Exchange to Vancouver / New York.

Hi all!

I'm a dutch finance student, thinking about going on exchange next year. The two destinations I am very excited about are Vancouver and New York. In vancouver, it is possible to study for one sememster at the Simon Fraser University. In New York this holds for Hofstra College.

Has any of you any experience with studying on one of these universities / studying in New York or Vancouver in general?

Thanks a lot in advance!

 
break516beatz:

I go to Hofstra and I'm a finance major. Let me know what questions you have and I"ll try to answer them for you.

Nice! My questions: - how is life in New York in general? - do you live on campus or off-campus. If you do live on campus, which houses could you recommend? - is it easy to go to manhattan by public transport? - how is the quality of the courses taught?

As you can see, for now quite general questions. If you have any other information, tips or whatever, that you think might be handy, just let me know please ;)

 
Best Response

1) I was born and raised here so I really enjoy it. Hofstra University is on Long Island but a short train ride from Manhattan. You're not too far from the city and all it offers. Since my opinion of NY is somewhat skewed because I live here, I've talked to people who are from out-of-state and they absolutely love going to school here .

2) I live off-campus since I'm from the area. I'm a 20-30 commute from campus. I can't give you a recommendation about a house to live in and I've never seen the dorms. My advice is to just live in a dorm and if you don't like it there are people who constantly are looking for roommates off-campus (they rent a house and have an open room for rent). You could always move out if you don't like it so don't feel like if you go to HU you're stuck in the dorms.

3) Yeah, it's fairly easy. If someone in the dorms can't drive you to the train station, you can always take a bus to the train station and then hop the train to Manhattan. Taxis also frequent the area, so you have that option as well.

4) I've taken four classes so far (heading into my second semester this semester after transferring). Just for transparency purposes, the four classes I've taken are FIN101 (Introduction to Financial Institutions and Markets), QM122 (Intermediate Business Statistics), PSC133 (Politics of the European Union), and a global studies class that focused on human trafficking. I wasn't a fan of the non-business related classes (my PSC class was a shitshow due to my professor going out on maternity leave halfway through the semester) but I absolutely loved my business-related classes. The professors really do care about making sure you understand everything, will go over the material a hundred times to ensure you do understand things, and you really do get a lot out of your classes. Just as a heads up -- FIN101 and FIN110 (Introduction to corporate finance, which is what I'm taking this semester) are required for all business school majors, so those classes are going to have about 70 people per class. Once you get past those classes and further into the finance studies, the number of students decreases dramatically (about 25 students per class).

In short, if you're considering Hofstra then I would give my recommendation to go there. My question to you (if you don't mind sharing) is that how did you hear about Hofstra from where you live? I always thought of Hofstra as a small commuter school but I guess it's grown over the last few years. What made you decide to consider going to school here?

 
break516beatz:

1) I was born and raised here so I really enjoy it. Hofstra University is on Long Island but a short train ride from Manhattan. You're not too far from the city and all it offers. Since my opinion of NY is somewhat skewed because I live here, I've talked to people who are from out-of-state and they absolutely love going to school here .

2) I live off-campus since I'm from the area. I'm a 20-30 commute from campus. I can't give you a recommendation about a house to live in and I've never seen the dorms. My advice is to just live in a dorm and if you don't like it there are people who constantly are looking for roommates off-campus (they rent a house and have an open room for rent). You could always move out if you don't like it so don't feel like if you go to HU you're stuck in the dorms.

3) Yeah, it's fairly easy. If someone in the dorms can't drive you to the train station, you can always take a bus to the train station and then hop the train to Manhattan. Taxis also frequent the area, so you have that option as well.

4) I've taken four classes so far (heading into my second semester this semester after transferring). Just for transparency purposes, the four classes I've taken are FIN101 (Introduction to Financial Institutions and Markets), QM122 (Intermediate Business Statistics), PSC133 (Politics of the European Union), and a global studies class that focused on human trafficking. I wasn't a fan of the non-business related classes (my PSC class was a shitshow due to my professor going out on maternity leave halfway through the semester) but I absolutely loved my business-related classes. The professors really do care about making sure you understand everything, will go over the material a hundred times to ensure you do understand things, and you really do get a lot out of your classes. Just as a heads up -- FIN101 and FIN110 (Introduction to corporate finance, which is what I'm taking this semester) are required for all business school majors, so those classes are going to have about 70 people per class. Once you get past those classes and further into the finance studies, the number of students decreases dramatically (about 25 students per class).

In short, if you're considering Hofstra then I would give my recommendation to go there. My question to you (if you don't mind sharing) is that how did you hear about Hofstra from where you live? I always thought of Hofstra as a small commuter school but I guess it's grown over the last few years. What made you decide to consider going to school here?

Thanks a lot man! Of course I can tell you. It's because Hofstra University is one of the partner universities of my university. Since I am really interested in finance, I was attracted to NY. When looking which partners my university has in NY, I found Hofstra was one of them. So indeed, I do think Hofstra has expanded it's network heavily in the last couple of years.

Hope we can stay in touch via this forum :)

 

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