UBC Sauder BCom: Personal Profile Questions and Video Interview
UBC Sauder’s BCom application adds two things to the standard UBC Personal Profile: two Commerce-specific written questions and a recorded video interview with thirty seconds to think and ninety to answer. Here is the format, the questions as published, and how to prepare for a video interview where you choose which answers to submit.
The format
- The standard UBC Personal Profile. Up to six common questions, each 500 to 2,100 characters, an activities list, and two references. The UBC Personal Profile guide covers those.
- Two Commerce-specific written questions, each with a 1,500-character limit:
- Explain how you responded to a problem and/or an unfamiliar situation. What did you do, what was the outcome, and what did you learn from the experience?
- How are you positively impacting your community? How do you plan to leverage your UBC Sauder experience to enhance these efforts?
- A video interview. In recent cycles: one practice question, then three randomly generated questions, each with 30 seconds to prepare and 90 seconds to answer, from which you choose two responses to submit. The first two are interview-style; the third has been a creative or scenario prompt.
What Sauder says it’s looking for
Sauder describes the video interview as a chance to show how you think critically, perform under pressure and stand out, and says the aim is to see how you think, not to trick you. The written questions follow UBC’s four Personal Profile criteria: engagement and accomplishment, leadership, substance, and voice. Read together, the package is testing three things: can you tell a specific story with a result, can you reason out loud quickly, and do you sound like a real person doing both.
The two written questions
“A problem and/or an unfamiliar situation”
Three parts are asked for: what you did, the outcome, and what you learned. Fifteen hundred characters is about 230 words, so roughly two sentences of situation, a paragraph of what you did with a decision in it, one sentence of outcome with a number if you have one, and two sentences of honest learning. The STAR method interview guide is the shape. Pick the unfamiliar situation over the problem if you can; it produces more interesting answers.
“Positively impacting your community”
Two parts, and applicants answer only the first. The second asks how Sauder specifically would help you do more of it, which means naming something real about the program: a course, a club, the co-op structure, a centre. If you haven’t looked that closely, this question will show it.
The video interview
Thirty seconds of prep is enough to pick a story and your last line, nothing more. Ninety seconds is enough for a full story if the setup is one sentence. Since you choose two of three responses to submit, the strategy is simple: answer all three as if each counts, then drop the weakest. Don’t save effort on the third because you plan to drop it; it has often been the creative one, and a good creative answer is the most memorable thing in your file.
Practice question: You have $100 and one weekend to make as much money as possible. What do you do?
I’d buy a pressure washer rental for the weekend, which is about $80 where I live, and spend Saturday morning knocking on doors in a neighbourhood with a lot of driveways and older owners. The pitch is thirty dollars a driveway, done in twenty minutes, and I’d do the first one free on a corner lot so the neighbours can see it. I think the constraint people miss in this question is that a hundred dollars won’t buy inventory worth selling, but it will buy a tool that turns my time into something people already pay for. If I do twelve driveways over two days, that’s $360 on $80 plus gas. The risk is rain, so I’d check the forecast before renting, and if it’s wet I’d switch to gutter clearing with a $20 ladder rental instead. Either way the principle is the same: rent leverage, sell time.
Fifteen practice questions in the Sauder format
AcceptMe practice questions written to Sauder’s themes: problem solving, community impact, business awareness and creative reasoning. Not Sauder’s questions. Run three at a time on a 30/90 timer and practice choosing which two you’d submit.
- Tell us about a time you had to figure something out with no instructions and nobody to ask.
- Describe a project where the first plan failed. What did you change, and what happened?
- What is a business in your community that you think is run well, and what specifically do they do right?
- Tell us about a time you convinced someone to change their mind. What worked?
- Describe something you started that other people are still using or doing.
- If you had to teach a class of Grade 9 students one thing about money, what would it be and how would you teach it?
- Tell us about a time you worked with someone very different from you. What did you learn from them?
- You run a small campus café and a competitor opens next door with lower prices. What is the first thing you do?
- Describe a time you gave up something you wanted to keep a commitment.
- Design a product for a grandparent that doesn’t exist yet. What is it, and why doesn’t it exist?
- Tell us about the busiest month of your last year and what you deliberately dropped.
- What is a recent business or economic story you followed, and what did it teach you?
- Describe a time you noticed someone being left out and what you did.
- You have to cut one of three club events to save money. How do you decide which?
- What would you do differently if you were principal of your school for one term?
Mistakes specific to Sauder
- Answering only half of the community question. The Sauder half is where the fit is judged.
- Sandbagging the third video question. Answer all three properly, then choose.
- Counting words. The written limits are characters. Draft with a character count.
- Trusting last year’s format. The platform and question count have changed before. The application itself is the source of truth.
Keep reading
- UBC Personal Profile Questions: How to Answer Each One UBC's Personal Profile questions as published, the four things UBC says it reads for, how to answer within 2,100 characters, and a worked example.
- SFU Beedie BBA Supplemental Application: What Each Part Wants Beedie's blind-scored supplemental for Fall 2027: the 300-word activity answer, achievements and references, no video, with a worked answer.
- Supplementary Applications in Ontario: Every Program Compared Every Ontario business and engineering program with a supplementary application: what each asks, the video and written timings, and all the deadlines.
- UBC Sauder Admissions Interview: How to Prepare What the invited Sauder interview is, why it arrives in March with no warning, and how to prepare answers in the days you get.