A Difficult Program but a Life Changing Experience June 09, 2022

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

The classes are not challenging, but set up in a very frustrating way for a student. They are each three hours long, once a week. As such, paying attention is a challenge. Especially when the teachers are not expert lecturers, and don't create a great discussion space. Despite the content being fairly simple and not rigorous, there is both a final exam and a research final paper for many of the classes, which creates a necessarily difficult finals season that is not proportional to the difficulty of the classes. Lastly, since it is not directly attached to a university there are no library resources, professor academic support, and more. I feel that I learned very little from my classes with this program.

On-site administration of your program

A few of the administration staff were incredible, supportive, and helpful. However, the administration as a whole was very difficult to work with. They were not as communicative as they claimed that they would be (but expected US to be more communicative than they were), and it was very difficult to reach them on their emergency number (it required 4-5 calls before someone picked up). They seemed overwhelmed by the number of students, and incapable of handling all of us. There were times where the administration would tell us we were overreacting about our problems, or failed to adequately support us. The situation definitely improved over the course of the semester, after we made sure that our concerns would be listened to. So, by the end of the semester I felt more comfortable coming to them with issues. However, for the most part I felt that we had to rely on each other (fellow students) to support each other because we could not guarantee that the administration would provide it.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

Despite my apartment building being a little old and having some maintenance issues, I was very happy with our landlady and the location that we were placed in.

IES did not provide us any food on this program.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

I did not feel very integrated with the local culture because my language ability was not as good as I wanted it to be. I did not feel that I learned much from my language class, so I struggled to interact with local people. Similarly, there were only a few programs that IES initiated to have us interact with the local culture, and they were not very immersive.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

This program did not seem prepared for the fact that it was operating in the middle of a pandemic, with more than 50 students. They were creating COVID protocol on the spot, which made for very inconsistent policies throughout the semester. It felt like they did not listen to us, and made arbitrary decisions about best practices. Similarly, attendance in classes was the #1 priority of this program (and largely the only thing the administration cared about) and this was put before health concerns once or twice during the semester.

I overall felt very safe in the city. The only thing that made me feel unsafe was the catcalling that would frequently occur to me and my friends. However, this was not unique to Nice, and occurred in most cities in Europe that I traveled to.

This might be very confusing given all of the negative things I have written about in this review. I took serious issue with the way the program was run, and the administration. However, I had the best semester of my life. All of the issues with the program were absolutely worth it because I got to travel the world, live in the most beautiful city in the world, and meet some of my best friends. I'm not sure that I would recommend this program to someone else. But I can say that I would choose to re-do this experience in this program every single time if it means that I got to have the experiences that I had. The life changing experience made everything else worth it, for me.

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

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

Most people on my program had little to no experience in the language, so the administration assumed that everyone would always be speaking in English. Also, the language class was not very helpful for learning the language, so it was very difficult to improve.

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• Apartment

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• Americans

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• Americans

• The location, Nice is stunning and a great place to live.
• The ability to travel on weekends.

• The classes and overall academics
• The communication/interaction with administration
• The lack of interaction with local students/people