduate Student Travel and Research Dissemination Fund. Key changes:
- Eligible applicants will now receive a lump sum award offer of $500
- Previously, applicants received up to $500 depending on receipts submitted
- Receipts are no longer required as part of the application
- Refer to the award webpage for details on application requirements
- The application form has been updated:
- To remove the request for the applicant's summary of expenses
- To include a section specifically for applicants indicating an open access publishing charge.
- To include language regarding Workday payment (ie. payment to faculty members)
LFS Graduate Student Travel Award (LFS GSTA) - INSTRUCTIONS 2023-2024 LFS GSTA (includes link and QL code)
PLEASE NOTE: A number of changes have been made to the LFS Graduate Student Travel Award for 2023-2024. This application will be in effect for conferences dated between September 1, 2023 and August 31, 2024.
The LFS Graduate Student Travel Award (LFS GSTA) is funded through a generous $1.4 million endowment bequeathed to LFS from the estate of Ursula Knight Abbott. The award is intended to help defray costs incurred by research-based graduate students for attending and presenting a research paper or poster describing their thesis research at a scientific meeting/conference, held by a professional society, outside the Lower Mainland. Approximately 45 LFS GSTAs are assigned annually. `
Value: $1750 1 award per degree program for MSc students; up to 2 awards per degree program for PhD students (students who transfer from MSc to PhD are eligible for a maximum of two LFS GSTA’s in total). NOTE: Students can only claim one travel award during each funding period (September 1 to August 31).
The LFS GSTA is limited to research-based graduate program students only. Students may receive a travel award for a period of up to 6 months following their program completion date. Students on leave are not eligible.
Link to Qualtrics survey application
Bursaries are non-repayable awards that are given to students on the basis of financial need. At UBC, there are the following two bursary programs available: General Bursaries: UBC’s General Bursary program is designed to help fill your “unmet need,” which is the gap between your educational costs and your available government assistance. This program covers most bursaries available to UBC students, although it is separate from the Major Entrance Awards. If you’re entering UBC directly from secondary school, you should consider applying for both the bursary program and the Major Entrance Awards. Affiliation Bursaries: There are many different Affiliation Bursaries. Eligibility for these bursaries is usually determined by connection to a specific club, trade union, company, geographic region, or demographic group. The requirements for each bursary are unique. Each bursary has its own eligibility requirements. In addition, there is an application process (including deadlines) for all UBC bursaries. Bursary application are not administered through the LFS Grad Office nor are we ever informed of or publicize recipient information due to the confidential nature of bursaries.
Please refer to the UBC Bursary page to determine your eligibility for bursaries and for information on the application process.
A number of University awards for upcoming academic year are available to current and incoming graduate students.
Annual Value: $150 to $16,000
Eligibility: See www.grad.ubc.ca/awards/spring-graduate-awards-competition
- https://www.grad.ubc.ca/prospective-students/scholarships-awards-funding
- http://www.students.ubc.ca/finance/graduate-students/types-of-financial-support/#Scholarships&awards
- Awards Search
- Awards FAQ
- Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies Resources for Award Applicants: Includes links to funding databases, tips and best practices, workshop and presentation materials and sample application materials.