Exchange students?

[Ziltoid]

I'm looking forward to do a semester as an exchange student in another campus, I already talked about it to my parents and they seemed to like the idea to get rid of me for a semester/year

Has anybody done this? I'm curious to see what's you thoughts about it.

Also here's the universities I can go to with a scholarship and be credited by mine:

Germany: - Université de la Sarre, Saarbrücken
Belgium: - Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-neuve

Chili : - Universidad d’Antofagasta, Antofagasta

US: - Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green
- University of Central Arkansas, Conway
- California State University East Bay, Hayward
- Lamar University, Beaumont , Texas
- University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana
- Western Illinois University, Macomb

Finland: - Turku University of Applied Sciences , Turku

France: - Université de Poitiers, Poitiers
- Université de Caen-Basse Normandie, Caen
- Institut d’administration des entreprises de Lille, Lille
- Institut d’études politiques de Lille, Lille
- Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Lyon
- Université de Nantes, Nantes
- Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
- École supérieure de commerce d’Amiens Picardie, Amiens
- Institut supérieur d’agriculture de Beauvais, Beauvais
- Université Paul-Cézanne, Aix-Marseille 3, Marseille
– Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
- Université de Bretagne-Sud à Lorient et Vannes, Lorient et Vannes
- École de management de Normandie, Caen
- L'Université des Antilles et de la Guyane
- Institut commercial de Nancy, École de management, Nancy

Hungary - University of Pécs, Pécs

Mexico: - Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara
- Universidad de Colima, Manzanillo
- Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, Villahermosa
- Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi

Roumania: - Université de Bucarest, Bucarest

Switzerland: - Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale, Fribourg
- Université de Fribourg, firbourg

I didn't do any extensive research about the uni's yet, just ruled out those who were not in a language I could deal with (French/English and I don't think English would be a good idea but I left the options open).

This will probably not be next year but the one after so I have lots of time left for planning/research and what not.

Apperently it's really harder in Europe at the "license" level then it is here, hence why my parents told me to wait an extra year to make sure I'm more then prepared.

Thoughts, opinions, anything, help?

[MJ5150]

Go to the one in Louisiana.

-Mike

[Ziltoid]

Lafayette is probably too expensive considering the nature (well amount) of the exchange scholarship, there's that and the fact that my parents told me that going for a semester in the states won't really help me resume wise for scholarships, TA jobs and whatnot in the future (master).

[Bett]

Go to Finland, even though you crossed it off. You'll like it there. Most people speak or at least understand English there anyway, though I dunno how many classes are taught in it in Turku. Did you check Helsinki University? They do offer some classes in English last I looked.

[Ziltoid]

I'd have to check if the classes are taught in French or English, and Helsinki U isn't part of the exchange program so I can't go there.

[Bett]

Ah, I see. I thought that was just a list of places you had thought of.
I just looked it up, and Turku University does have English courses, though I'm not sure if they'd be the same classes you want. http://www.utu.fi/en/studying/programmes/ If you do pick Finland, I'm sure you'll have lots of fun there. If you end up there at any point in the summer, then Sean and I will have to come visit you, and maybe we'll get Nolifer to come along too.

[MakiSupaStar]

I have a sexy japanese exchange student living with me and she's sexy. I approve of exchange students.

[flypejose]

I cannot speak on the other places you mentioned but I know a bit about Belgium, which is where I lived and studied before I came to the US. I will say Louvain is a nice place to study at; however the whole city is almost deserted on weekends. “Universite Libre de Bruxelles” ULB or Universite de Liege would be better IMO as they are located in bigger cities.

When it comes to your Master degree, I think nothing beats living in Brussels and attending VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), the Flemish counterpart to the ULB, which gives lectures in English (only at the master level). They are much cheaper due to more subventions by the Flemish government (564 EUR/yr against 835 EUR/yr at ULB), and you get to know another culture within the super cosmopolitan Brussels.

[guitar ed]

Living in the Bay Area, I would suggest skipping CSU East Bay. Housing will be more expensive than LA, I can promise you that. Hayward is not exactly the garden spot of CA, either. Now, CSU Chico is real nice, I went there back in the day. Not so expensive, I thought it was a really neat place. Wish I could have lived there, but no such luck.

Otherwise, I would suggest outside the US, if you can swing it. Heck, UBC in Vancouver is real pretty. Worth looking into, I would think.

edg

[bassrique]

I was an exchange student in France for a short while. The family I stayed with were nice, but strange. They bathed in the same bath water [they let me go first], ate chicken necks, only had a bit of bread for breakfast and put my leather Adidas Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sneakers in the washer and drier. These were not poor ignorant people btw.

I had my head handed to me playing soccer, and challenged everyone to baseball and football matches. That went nowhere.

