Experience report Name: Joost van Kempen Email: joostvankempen11@gmail.com Study program: Organization studies Exchange semester: Winter 2017 Academic year: 2016-2017 Host University: University of Waterloo
General information about the school The University of Waterloo has a very big campus compared to Tilburg University. If you had to walk from one class to another it could take you up to 20 minutes. The university has approximately 36.000 students. The town itself has about 100.000 inhabitants. The university of Waterloo is not the only learning institute in Waterloo, there are 2 more colleges and there was another university called Laurier. This meant that from the 100.000 inhabitants, most of them were students. In the city centre, you have this one big street called king street. This is where you ll be a lot during your exchange in Waterloo. Not only because there are a lot of bars and clubs in this street but also because it s a nice place to find something to eat. Before you come to Waterloo you must pay certain fees. If you paid these fees you can use all the facilities from the university of Waterloo. This means that you can do almost every sport that you can imagine. This is a great opportunity to try out some new sports. Some of my friends joined for example the rugby varsity team of the university or the hockey team. If you want to go shopping, you can go to the Conestoga mall. This is a big mall very close to the university (a ten-minute bus drive) which has everything you need. It even has an apple store so if your MacBook or iphone breaks down you can easily go to this store. Waterloo is very well located in Ontario to visit a lot of stuff. Within a 2-hour bus drive you re in Toronto and if you rent a car you ll be at the Niagara Falls. Also, various national parks are close to Waterloo. I would highly recommend to go the following parks: Killarney, Bruce Peninsula and Algonquin. In Killarney, you can have one of the most beautiful kayak trips in the whole world (so you should go when it is warm enough). In Bruce Peninsula park, you have a place called The Grotto. This is a beautiful cave where you can swim if it s warm enough. We always rented a car (the cheapest place to do this is Avis) if we went somewhere. What is also nice about Waterloo is that it s very close to the American border. During my exchange, I visited places like Chicago, Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
Practical information I was going to be in Canada for 4 months what meant that I didn t need a visa. The only thing you need to have is an ETA. This is some sort of electronic visa what only costed my 7. When you want to buy the ETA go to the website of the Canadian government. There are other sites where you can buy this ETA but they will charge you more! Keep in mind that if you re going to visit America that you ll need an ESTA. This is kind of the same as an ETA but for America of course. When I arrived, I couldn t go directly to my housing so I had to stay in Toronto for a night. This was quite nice because I could discover the big city Toronto before going to Waterloo. When arriving in Waterloo the next day I went to my place called WCRI. WCRI is a cooperation that provides housing for mainly exchange students. It is officially off campus but you literally only need to cross the road and you ll be on campus (some on campus housing from the university, like Columbia lake, where further away than mine). By the time I booked WCRI it was the only option for me. Luckily it was because when I look back at this whole experience this is the place you need to be when you go to Waterloo. WCRI is a place with multiple buildings. In every building there are different floors with a shared kitchen and on the ground level there is a basement where lots of parties are organised by the exchange students. On the first page you can see a picture of the basement. On every floor, you have 5 units. In every unit live 4-6 people who share a bathroom and a toilet. What I really liked about this is that a lot of exchange people lived at the same place. In the beginning this was convenient because everybody wants to meet new people and make friends. During the term, it was nice to live with exchange people too because you never had to worry about being by yourself. There were always people to hang out with. It wasn t the case for me but a lot of people felt a bit homesick after a couple of weeks so to live with people who are experiencing the same really helped them to get through it. There were some down sides to WCRI though. You lived with a lot of people on one floor so you can imagine that some of the kitchens were dirty all the time. It depends on the floor you re living in though because I lived on a really quiet floor where no people were cooking at all so it was very clean. Quick tip, if you are going to stay at WCRI, don t buy the amenities kit. This contains a pillow, blanket, 5 clothing hangers and a towel. This is not worth buying, you can better buy everything at Walmart.
