Missouri-London Program: Culturally Wonderful, Educationally Shoddy Past Review

By A student (HISTORY., Truman State University) - abroad from 06/08/2014 to 04/25/2014 with

CEA CAPA Education Abroad: London, England

What did you gain/learn from your experience abroad? Was it worthwhile?

I learned how to navigate British culture, gained confidence in my professional future, figured out what I want to do as a profession, and learned more than I could want about Europe and Britain. The experience was totally worthwhile, but the program was bad.

Personal Information

How much international exposure did you have prior to this program?	1 month - 6 months

Review Your Program

* Overall educational experience Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.	The classes were generally interesting, but not at all academically challenging.
* Host Country Program Administration On-site administration of your program	The staff of CAPA was incredibly nice and helpful with students' questions, and the internship placements done by CAPA were wonderful. However, the infrastructure of CAPA is poor at best. Their educational facility (classrooms, common area, workroom) is able to hold 70 students comfortably, but there were 300 students total participating in CAPA programs in Spring 2014 and likely 150 students at the facility at any given time. This made for an incredibly crowded space, with students sitting all over the floor after tables and chairs ran out. There were only 7 working desktop computers for student use at any given time, making for long lines to print assignments. Also, the wireless internet access for students at CAPA has the capacity for a single-family home, not the university-type use it sees every day. Because of this, students were unable to use the internet reliably to complete their schoolwork or just to use the web during their free time. Students were forced to find alternate locations of free internet access, thus crowding up local restaurants and shops. This was incredibly inconvenient to say the least.
* Housing: How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?	Great flat!
* Food:	Cooked for myself.
* Social & Cultural Integration: How integrated did you feel with the local culture?	Because CAPA students do not have classes with British students, cultural integration was much more difficult for an introverted person like myself.
* Health Care: How well were health issues addressed during the program?
* Safety:	Always felt safe
If you could do it all over again would you choose the same program?	No

Finances

* Money: How easily were you able to live on a student's budget? (1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)	I am very good at budgeting, but things in Britain are incredibly expensive.
Not including program expenses, about how much money did you spend on food and other expenses each week?	$400

Language

* Did your program have a foreign language component?	No

Other Program Information

* Where did you live? Select all that apply	Apartment
* Who did you live with? Select all that apply	Americans
* Who did you take classes with? Select all that apply	Americans
About how many local friends did you make that you will likely keep in touch with?

A Look Back

* What did you like most about the program?	Opportunity to be a tourist Internship Travelling throughout Europe
* What could be improved?	Program infrasturcture Integration of local students into classes Cost of program lowered
* What do you know now that you wish you knew before going on this program?	Watch the locals and do as they do. Do not be that American who gives our whole country a bad reputation because you can't integrate yourself into a foreign culture.

Reasons For Studying Abroad

To help future students find programs attended by like-minded individuals, please choose the profile that most closely represents you.	The Nearly Native or Trail Blazer Craving the most authentic experience possible, perhaps you lived with a host family or really got in good with the locals. You may have felt confined by your program requirements and group excursions. Instead, you'd have preferred to plan your own trips, even skipping class to conduct your own 'field work.'

Individual Course Reviews

Course Name/Rating:	British Literature
Course Department:
Instructor:	Rodney Taylor
Instruction Language:
Comments:	This class was incredibly dull and disorganized. In our syllabus, we were scheduled to discuss literature written by British authors from the 1600s to the present. However, we only reached 1900 chronologically in our reading, and the majority of our time was spent on discussing Goethe's book Faust (not a British author) and Romanticism (British authors, but seven weeks of discussion). We did not at all discuss several of the most crucial authors to British literature - Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, or Conan Doyle. The work assigned to us was also disorganized and not at all challenging - we received a differently worded version of the same assignment each week for a month straight.
Credit Transfer Issues: