Type of housing: Apartment/House

Arranged by: Host university

If returning, I would choose: Apartment/House

Why? Great idea, just need to have luck with the flatmates.

Personal comments:
I requested to live with students, but I ended up living with a hothead, arrogant nincompoop (ie- he thought he was smart, and he rides around in a SMART company car), his gorilla girlfriend (I swear, she resembled a gorilla), and a cool guy from Italy. Had no problems with the guy from Italy, obviously, but everything else was miserable. Just a complete and utter conflict of personalities. The rent was too high, didn't get anything in return, and decided to move apartments for the second semester (I'm writing this assessment for my first semester only, as it was quite simply an unforgettable experience). Now obviously this doesn't happen all the time, and I must say that the university's apartment search service is quite good; I guess I just got unlucky.

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

Activities, Travel: Takes place mostly within the university/student environment

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

Personal comments:
The fact that St. Gallen is the 5th or 6th largest city in Switzerland is somewhat misleading. 70,000 people doesn't constitute a large city. Nightclubs were expensive, played nothing progressive, and were filled mostly with high school students. Most college students seemed to go home for the weekends, which explains why the town was relatively empty for the weekends. Obviously the exchange students didn't have places to go, so the scene wasn't THAT bad. In fact, the apartment parties thrown by exchange students are pretty decent (I DO come from the #2 party school in the USA), and will more than likely serve your needs as long as you don't NEED to go clubbing. I'm used to frat parties and free alcohol, so maybe my view is somewhat skewed. The location was great, one hour east of Zurich, 1.5hrs from the Alps, with some smaller ski areas even closer. Swiss trains are very efficient (on time, whether that is in your favor or not is up to you). Best places: Brühlhof (cheap drinks, good atmosphere, cool owner), Alhambra (chill-out bar), Bierreria (Wednesdays all beers are CHF5.00), Limette (thursdays great happy hour -- CHF5.00 mixed drinks) Places to avoid: Elephant (overrated club, despite being the biggest in St. Gallen -- CHF12.00 entrance fee, no free drinks, nothing. Drinks are too expensive, small dance floor, filled with sketchy people. Sometimes you'll get a laugh out of what some pepole wear to clubs though...The mullet is making a comeback...in Europe. There truly IS a reason for the term 'eurotrash')

Course recommendations:
Every "department" (accounting, banking, etc) can only offer two classes per semester, so there is a natural lack thereof. If you already know what you're interested in (accounting or finance, for example), you're pretty much screwed as far as course selection is concerned. Maybe one finance and one accounting course per semester for the undergraduates and then you're left to choose between filler and masters courses. Obviously there's no problem with the masters courses (in fact, they are more representative of what I can get at my home university in the States), it's just that that kind of selection should be mirrored in the undergraduate course catalog. Courses are all block-fashion, meaning you've got one lecture a week, sometimes for four hours straight. Dealing with TAs instead of the professors themselves is a pain in the ass, and the Swiss students show no interest in the international students, with few exceptions.

Personal comments:
Good God, yes! One exam and that's it??? I know not ALL courses operate this way, but the fact that at least 1/3 of them do is quite disturbing. You have no clue how well you know the stuff until you step foot into the final exam. No assessment in the middle of the semester. **YOU HAVE TO SIGN UP TO TAKE TESTS** What genius came up with this idea? I mean if you're gonna take a class, you are gonna take the test, or is this just an American thing? So yeah, I didn't get that memo, which means that I wasn't ALLOWED to take my tests. Fortunately, I took one of them with the exchange students right at the end of the semester, so I got SOME credit for the semester, but on the whole it was a waste of 3 months of my time and money. Will be a blast explaining that to my home university when they ask what I did for the whole semester since I got only 4 credits. The faculty also seems to be way out of touch with the student body. This, however, can be topped: the administration is on it's own level, somewhere circling Venus, as if not caring about what the faculty OR the students wanted was a cool thing. Example: the university REQUIRES many courses to have 2 semester hours of what amounts to homework. However, both students and professors hate it because nobody knows how to approach/formulate it. It's kind of a general rule that if something is mandatory/forced, it's gonna suck. For the US students out there, remember summer reading? For the most part good books, but if you got them on your summer reading list, they were the most painful waste time, and you read the same sentence about five times on page 532 because you fell asleep every time you got to the end of it. That's why I hate Charles Dickens. But both parties go along as if nothing about the system were broken and so nothing gets changed. How about actually giving the faculty control of their own curriculum instead of policing it? I thought that was the whole point of academics (or at least on the teaching side of it) at the college level. They say this is one of the top European business schools, and one of the top two in the German-speaking areas. This leads to the fact that the university is very poor at marketing itself towards its own students -- the administration doesn't seem to give a rat's ass what the students think, but the students go on as if that kind of stuff is normal. They should do an exchange at a smaller liberal arts university in America, and they'd see what they're missing. In short, you really can't compare University of St. Gallen to any American university, big or small, East coast or West. It is lacking in so many areas, but doesn't seem to acknowledge ...

Language of instruction: German

Main source of funding:
Family

Other sources of funding:
None

Work opportunities:
It was not legal for me to work

Personal spending habits:
Why did I spend more than at home? It's freaking Switzerland. Example: in Germany, a Döner Kebab (food of the gods) costs €2.50, and in Switzerland what amounts to €6. Everything is overpriced, so get used to it.

Food, Travel, Nightlife, Overall, Telephone, Housing: was more expensive than at home.

I wish I had known...
That everyone in the world knows American universities (Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford) for a reason. They're simply better than any others. And that you had to sign up for tests in order to be able to take them...

In my opinion:
Most people loved it.