Monthly living costs: - Housing: 500 - Food: 200 - Books: 200 (in total) - Miscellaneous: 100 - Transportation: 0 This is my estimation of what an average person would spend in Waterloo. In the end, I paid around 1250-1500 (this is without housing) because of travelling and clubbing. I wanted to do as much as possible on exchange because this is a once in a lifetime experience. So, in the beginning I went clubbing a lot to make the social contacts I wanted and during the weekends we went on trips to different places. It sounds a bit crazy (crazy expensive), but in the end I was away every weekend. It will cost you but in my opinion it is totally worth it. I would highly recommend to do the same because you won t do this again soon in your life and it makes your exchange so much better. If you go to the University of Waterloo, you ll get a Watcard. This is a student card from the university. With this card, you can use the bus in the Kitchener/Waterloo region for free. This is really convenient for doing grocery shopping. You have two big grocery stores called Walmart and Sobeys. Walmart is a bit cheaper but doesn t have as much choice as Sobeys. Walmart is not only groceries but as I said before also the place to buy your blankets and pillows (you can buy almost everything there). I always went to Sobeys because I was told this place was better for grocery shopping. In terms of culture it s pretty much the same as in the Netherlands. The only major difference that I liked about Canada is that the people are much nicer than in the Netherlands. They are more willing to help people when needed and will be more polite when speaking to you. That was one of the reasons I didn t connect with a lot of Canadian people. I wanted to explore new cultures and I did that by connecting with the exchange people. In my case I met some nice Canadian people, mainly because of group projects, but I didn t have the need to connect more with Canadian people. That may sound weird now but I think all exchange students had the same. The way this experience changed me is that I m more interested in other cultures and other people in general. Before my exchange, I was satisfied with the friends I had and I wasn t looking for any challenges but now I m open to meet so much more people and go to many more places in the world. When you re in the Netherlands it s not that common to travel around in the weekend but my exchange showed me how easy it actually is to travel around in Europe. In Canada, we went on a trip every weekend and it was a minimum of 3 hours to drive somewhere. In Europe, it s so cheap to travel around by plain nowadays so I ll definitely do that now I m back.
Academic information The academic system in Canada is a bit different than in the Netherlands. First, they do not grade in points but in percentages. So, the 5.5 what will get you satisfied here would be a 55% in Waterloo. The second difference was that in Waterloo you only needed to get 50% to pass a course. The third big difference was the workload. Compared to Tilburg you have a lot more assignments. In the beginning, you had to get used to that because you had to work hard from the start but later on in the term it was quite nice and next follows the reason why. The fourth difference was that for all my courses I got a participation mark (this is not for every course in Waterloo). This is very different because in Waterloo you had to go to every class, in Tilburg if a class is on Monday at 8:30 the classroom will be pretty empty. In Canada, all the students are aiming for a grade of at least 80% because you need high grades in Canada to get a job. This means that the assignments and finals are designed to get these kinds of grades. The exams were more easy and with the assignments you had to do less to get a good grade compared to Tilburg. So, in the end it was a much higher workload but I didn t mind because it was much easier to pass the courses. The courses I followed were all very interesting and had a perfect fit with my degree in Tilburg. Almost all my courses were HR courses because that interest me next to organization studies. Course Exam ECTS Grading HRM 301 Strategic Human Resource Management HRM 305 Occupational Health & Safety HRM 307 Labour Relations ECON 220 The Principles of Entrepreneurship Written 6 25% midterm 30% group assignment + presentation 10% participation 35% final exam - 6-3 midterms 25% each - 25% group assignment + presentation (no final exam) Written 6-20% midterm - 15% group assignment + presentation - 5% participation - 40% final exam - 6-65% group assignments - 20% individual assignments - 15% participation (no exams) The most interesting course to me was ECON 220. I think mainly because it s so different from what I study in Tilburg. What attracted me was the fact that your whole grade was based on assignments. This meant that you really had think about the content you got in front of you without having to study it later. This made me more motivated to perform well. I think the other three courses were interesting but very basic and kind of the same compared to courses in the Netherlands.
You can see in the table that some courses don t have a final exam and for some it only counts for not that much. This could be very important for the end of your exchange. If you get good grades for the midterms and the assignments there is a change you won t have to do the final exams anymore (because your final average will be above 50% even if you get 0% for your final exam). This was the case for me, I was done with my courses the 25 th of November because I worked very hard the first months, so I had the whole month of December to travel around! The final exam period is going to be the last month of your exchange so if you really want to see a lot of Canada make sure that you and your friends are done with exams before that. One last tip I want to give you: Wherever you decide to go, make sure you will live in an accommodation like WCRI. A big student flat or something similar with a lot of exchange students makes it a lot easier to make new friends. It will be the best place for you to make friendships for life. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me! Best regards, Joost van Kempen