A review of UBC's physics courses
Jan 06, 2025As I enter my final semester of university, I have the chance to reflect on the time I've spent here at UBC. In doing so, I've realized that soon my brain will no longer revolve around all-things-student, and my college memories will begin to blur. So, while all the information is still (pseudo) fresh, I need to create a proper digest of my physics degree. Honouring this theme, let's do this in the nerdiest and most physics-y way possible: with a tierlist.
Of course, every good tierlist needs a rubric. Here are things I do consider for each ranking:
- Usefulness. How useful is the course for post-school life?
- Execution. Given what the course sets out to do, how well does it accomplish this?
- Organization. Are the topic and quantity of the course content reasonable?
Let me lead with a forewarning; these are things I absolutely do not consider for each ranking:
- Professor. Teaching staff often changes, and it is not my intention to use this platform to provide performance reviews of faculty.
- Grades. Including this metric skews the rankings to not properly reflect the true learning takeaways of a course.
Here's the list1:
S
- PHYS 410
- MATH 400
- PHYS 449
- PHYS 402
- PHYS 409
- MATH 317
A
- PHYS 403
- PHYS 210
- PHYS 309
- PHYS 216
- SCIE 001
- MATH 316
B
- PHYS 401
- PHYS 229
- PHYS 474
- MATH 221
- MATH 215
C
- PHYS 407
- PHYS 306
- MATH 300
- MATH 318
D
- PHYS 200
- PHYS 203
- MATH 200
- PHYS 301
F
- BIOL 140
- PHYS 219
- PHYS 304
1 The astute reader will note the inclusion of some non-physics courses in this list. All math courses listed are required for an honours physics degree. First-year science courses (here SCIE 001 and BIOL 140) were also included because the physics specialization does not begin until second year.