Exchange to the East

Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance (also called FINEC) is HWR partner university situated in a wonderful Russian city Saint Petersburg.

One IBMAN student is already studing there at the moment. Ivan Bakalov (originally from Bulgaria). If you would like to check how he is doing in Russia, what experiences he has as year exchange student have a look at his blog where you can also find the important information concerning Russian visa applying and extension procedures as well as registering process.

There is no better way to learn about the university than directly from the student. So here is an interview with Oxana Khlebopasheva -- exchange student at HWR from FINEC.

PS: If you are once in Saint Petersburg do not forget to to take night boat trip to see how bridges begin opening to let ships go through. It is beautiful -))

Poznań is a Polish city located in the western part of the country that deserves attention owing to the fact that it is so easily accessible from Berlin. It lies relatively close to the German border and remains a highly attractive place to go for a foreign exchange.

HWR Berlin cooperates with 2 higher education institutions in Poznań:

1. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań CLICK
   
2. Poznań School of Banking CLICK
   

We present you an interview with a student of the Poznań School of Banking – Bartek Gośliński. You can see it below and you have a chance to either check your Polish comprehension or at least have a look how Polish sounds (in case you have never heard it before). The translation follows below.

Hi! Today we are interviewing Bartek who is an exchange student at HWR this year. Thanks for finding some time for our interview! Tell me, you live, or you used to live, in Poznań… For how long?

I have been living in Poznań for 6 years now.

What do you think about this city?

The city offers a rich cultural offer for students… many clubs, movie theatres where you can spend your free time. There are also numerous museums, but students are not really interested in them that much

Right, are there many students in Poznań?

Yes, quite a lot. For sure over 50′000.

For us it is pretty important that you study at the Poznań School of Banking. What do you study there?

I study Finance and Banking, I am in my second year.

How do you like it? How do you like the school and the program of the studies?

The program is very similar to the one offered here, at HWR, so later on my grades are acknowledged without any problems. As for the school… the attitude towards students differes a lot.

In what way?

All our classes are held in much bigger groups. If we have a lecture, for example, it may be held with an audience of 100, sometimes 200 people. And… you do not approach a student individually, like in here (HWR Berlin). There are usually 20-30 people in our practice groups.

Is it harder to study?

The level is comparable, however I have to admit that here subjects are much more… practical than in Poland. In Poland it is usually the case that you have to learn by heart, pass, and forget… There is not enough practice.

Do you offer programms in English?

Every semester there are a couple of courses offered in English, but such special courses, like IBMAN, are not offered yet.

OK, these was the most important information. Thank you for the interview!

In case you have further questions, please ask

Generally speaking European and Russian higher educational systems have a lot in common, but there are, of course, the differences based on the culture and history. This video might help you to find out some peculiarities of Russian education:

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask me any details!

Some of you were interested any differences between Polish and German higher education systems.

Have a look at our short video as an introduction:

To sum up, the most important differences:

• We tend to count academic achievment in years, but of course the academic year is divided into winter and summer term. You usually ask a student – “in which year are you?”, rather than in which semester.

• Polish academic year starts on 1st October – classes start from this very day! Winter semester classes are till around 20th January. Afterwards you have an examination session which we call “SESJA” in Polish. Sesja ends on around 20th February and summer term follows immediately! From this reason we finish our summer term way faster than in Germany – usually around 15th June or even earlier.

• Our gradation system is different, the best note is 5 (very good) and you fail with 2.

• Lecturers are often more strict than in Germany – they rarely accept not coming to class, being late, eating during the lecture, etc.

• Laptops are not always welcome.

• You often have to copy a lot for a given subject!

• Many subject are given dually so to say – you have lecture +practice sessions separately on the same subject, and you should take both. You usually write an exam from the whole year, but exchange students are an exception – lecturers give them other options.

• It is VERY common to fail MANY students every year. That is why studying for regular students is often a stressy and challenging matter, but in the end rewarding of course

• Attendance is often obligatory – you can usually miss up to 2 sessions per subject.

Michael Trulson is a HWR student wishing to spend his semester abroad in Russia, particularly in Saint-Petersburg.

Great city!

Great university!

Great people living there!

We hope that Misha (that is how he is going to be called in Russia) would get his best experience there and after coming back home would tell everybody that he made a right choice and got only the best out of it!

And now Misha is going to share with us his experience concerning the application proccess and tell us why had he chosen Russia.

As our survey showed some of our students would like us to mention some reasons for choosing Russia as semester abroad country. I can imagine that even some of you reading this post think that there are still lots of more fascinating countries to go for studies like for instance Spain, France, USA, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and so on.

So we decided to consider this issue from economic point of view and asked Hagen Sinodoru (HWR lecturer of Corporate Finance) having experience in developing business in Russia on behalf of Deutsche Bank and Michael von der Heydt (Managing Director of Next4 GmbH) specializing in financial business branch for many years to share their knowledge about Russian business market that still remains attractive place for carrying on business.

