On the journey to a career in engineering, your first destination is university.

To work as a professional engineer in Canada, you need to have a degree from an accredited university, like UBC.
For engineering students, that usually means taking four to five years to complete a degree.
While most undergraduate degrees are four years long, engineering can be a little longer. That’s because many students do co-op, where they do several paid work terms that last between four and 12 months each. Co-op is a great way to gain paid experience and test out different kinds of engineering jobs way before you graduate.
What’s university like?
Amazing! Imagine taking courses that truly interest you, working on cool projects, joining clubs, and making friends with other students who share your passions and sense of purpose. University is all this and more.
Check out Everything you wanted to know about studying engineering to get a sense of what it would be like to be an engineering student.

How do you decide where to study?
Deciding where to study is like planning where you’d like to go on a vacation. Lots of factors are going to go into your decision.
When it comes to choosing a university, you might want to live close to home or far away from home. You might be interested in a university’s rankings and how it measures up against others around the world. You might want to study on a big campus or a smaller campus.
The factors that will be most important to you are uniquely your own. Here are some things you might want to know about UBC:
- Why UBC is consistently ranked one of Canada’s best engineering programs
- Deciding between UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan
- The first-year advantage of UBC Engineering
Not sure if university is for you?
You can work in other engineering-related fields without an engineering degree. Polytechnic institutes like BCIT offer fantastic programs where you can gain practical experience and the credentials you need to pursue a wide range of occupations.