Check Your Eligibility

Applicants are required to have a completed equivalent to a 4-year, 120-credit UBC bachelor’s degree, conferred by an accredited post-secondary institution, with relevant courses with respect to their intended BEd program option, as detailed on the Academic Requirements page.

Courses taken should have post-secondary credits equivalent to the amount of credit hours required by the BEd program and must come from accredited institutions. Generally, a 3-credit UBC course is comprised of 39 hours of classroom instruction over a 13-week term.

Please note: these required courses are not transferred from your previous program to the Bachelor of Education program. Admission to the BEd program requires applicants complete courses within the proper discipline and with the requisite course content.

The academic requirements of the BEd program are determined by both the UBC Faculty of Education and the prerequisites indicated for licensing by the BC Teacher Certification Branch. The requirements listed on the self-assessment worksheets cannot be waived and must be completed before you begin the program.

How to determine if your courses are equivalent to our requirements:

1. Identify if your home institution(s) is accredited to grant credits and degrees, and if your degree is equivalent to a 4-year, 120-credit UBC bachelor’s degree.

  • Applicants from BC can check if their instituion and degree program are listed on the Degree Authorization page of the BC government website.
  • Applicants across Canada: check with the respective provincial authority to determine if the institution is authorized to grant credits and degrees.
  • Applicants with degrees from outside of Canada:
  • Courses from accredited institutions would generally satisfy the credit requirement of the BEd program. To check if your courses have equivalent credit value at UBC, you can use the BC Transfer Guide or the UBC Transfer Credit Search.
If you are unable to find a course option directly transferable to a UBC course, don’t worry. At this point, you are simply trying to determine if your courses have credit value.

2. See if the courses you have completed satisfy our course prerequisites.

  • The BEd program requires that applicants have completed courses that contain the proper course content. Determining this is usually straightforward especially if the course codes and titles that you have taken are, or almost are, identical to those required by the self-assessment worksheets.
  • To determine whether your course content fulfills the requirements for your teachable subject(s), download the self-assessment sheet(s) and compare the recommended UBC course descriptions with the course descriptions from your home institution(s).
If you are a UBC student wondering if a course you have taken will count toward a specific requirement, you can check to see if it is cross-listed with any other discipline using the UBC Calendar course list. (For example, ASIA 270 China in World History is cross-listed as UBC HIST 270.)
Elementary & Middle Years Applicants

Elementary & Middle Years Option Applicants:

We have prepared a pre-approved courses guide for those who have taken their courses from institutions in BC. Download the Acceptable Courses Guide here (under "Elementary & Middle Years" Step 2).

Defining Canadian Studies: A course is considered a Canadian course if 90% or more of the course’s readings, activities, and content focuses on understanding the Canadian experience, and where the Canadian content is central to the conceptual thesis of the course rather than existing only as exemplar supporting concepts of another academic discipline.

Secondary Applicants

Secondary Option Applicants:

Please see the academic and experience requirements on our website.

For applicants to any of the Social Studies Education category teachables:

Defining Social Science: coursework taken in Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Canadian Studies, Regional Studies, Criminology, Gender Studies, First Nation Studies, Religious Studies (of a non-doctrinal nature), Classical Studies, Urban Studies, and Environmental Studies may be included under the Social Sciences umbrella. Coursework taken in Psychology or Philosophy may not be included.

Course Completion and Transcripts

Applicants still lacking prerequisite courses can take them from any accredited post-secondary institution, and can be taken in any format, in-person or online. Details about course completion and transcript submissions deadlines can be viewed on our Transcripts page.

Contact Us

If you are still unsure about your courses, feel free to reach out to us using our contact form. To help us determine the eligibility of your courses, please attach completed self-assessment sheets, course descriptions, and syllabuses of the courses with your message.

Note: The information presented on this page is intended as a general guide to assist prospective students with determining if their academic qualifications may potentially meet admission requirements to the UBC Vancouver BEd program. As this is a general guide, there may be exceptions to the information presented, and information is subject to change. Should you have any further questions after carefully reviewing this page, please contact the TEO.
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