University: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA
City: Santa Barbara
Country: United States
Continent: North America
Field of study: economics
Study type: semester abroad
University
I’m studying industrial engineering and mechanical engineering at the TU Braunschweig and studied the case quarter 2014 at the UCSB. UCSB is particularly well positioned in the areas of economics and other business courses. In terms of courses, a distinction must be made between extension courses and open university courses. Open University courses are regular courses taken by local students, and we usually have to crash them. That means you go to the relevant courses at the beginning of the semester, stay in contact with the professors and ultimately hope that there are still enough places available to be able to take these courses. This means there is no guarantee that you will be able to take these courses. See toppharmacyschools for Thompson Rivers University Study Abroad.
Extension courses are courses that are often not held by professors but by working experts from the business world. I decided to only take extension courses, as they don’t have to be crashed and this gives you the security of being able to take them, they are cheaper, a little lighter and the system is a little more interactive than the Open University courses. The disadvantage of these courses is that they usually only start very late in the evening and are mostly attended by international students, especially Germans. If you plan to attend lectures with Americans, these may not be the right place for you. I got very good grades in the subjects, which was very nice for me because I could count them in Germany.
The sooner you start collecting your application documents, the better. Things like the TOEFL test or scholarships can sometimes take a lot of time. In any case, you should have submitted all documents to MicroEdu at least six months before the start of your semester.
Costs
Studying at UCSB or studying in the USA in general is very expensive. If you still want to do something here and there and don’t want to live on a very low budget, you should budget around 8,000 to 10,000 euros with tuition fees, flight, visa, apartment and all the living expenses. In order to reduce the costs a little bit, you should definitely check whether you can get an international student loan, the DAAD full scholarship or at least the DAAD partial scholarship
(PROMOS) gets. Just find out a little bit, for example I received a PROMOS scholarship of 2,000 euros from the DAAD with very little effort, which in my case went through the International Office of my university.
Housing
Accommodation in Santa Barbara and especially Isla Vista is very expensive so most students will even share rooms in a house or apartment and even then you will be paying anywhere from $500 to $900 a month. In older reviews you may read that it is not a problem to find somewhere to stay quickly and that it is best to do it on the spot.
That was probably the case in the past, but I can definitely no longer sign it like that. Things have changed a bit and the housing market is really tight, especially in the Fallquaters, and it was very, very difficult to find an apartment or a free bed in a shared apartment in the two weeks before the semester started. It may have improved significantly again, but you should definitely find out more about the current situation. In principle, be careful about hastily transferring money for an apartment that you haven’t seen yet, because there are some really dirty apartments and some landlords have really unpleasant rental contracts with which they like to rip off internationals. However, if you find a legitimate-looking offer on Craigslist.com, preferably in a flat share with Americans, it certainly can’t hurt to take care of that sooner rather than later. If you want to take part in student life to some extent, you can’t avoid living in Isla Vista, Goleta will do if you have to, but Down Town is definitely too far away.
Leisure
If you’re not tied into uni 24/7, there are a lot of good ways to pass the time. Those who enjoy going to the fitness center can sign up for $60/term at the Recreation Center. I would like to recommend the Excursion Club to everyone, there you pay $30/term and you can rent surfboards, kayaks, hiking and camping equipment, etc. for free at any time. It is worth buying a car for anyone studying for more than one trimester. Rental cars are quite expensive and shopping and traveling (eg to LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Yosemite National Park,…) is actually a lot easier with a car.
If you like throwing big house parties, you’ve come to the right place at UCSB. It definitely doesn’t hurt to get to know as many Americans as quickly as possible who have a large circle of friends and can always take you with them to the really cool parties. But in general it shouldn’t be a big problem to meet a lot of people and have a great
time. Americans are very open and friendly people.
Conclusion
Conclusion of my stay abroad: I have not regretted it a bit and it was exactly the right decision for me to go to UCSB. Precisely because I didn’t just plan to study, but also to have an eventful semester, to get to know a lot of people and to experience the American way of life. UCSB has a beach right next to the university. There are many beautiful places and cities in the area where you can travel to from time to time (you can sometimes find cheap flights to Hawaii or Vancouver). UCSB is always ranked as one of the top party universities and rightly so in my opinion. You certainly won’t get bored here. You have students all around you and a beautiful campus with a great flair. I would sign that you already meet and get to know a lot of Germans because of the program, which might annoy some people, but it didn’t bother me as much as I thought, because of course you can travel much better with internationals somewhere in between through than you could do that with locals who already know it all. I can therefore definitely recommend UCSB and MicroEdu suits you
always available as a contact person.