Arrivals:
We flew to Boston by plane, visited family there and then flew on to Halifax by plane. We therefore only arrived on a Sunday at 12 o’clock in the evening, which meant that the SMU did not send our booked airport pick-up service.
A little tip: Always ask whether the airport pick-up will work.
On the first “day of school” there is a brief briefing by a police officer who educated the international students about cultural issues and the rules in Canada. You should go there and listen, otherwise walking across the street when it is red could be an expensive experience. Visit ehuacom.com to get information about CSUMB study abroad program.
Our first accommodation was the absolute horror. We lived in North Halifax for the first 10 days, insanely far from the university and with an absolute penny pincher, wash cold, don’t shower too long and please don’t watch TV, it could break down or cost electricity. We then left this accommodation after ten days and moved back closer to the university off-campus. Absolute dream location, super cheap, acceptable rooms, and great people.
I can’t say much about on campus housing, the rooms should be okay, but the food is probably terrible. Many of the fellow students who lived on campus paid for the meal plan, but ate out.
Health insurance:
The health insurance of the SMU is quite expensive, it cost about three times as much as a private health insurance that you can take out in Germany, or with some even if you are already abroad. There is the possibility to reclaim the money paid for the health insurance of the SMU by a certain point in time by submitting proof of private foreign health insurance.
University activities:
The university offers excursions and the like, but caution is advised here. Sometimes the excursions are not cheap and overpriced. I don’t mean that you can’t pay for the excursions, but that the ratio is simply not right. It is especially annoying when you find out later that it would have been much cheaper if it had been organized privately. I only went on one trip with the university, as I quickly got to know Canadians who showed us around on the weekends.
Courses:
We took 3 courses: Public finance expenditure with Prof. Sultan International accounting with Prof. Secort, and intermediate macroeconomics with Prof. Yin.
In the order of difficulty, intermediate macroeconomics would be in first place, international accounting in second place and public finance expenditure in third and thus the easiest, but this is where you learn the most
To the Profs.
Prof. Secort: quite conceited and can not help saying 20 times during the semester that he is admitted as an accountant in 3 countries and how rare this is. The course is quite ok, but as always when you hear international in your studies that sounds great at first, but is actually “NOTHING of everything”. No exams are written, just small tests that are not announced. The actual note is later made up of 3 cases that are made in group work. The last one weighs a little more than the previous two for the final grade and must be presented.
Prof Sultan.
He is super nice and extremely easy to care for, the exams are absolutely tailored to the material that was dealt with, the grading is fair and the cases must also be passed.
Prof: Dang,
supposedly comes from Mc Masters University. Is quite manageable at the beginning. Multipliers etc. are dealt with, but at the end it goes in-depth. He always said there was no reason why we shouldn’t learn this when the Harvard and Cornell students are learning. Some people in the course used the strategy of making up for bad grades at the beginning with good grades at the end. Well, far from it, I learned continuously and still got a final grade of 89%, but in the final exam I didn’t see any more countries.
Sport Center:
The SMU has a well-developed sports center, there is everything you need to stay fit. Admission is free with a student ID. The opening times range from very early to very late.
I really enjoyed my time at SMU, it was my 5th long stay abroad and my 2nd long stay in Canada.
When I compared it was a very nice time.
The university is not the university milestone on my résumé, but it still doesn’t look bad.
