| 2007-11-30 | How would I choose universities for exchange? I agree that a year of exchange will be useful to most students. However, I disagree we have to choose the well-known universities. What kind of universities to choose depends on the purpose of exchange. Try to answer the following questions to determine what suits you best.
1. What do you want to get from the exchange? Cultural exchange? Language training? Economics training?
2. Are you willing to defer for one year if some of the credits cannot be transferred back to HKU?
3. What kind of companies do you want to work with in your future?
4. Your own academic performance?
5. How important is the name of the university of exchange to you? Or the value added during that year?
If I had a chance for exchange, I would value the cultural exchange very much. Thus, I would choose the less competitive ones (of which, I have more chance to get into), I would choose the smaller universities, I would choose universities that are located in big cities, I would choose universities whose class sizes are small, I would choose universities that has smaller Asian population,....
Should I insist on a university with good Economics Department? No. Good Economics Departments are good in their frontier research (which are often impossible to be discussed in lectures). Good research is not directly related to good teaching in Economics at the undergraduate level. Most top research professors teach graduate school, not undergraduate courses. Small class size is a more important criteria.
However, if you want to study more Economics during your exchange year, you will want to select a university that offer a bigger variety of Economics coures. In that case, good Economics Departments often offer more Economics courses. Note that some universities offer courses that are not currently available at HKU, e.g., Health Economics, Energy Economics, Economics of Airlines, etc. If I were on exchange and my purpose were to learn more Economics, I would value opportunities to take those courses very much.
I cannot comment on individual universities because I do not kown most of them. Student should try to find those information from the US New Ranking of the universities and the universities' websites.
If you consider my sharing not very helpful, you may consider reading the following sharing from a student on exchange in a college unknown to most of us. (The college is Mount Holyoke College. The student is Geng Liting.) I asked Liting to write up her thought. She did it in less than 24 hours.
----- Liting's sharing -----
1. How you chose among the universities last year?
Last year when I was trying to choose among the huge number of universities, I simply wanted to go to University of California, especially UCLA as a lot of Chinese students did. However I didn't get that offer in the first round. Instead, I was offered another university in France, which is also pretty good. Since my favored country was U.S, so I decided to decline the offer and try my luck in the second round. I checked all the other choices in U.S., searched online, asked advices from senior students, and then noticed Mount Holyoke College.
First, I noticed it was a women's college, which was very different and attractive to me. Second, the online resource indicated that Mount Holyoke's liberal arts were among the top in U.S, which certainly included economics, and at the same time, since it's a college, it has very small class sizes, which means each students would enjoy more resource and more communication with their professors. Third, I noticed that the students at MHC were all very proud of their college, and love it so much. Last but not least, at that time I knew that another student who was offered MHC in the first round was going to drop for some reason (She didn't want a women's college.), which would in a way increase the chance of my successful application.
2. How will you choose among the universities for exchange if you were to choose it again, given your exchange experience at Mount Holyoke?
If I were to choose again, I would probably still choose Mount Holyoke for I've been enjoying so much the experience here. The really nice professors I've met here, the academic atmosphere, the nice people I've met, especially my dear roommate ... all sorts of reasons.
If I really have another chance, I'll pay more attention to some detailed aspects that I ignored last year. For example: the location of the university/college--is it located in a city or rural area? Is it in big cities that I really would like to know more about? Or is it far away from them? The location of a university/college really matters a lot, especially for us exchange students. It kind of determines which part of the foreign country's culture we'll be exposed to. It determines how much we can see from the country. For me, I really regret that I cannot live in cities and know more and feel more about city life in U.S. Maybe I can make up for it by travelling after the final exams. ;-)
3. How does your exchange experience at Mount Holyoke change your strategy?
First, do not follow what other students (maybe most of the students) are chasing after; try to find a university that really interests you in at least one special aspect. Do enough searches online, and try to ask advice from your professors.
Second, pay attention to details as location, courses, or other things, besides paying attention to the university's ranking. All the other details will allow you far more gain than just the ranking.
Last but not least, think twice before filling the application form. I shouldn't have put France in my application form last year. I cannot really speak French. Stupid mistake.
| 2007-11-28 | Excuse me. Can you write a recommendation letter for me? | | 2007-11-12 | No pain, no gain! | | 2007-09-14 | Teaching is to be enjoyed, and so is studying. Grades should only be secondary. | |