So if you feel that one day in your future brilliant working life you have to deal with Russian business market Moscow or St. Petersburg can become interesting places for you to study within one semester and gain some experience you can use in future.

As Russia has an image of the country with deep alcohol drinking traditions our guests share their impressions concerning this matter in Russian business circles.

Have a good our interview viewing!

PS: My former German boss who has been living in Moscow and working for German Company for about four years  used to tell us at the beginning, “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think what’s the hell I am doing in Moscow…”

Russia is a country with plenty of business possibilities but with some problems and difficulties as well.

[slideshow id=2594073385400917177&w=426&h=320]

One of the concerns that future intership students may face in the new country is about new culture and new people they are going to meet. I would like to introduce Andre from Schwerin, Germany, a former exchange student, who has spent a year in Moscow studying at Peoples’ Friendship Unversity of Russia in Moscow.

“…before coming to Russia I thought that this country is very criminal,  people are unfriendly, and Moscow is dangerous and dark. But it has turned out that everything is completely different, people are very funny and friendly, many of them are also positive and intelligent.
I love Moscow, it is a very pleasant and remarkable city…”

The most common prejudices about Russia are those that Russian like to drink vodka, they are either very poor or very rich, there is Russian mafia, Russia is cold… thanks God, nobody is speaking now about bears walking along the streets. But i would like to speak here about some stereotypes concerning the business world, since most of our audience are future business people. I hope that for those who see their future in Russian business connection this information could be useful.

According to Ecommerce Journal the Russians prefer chic and the quick gain. They do not like telephone calls and are mostly using ICQ. Most entrepreneurs consider their business doing well if it brings over 50% and sometimes not less than 100% of revenue. They risk easily and would rather make big investments than wait for a small gain to come.

Here are some amusing facts:

• If you chose Internet as a platform for communication, remember that almost everyone in Russia uses ICQ. Offer on communicating through MSN, Yahoo, QQ, Skype and other messengers will cause your partner negative emotions associated with the anticipation of the time lost to install the Messenger.
• Working with the Russians, one should bear in mind such an important point as holidays. Holidays in Russia are more than a few days off especially New Year celebrations. They are continuing from 31 December to 10 January and it is easier to find someone on Hawaii than in the office.

However, experienced business people on can tell with the confidence that working with the Russians will become a pleasure if their rules are followed and relationships are built in a respectful manner.

Thanks again to those who participated in our survey! According to it the most of you are scared of the language problems when going to Russia or Poland. As Russian could be chosen in HWR as the second language we decided to make our first interview with Larissa Paris -- our Russian teacher. We asked Larissa to answer in Russian and below you could find the English translation. So you are very welcome to check you Russian level)) Enjoy it!

Today I`m glad to have an interview with a person who better than anybody else is aware of all language problems that face students who are going to Russia for their year abroad. Larissa Paris is a Russian teacher at HWR Berlin.

- Good morning, Larissa! I would like to start our interview with a following question. How, to your point of view, our students are prepared for studying in Russia meaning language issue.

It depends on the level of their language they got at school, for example. All in all the level is not that high and I would strongly recommend to spend more time learning. We have our class once a week and that is extremely not enough. But that doesn`t mean that with this level of the language you should forget about studying in Russia.

- Is it possible with no starting knowledge in Russian for 3 years studying it at the university face no problems during your exchange year?

During your everyday life – yes, that is possible. But in your studying process – it depends on how good was a student. If he attended classes regularly and besides spent a lot of his free time learning, then the result is obvious. And of course all people are different with different talents, so to say.

- What difficulties could face our students in Russia?

The main thing is different mentality. That is why I try to explain that to my students during our classes. For example today I had a discussion concerning stereotypes – who are the Russians and who are the Germans. I would suggest students to read more literature on this topic. What is more – when you come to Russia you instantly forget Russian language – so you need time for getting used to it. And the third thing are the typical Russian problems. I mean corruption and bureaucracy.

- Do you consider Russia being a good country to get education at?

For sure! Russia has always been a great educational country especially now when all the borders are opened. And I should tell you that Russian students are more hard-working and well-organized.

- What are your wishes to the students who decided to go for their year abroad to Russia in spite of all problems?

What problems do you mean?

-The problems you were explaining to us recently

Oh, I see! I would wish to get acquainted with another mentality, character features that German mentality lacks. Please, feel new country, new culture, new language as Russian language is very similar to all the other East-European languages. So I wish you only  the best. I have never met a student who came from his year abroad spent in Russia and was not fascinated. They like Russia and I love that!

Thank you very much, Larissa for your honest and important advises. I`m sure they would help our students a lot. Good bye!