On the bright side, I could buy pornography there as a minor with no questions asked.

[bmc]

My daughter was at UBC in Vancouver and did an exchange year split between Oslo and Uganda/Tanzania.

Loved it. Had a fabulous time. Currently doing an internship in Brussels. Graduate school will be in either London, Paris, Geneva or Sweden (Upsalla Uni). She's Canadian.

Go abroad. North America is too easy to do. The nice thing about Europe is how cheap it is to fly everywhere. She flew from Oslo to Dublin for St.Patricks for $50 cdn round trip tax in.

There should be no difference in the university fees from what you are paying now.

[AciDBatH666]

- Lamar University, Beaumont , Texas
- University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana

Lamar I'd scratch off. My cousin is from Bridge City, Texas and he went here. It's really small if I remember correctly. Just a lot of smaller outside areas that congregate towards that school. I could be wrong tho. I just know my cousin lived in a small area and went there because it was the closest around him.

As for University of Louisiana @ Lafayette, I went there. I still live in Lafayette. Lafayette is a huge central area for a lot of cultures. Lafayette and the surrounding areas (about an hour in each direction) is called "Acadiana". It's not on a map, but it's a cultural outline for the area. Lafayette has a population of about 250K, and a surrounding area of about 500K. Lafayette is known as the "Cajun Heartland" because of it's history and food. I think it has one of the largest restaurants per capita in the nation. There's so many places to eat around here it's not even funny.

Lafayette is growing a lot, but it's growing inwards. After Katrina hit our population jumped up a pretty big amount and it's added to traffic congestion.
If you like hunting/fishing, Louisiana is known as "Sportsman's Paradise". There's nearly every kind of game you can imagine if you're willing to travel to the gulf or other areas.. There's over 400 Festivals here each year. Also there's Festival Internationale. It's a HUGE thing downtown with bands from all over the world.

There's tons of culture and food down here. Also, if you like to drink, this is the place to do it. Where most of the rest of the country closes their alcohol sections on Sundays, you can get beer ANYWHERE here. I've gone to places out of state and wanted to get beer on a Sunday and they looked at me like I was crazy. Also, you don't have to go to liquor store or winery to get alcohol. It's for sale at damn near everywhere. Not just specialized stores.
Not that it's much to brag about, but pretty much all these festivals are just a reason to go somewhere and drink.
That's some of the upsides...

Some of the down sides? I could care less about "Cajun Culture". I was born and raised here and when you've lived in an area for so long you just get used to it. The music, meh, it's ok.... But I can only see so much live Zydeco and 2-Step dancing before I'm bored out of my mind. There are cajuns here, but only a small percentage of the population actually speak French, or Cajun French. If you go further south, you'll run into some rural areas where there's some true coona$$es that have that retarded accent that was brought to the world by Adam Sandler in "The Waterboy".

It's nice down here, but I'm just used to it. I'm bored with the city. Once you've been here for a while there's not a ton to do. But if you like venturing out a little to check out live music, there's always something going on. Unfortunately for me it's not always the music I wanna hear. ULL is a GREAT University. I went there for Industrial Design and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Their Computer Science and Engineer departments are very good. Engineering is in high demand because we're central to the oil business being center of the whole Gulf of Mexico area. The oil business is HUGE down here and a lot of companies have their main offices here. Partially because it's close to the gulf and the port in New Iberia... And because it's between New Orleans and Houston.

Anyways. I'm babbling. Anything you'd like to know about the area just shoot me a pm or something.

[RonGillman3]

No Brasil.
I went to Brasil for a year last year (as a high school Junior). So I definitely recommend going anywhere, I have friends in those places but don't know what its like.

[Ziltoid]

The US are out

[Bett]

If you go to Finland soon you'll have free tuition. But go quickly, cause they're thinking about changing the laws at some point for non-EU citizens.

[Ziltoid]

Tuition isn't much of a worry as France per example will be like 100euro for a year or something very minimal like that. So far I think I'll go to France...

[Bett]

But everyone goes to France. Plus it's not cold enough there. Go to Scandinavia in the winter and enjoy all the snow, and hours of daytime darkness!

[Ziltoid]

That wouldn't be anything new, the idea of going to France is to study in the language I'm good at

[Tsal]

Many universities offer limited courses that are taught in English, some universities have even whole programs in English. Depends on what you want to study, though, I think most foreign-language programs are in fields like Business or Engineering.

[Ziltoid]

Exactly, currently my three concentrations are Political Science, Sociology and Philosophy, my choice of which Uni. in France will depend on which one I want to pursue in at that time, if it's Philo it's a no brainer and I'm going to Poitier but I doubt it very much as I want other options then teaching which is about the only thing you can do in Philo to stay in your domain.