Alright, then, let’s get to brass tacks. The main reason we exchange students go abroad is to learn. Well, maybe it’s not the main reason, but it’s certainly the centrality of it all; without the institutions, we wouldn’t be able to cross countries for so long with relative ease. (Relative, of course, being the key term; red tape will definitely vary your results.)
After some sticky bureaucracy caused by the squeeze of the end of the fall semester in Baruch and the beginning of the spring semester in CityU, I ended up taking management, service management, marketing and intermediate microeconomics. It was not a bad roster, though perhaps more minimalistic than I wanted (I did not manage to snag a statistics elective, pity).
I was somewhat fortunate enough to net myself a roughly four-day week of courses. While that might sound nice, it was apparently child’s play compared to some fellow European exchange students. During the orientation week (the week prior to the beginning of classes, and the time for the exchange students to finalize schedules should they want to), some of my fellow exchange students tried to and apparently successfully managed to cram six courses into two days! That seemed like nothing short of sticking an IV full of coffee for those two days; I was more than content with what I had.
An excellent, albeit light, schedule.
The classes consisted of one class of lectures and one class of tutorials per week. As the names imply, the lecture classes were where professors effectively processed the textbook and other notes in audio and visual form, whereas the tutorials allowed students to show their own work. For those who have taken basic accounting in Baruch, think of it like that.
In theory, this would be a fairly good system. It encompasses those who learn by rote as well as those by work. Compared to Baruch’s typical courses, it’s not as flexible, but it covers the bases. Baruch courses tended to be mostly lecture classes, but have the freedom to do hands-on work if need be. That was the tradeoff between Baruch and CityU courses in general.
In actuality… the classes were not as smooth or effective as it seemed.
The lecture classes were, expectedly, one-dimensional in that respect. We went to class, the professors relate textbook material and some examples to us, and we take notes. Sometimes questions were asked, there was a presentation for one class, and some of the classes used exercises to convey concepts. However, with no roster check for lectures (because many of them cleared a hundred students easily), absence rate was fairly high.
The tutorial classes however… did not go as smoothly. For my management class, the tutorials did not match up with the sections taught, so there was a bit of dissonance that grated on me at first. For the intermediate economics class, the attendance rate became gradually and frighteningly low. What began with twenty-thirty students ended up being three attendants by the last tutorial. The marketing tutorial was effectively a multiple-choice worksheet and review, which was adequate in its intents. The service management class did not have a tutorial section because the lecture class was a double-class (much like our three-hour, one-day classes).
Extensive math sometimes involved.
Adequate Q&A, multiple-choice worksheet.
The projects were also a bit of work. The service management one was probably the best, as it was a full-fledged project that encompassed most of the concepts we learned, and it was more or less semester long. I liked the professor; he was quite stern with his evaluation (he made no doubts about that, evident with my first exam score), though he was also very nice and helpful to those who approached him. As for the management and marketing projects… they baffled me in that the marketing project seemed to incorporate concepts of management, while the management project seemed to focus more on marketing (in that it focused a great deal on SWOT analysis). Completing them wasn’t too bad, but the inverted manner in which they were delivered still irks me today.
Now, before I go onto the exam section of this blog, I want to preface with another concept:
Studying. Because of the spacious size of lecture classes and the general lack of homework given, you’re going to want to double down on your studying efforts. The university classes generally run on a midterm-final system, which means your grades are incredibly stacked towards them. It does explain the lack of attendance, though…
But I digress. The point is, cramming is not an option. I do not say that with respect to having experienced cramming for these exams. No, I say that with the perspective that even though I reread my notes repeatedly and scrolled through my textbooks repeatedly over the course of the month prior to the exams, did as much as I could to cover all of the bases that I could, the exams were still quite challenging.
To be fair, it wasn’t that the tests were difficult. I thought that they were fairly challenging, but certainly not impossible; everything was there, I just had to look for it. The problem was that, because of the very formal approach for both the lectures and the tutorials, they were not quite the learning methods I was accustomed to.
And, again, to be fair, in hindsight I don’t think I did poorly in any of the exams (save maybe the service management one). I’m a bit of a completionist when it comes to tests, so when I can’t answer a question (read: absolutely stumped), it can send me into panic mode. And in hindsight, that was probably the stress I felt when I took those exams. I answered most of the questions fine, but when I arrived to that one big one with a blank, it would eat at me for the rest of the time.
Long story short, if you’re good with a midterm-final system, you might be solid in passing these courses with good grades. If not, keep up with the readings, try not to rust on the concepts and you’ll be golden. Either strategy, depending on your style, will give you plenty of time to explore the rest of Hong Kong. Just, for both your sanity and mine, DO NOT CRAM.
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