I had fun; you will, too. Duke in Istanbul Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

"Rigorous" is not a word to describe this program. The Duke history course was, at best, sub-par. The professor had a tendency to be at least twenty minutes late each session to the point where he added extra classes because he got behind and still we didn't finish all of the material. Other classes at Boğaziçi were engaging, but I wouldn't call them difficult. Having a Duke-only Turkish class was great, and we covered significantly more than the other introductory classes. That said, I don't know Turkish.

On-site administration of your program

The program director, Alican, was amazing. He's honestly just a fantastic guy. He went out of his way to make our experience enjoyable, and I will be eternally grateful for that. Duke sponsored excursions throughout Turkey and weekend activities in İstanbul were fantastic and significantly increased my cultural immersion. Only four stars though because supposedly there were other members of the team, but outside of the excursions I didn't see them.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

Superdorm is fine. It's not bad. It's the definition of mediocre. I would have loved if it had Wi-Fi installed during my time there. I also would have appreciated if the suites had stoves or anything to cook on. Some days I debated sleeping on the floor instead of the bed because it was so uncomfortable. On the other hand, the suites had a ton of cabinets for storing my limited things and were cleaned very often. My Turkish roommates were cool. The best part though was having all the program participants in the same building, which made it much easier to see each other and hang out.

İstanbul has amazing food. The food on program excursions was unbelievably delicious. The food near campus at restaurants was also great. The food at the cafeterias...well....it was 1.50 TL. Can't really complain about that.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

I leave İstanbul pretty satisfied with how my immersion went. I made a few close Turkish friends, not many, but enough. The language barrier, even on campus where everyone in theory knew English, definitely existed. But I definitely know a lot about İstanbul. I have favorite neighborhoods and have mastered the public transportation system.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

I went to the pharmacy a couple of times for cold medicine. It's cheap and powerful. I didn't talk to the program though because a cold is not all that serious. I'm sure if I had more serious issues that the program would have been great.

İstanbul is incredibly safe. I had no incidents. Maybe you should have a guy sit in the front seat of the cab just to be safe, but really I can't think of any times I felt my safety was threatened at any time.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

It definitely depends how you spend money. If you don't travel, you'll save a lot of money. Traveling from Turkey isn't cheap. Food can be done fairly cheaply - the cafeteria has meals for 1.50 TL (about $0.60 as I write this). The food is mediocre, but hey, it's cheap! Restaurants around campus are also pretty cheap. If you want to do other things in the city, though, you'll end up spending more.

0 = No encouragement, 5 = frequent encouragement to use the language

Did they encourage us to do so? I'm not sure. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi teaches in English, so other than our Turkish course, we almost exclusively spoke in English. Also, most of us had zero Turkish knowledge before starting the program so even if we wanted to, we still could not have conversations. By the end though, we were able to get around İstanbul quite well. We could haggle, go to restaurants, and say limited things about ourselves.

Select all that apply

• Dorm

Select all that apply

• Local Students
• Americans

Select all that apply

• Local Students
• Americans
• International Students

• Alican Ayanlar (Program Director)
• Excursions
• Ä°stanbul itself

• Eliminate the history course or get a different professor (that course is literally awful. If that's the Duke standard....oy... US News has to reevaluate its rankings!)