I received an email asking about my experience in Argentina and how it compares to Colombia. The person asked, “I guess first of all I’m just wondering if you are happy with your choice of Argentina for the exchange? I remember you said the only reason you didn’t go for Colombia is because you didn’t think your Spanish was good enough. Would you still have taken Colombia first if you could have? I’m also wondering how you feel regarding your safety in just day to day activities in Argentina when compared to Colombia?
I received an email asking about my experience in Argentina and how it compares to Colombia. The person asked, “I guess first of all I’m just wondering if you are happy with your choice of Argentina for the exchange? I remember you said the only reason you didn’t go for Colombia is because you didn’t think your Spanish was good enough. Would you still have taken Colombia first if you could have? I’m also wondering how you feel regarding your safety in just day to day activities in Argentina when compared to Colombia?
Regarding Universidad de Belgrano, what do you think of the campus life there? From the pictures I’ve seen of it, it looks like it’s just a high rise building. I imagine it would be more difficult to meet native students without nice common areas. ¿Verdad? And most importantly for me, how much did it cost? I’m going to email and ask about cost and all that soon but a heads up would be good.“
I am really happy with how my experience in Argentina turned out. I ended up living in that student residence and it made my entire time really worth it (check out my latest post to see what i mean). If i were living in an apartment by myself or with a few others i may not have been so happy here in Argentina. If i had to do it all over again I am really not sure if i would choose Argentina or Colombia. Colombia is still the superior country in my opinion but I can’t imagine having the chance to live in a similar situation and be able to go out to amazing clubs 4 nights a week. Either way you cant go wrong with either country.
I always have a difficult time addressing safety. Anything can happen at anytime in any country in the world. Colombia and Argentina are hardly any different in everyday safety than say Australia or the US.
I am not familiar with campus life in Australia so i’ll compare it to the U.S. I only took classes with foreigners so it was a rather small group of us mostly in all the same classes. I had an easier time making friends with people in my classes in Argentina than I do in the U.S. The only thing is if you go independently like I did you will show up to the schools orientation and be one of the few people that does not know anyone (most go through a 3rd party program that have a week long orientation of their own before the schools actual orientation begins). People tended to mostly hang out with people from just their programs and I barely hung out with anyone from school outside of classes.
You said something about chile which means you would be considering the direct exchange though your university just paying its tuition. It may seem easier it was not that difficult for me to do it independently. In my situation, i scheduled a meeting with my university’s office dealing with transfer credits. I printed out the syllabi’s for the classes i planned on taking and information about the university and got them all pre-approved. Then I just took a semester off from my university and when i go back in a month i will give them the transcript from belgrano and thats it.
Its not really like a college campus so much as its basically just a few buildings in the city. Sure, you can see people hanging outside the building before classes, in the cafeteria, or in the cafe below the building but thats pretty much it. I think their were a few clubs to join but i barely heard of any opportunities. If you enroll in some classes with the natives then your experience might be completely different than mine.
I enrolled directly in the school which is the cheapest way to go to school there. I paid about $2,200 $US for tuition that would allow me to enroll in as many classes as I wanted (I took 7 classes for 21 credits). Books are extra and I think i paid like $150 in total for them. I think there may have been another $100 fee or something for something else. You will want to get student medical insurance before you go which cost me about $150. My rent was $250/month for that student residence. Going out for a meal at a decent restaurant and getting something like steak, a side, and drink is about $6-$10 on average. Cooking your own food is obviously much cheaper. Nightlife was expensive if you had to pay entrance to clubs and stuff. But its pretty easy to get on lists for free entrance at most big ones. So nightlife is cheap. The subway is like 30 cents a ride making it a great deal while taxis are maybe like $10 from one end of the city to the other (not completely sure about that). Just know that if you enroll in a 3rd party program like AIFS you will be paying about $8,000 or more for the semester.
I know that Universidad de los Andes is more expensive but its also supposed to be a really good uni. The universidad de belgrano was a really disorganized uni. The only thing it was good for was a ridiculously easy semester that actually made it far easier to take 7 classes there compared to even 3 classes in the US. If you want a stress free semester than the foreigner program at belgrano is the way to go.
rasta says
Haha. Cool man, Hopefully it helps someone else!