The university is made up of eight faculties, including:

• Faculty of Environment
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Applied Sciences
• Faculty of Health Sciences
• Faculty of Science
• Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences 
• Faculty of Communication, Art, and Technology
• Beedie School of Business

High-ranking courses include Archaeology, ranking a highly-impressive 17th in the world (QS, 2022), and their Geography and Anthropology courses are in the top 100 globally (QS,2022). 

SFU also offers general learning support for all students so all students, domestic and international, can move at their own pace to achieve what they have set out to do at their time in education there.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) is unique in that it is split across three campuses but in three quite different settings but all are tied to their local communities intrinsically.

The Burnaby campus is situated on top of Burnaby Mountain, it contains over 30 academic buildings and even encompasses ‘UniverCity’, a sustainable residential community. 

Surrey campus is in the heart of the ever-growing city of Surrey and right next to Surrey Central transit station. It also contains both the ImageTech Lab and Neuro TechLab at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Vancouver campus is in the neighbouring city of Vancouver, containing Beedie Business School and the School for the Contemporary Arts amongst others.

Simon Fraser’s innovation strategy, SFU Innovates, is the university’s plan to help students achieve their utmost through entrepreneurship and dynamism. This is achieved through SFU’s “Four Pillars”:

• Entrepreneurship - cultivating thinking that uses creativity, collaboration and adaptability for problem-solving.
• Social Innovation - creating up-and-coming voices and solutions to make communities sustainable and fair. 
• Incubation and Acceleration - taking classroom-made ideas and implementing them into wider contexts that surround us. 
• Industry and Community Research Partnerships - benefitting society through collaboration. 

Startup Services are also in place for day-to-day queries, support, and advice. 

Coast Capital Savings Venture Connection’s incubator for early-stage ideas and concepts provide support for students, alumni, and faculty members. Mentors are assigned who work with teams and set goals that they will oversee and help accomplish. 

Research plays a large part at SFU, ranking among Canada’s top 15 research universities, and perhaps more impressively is SFU’s grants program that is similar to the Canadian government-funded Undergraduate Student Research Awards in humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Even in the past five years, Simon Fraser’s research income has surpassed more than $55 million. Stronger still is SFU’s offer to students of academic and research opportunities via the 3,000+ international research partnerships in 128 countries. 

Arguably the most impressive facet of Simon Fraser’s research though is displayed on their Burnaby campus, and is the existence of their sustainable community, UniverCity. The ongoing efforts to preserve and minimise impact on the mountain shows a real desire for positive change in which students play an enormous part.

Like many universities in Canada, Simon Fraser University offers many of its degrees in co-op courses where students can implement their classroom-based learning and theory with work placements, often in paid positions. This creates work-ready students that employers want to be hiring. Approximately 8,500 students are currently on placements with companies such as Tesla and Google, amongst others.

SFU’s Career Services are also on hand to help students across all faculties with writing resumés, getting in touch with employers, and interview workshops so students never feel like they are getting left behind. The events that Career Services put on, both virtual and in-person, are targeted for motivated students to seize the initiative and better their chances of employability.

Due to Simon Fraser being split across three campuses, the student life differs depending on which one of the three one would live or study at.

The Burnaby Campus offers a level of seclusion that many other university campuses cannot, but its Bus Loop and Cornerstone building allows students to venture out into nightlife and culture of either Vancouver or Surrey.

Both Vancouver and Surrey campuses are more straightforwardly metropolitan and feature a huge host of cafes, bars, restaurants in the vicinity of the campuses that students can enjoy. The west coast of Canada is steeped in history and activity that would make any student proud to call that part of the world their home away from home.

Simon Fraser’s varsity teams represent the only Canadian university competing in the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), the world’s largest collegiate athletic association, and students of SFU can attend games free of charge which creates high turnouts with excellent atmospheres. 

Simon Fraser University is one of the more unique universities in regards to the campuses being split across two neighbouring cities and a mountaintop, but it adds to the charm of the SFU experience. The Burnaby campus in particular seems an incredible place to ply one’s studies and the dedication to preserving the landscape and bettering the human involvement in that environment through study and research make it an enticing prospect. 

The research prospects at SFU are also impressive, and it appears to be the main focus of this institution, noticeably because the employment rates from the university are not of the highest rates in relation to competitor universities of this size. 

Simon Fraser university may not appeal to everyone’s idea of the university experience, but it is undeniably making positive change in research fields on both an international level, and a local level. The courses in Archaeology, Geography and Anthropology are also famed, and worth considering for students with interests in those fields.