Fundação Getulio Vargas Reviews

Type of housing: Apartment/House

Arranged by: Host university

If returning, I would choose: Apartment/House

Why? In an apartment or house you have the oportunity to select people you want to know and to have all privacy you need. Living in house with your friends or with selected unknown people is like a family!

Personal comments:
"Gringolandia" is the best house I lived. We lived in 7 to 15 people from all of the world changing at each 6 months, in a multicultural and continous exchange of experiences. The house was in a quite good area of Sao Paulo and 4 nice securities helped us in every problem. The Agenda was Grill&Party!!!

Describe host city: Students interact with the local community without much university involvement

Travel: Takes place mostly outside the university/student environment

Activities, Nightlife: Takes place both within and outside of the university/student environment

Personal comments:
It depends on kind of music you like. I like dance, techno, house, pop. So: 1) Ibiza - 4 kinds of music (dance&techno, pop, black music, chill-out), very good 2) LOV.E - techno, drum`n`base, good 3) Manga Rosa - techno, good 4) Liquid Lounge - house, ok (place better than music) 5) Marcenaria - black music, ok 6) Maeva - dance, pop, good 7) AMP Galaxy - techno, I`ve never been there but I heard it`s good 8) Love Story - FOR BOYS! ;-), go there late at night (after 2-3 a.m.) 9)A Loca - various music, it`s GLS club (gay, lesbians and symphatizants), very close to FGV, it was one of our (exchange students) favorite place There are plenty of other places - nightlife in SP is as good as in NY or London. Ask Brazilians at FGV - they know the best where to go. Apart from this FGV organizes a lot of great parties> You cannot miss Giovanna and Gioconda (once every half a year). Cervejadas are also good. You`ll find out everything when you start studying there.

Course recommendations:
As everywhere - there`re great classes as well as bad. So it depends on the teacher and your interests. I think it`s very subjective. The choice of courses IN ENGLISH is rather limited (so that`s why I put low grade for this). But if you speak Portuguese then you have great variety of courses! I took: 1) Politics and Culture in Brazil (prof. Jose Carlos Garcia Durand) - good course (good to know at least a little bit of the country; the prof. uses a lot of DVDs and films; a prof. is a bit chaotic; the course is not hard to pass; you will have midterm exam and than final exam) 2) Managing People Managing Psychological Proccesses (prof. Sigmar Malvezzi) - course ok (you have to write 2-3 papers during the course and than 1 disertation and the final exam so there`s a bit of work; I really didn`t understand fully the subject of the course) 3) The Dynamics of Brazilian BUsiness (prof. Vicky Jones) - very good course; prof. Jones is great; you`ll learn a lot about the contry; there`re a lot of guest speakers (sometimes good, sometimes bad); pretty much of work (5 papers during the semester, 1 group project, final exam) 4) Branding (prof. Paulo Standerski) - very good course; prof. Standerski is really good and in the topic; you`ll use a lot of cases during the class; workload (4 summaries of the cases, 1 group project + presentation, final exam)

Personal comments:
none

Language of instruction: English

Main source of funding:
Family

Other sources of funding:
Personal savings

Work opportunities:
I didn't explore any work options

Personal spending habits:
Prices in Poland are comprable to those in Brazil. But for many exchange students Brazil was as cheap as water. Of course you`ll spend more on nightlife and travel as you`ll do it more often than at home. But the prices are ok.

Travel, Nightlife: was more expensive than at home.

Food, Overall: was the same price as at home.

Telephone, Housing: was less expensive than at home.

I wish I had known...
I was well prepared and did not even have a big culture shock :-( I was looking forward to that before. But the culture shock at the return to home was not so negligible...

In my opinion:
Most people loved it.