REPORT STUDY ABROAD GENESEO
I studied for one Semester abroad at SUNY Geneseo University, in New York State (the USA), Fall 2017. I was nominated for my semester abroad at SUNY Geneseo University (USA) with my major Communication and Information Sciences. The program was taught entirely in
English. The first weeks I had to get used to the ‘American English’, there are quite some words which have different meanings.
The entire exchange, from the application to the semester in the USA was quite expensive.
But I knew that it would be expensive before I started to apply, so you just have to start saving money on time. At the beginning, we had to show the university that we all had around 7000 euro on our bank account, so the university knew for sure that we were able to pay everything. This was for me quite a shock, because of the high amount of money. But once you are in Geneseo you don’t have to pay anything more than your personal expenses so that is really nice. Hereby I give some estimated costs that we received from SUNY Geneseo University, these are all estimated costs in euros. First, the room costed around €3600 in total (each month €720). The housing deposit was €141,23. The meal plan is around €2000,-.
The SUNY Geneseo Fees are €800,-. The Health insurance is €803,-, which they say is mandatory but most of the Dutch students could use their own insurance so you probably don’t have to pay this. The books will cost around €300,- and your personal expenses around
€700,-. Geneseo university estimated that this would be around €7900 in total but it depends on your personal expenses and the health insurance.
The contact with the faculty of Geneseo university was very good. The application for the
university went very smoothly. The international office is also very helpful, there was always someone in the office who could help me with any questions. Also the contact with the mobility staff in
Groningen was extremely helpful. They helped me perfectly through the whole process. The contact with the mobility office couldn’t have been better organized!
It was very easy to find a room for my stay in Geneseo. I was assigned my place via the University Housing office and I lived on campus (in Wijoming). Everyone was obligated (from the exchange students) to live on campus. I applied for this room through a form. On the form you can tell the Housing office what exactly you prefer as a roommate, you had to fill in your sleeping time, how clean you are etc., so they exactly knew who they could match you with. After filling in the forms I had to pay a deposit. After filling out all the forms, I received an email that I was assigned a room to another student (names included). They told us that the dorms were around 14 square meters, but mine was around 18, so I was very lucky. But most dorms will be around 14 square meters.
The dorm life is quite different from the student houses in Groningen. You don’t have a lot of privacy because you live with someone else. Also, if you were under 21, there were strict rules about alcohol, you were not allowed to have alcohol in your room. You could choose between a corridor or suite, I chose for a suite. In a corridor you live with 20 others on a hallway and have more bathrooms which you share. In a suite you live with 8 or less and you share one bathroom, so you could leave your stuff (shampoo etc.) in the shower which was very nice. It can be very noisy on campus because you live with so many people in one building, so be prepared for that. I had a really nice roommate and suitemates, so I really enjoyed living on campus.
The American culture is very different when you compare it to our culture. Compared to the Dutch students, the workload for American students was high. You also have to get used to the food, on campus it is very good but in restaurants it is quite expensive to eat healthy. It’s also not as fresh as in the Netherlands. The holidays are quite long in the USA, you have a lot of free days (liberation day, thanksgiving and winter holidays). During my free time I went to the gym on campus, I went to activities on campus or we organized nice activities ourselves. You can go shopping in the shopping
malls nearby Rochester, go to the cinema or go traveling in the weekends to another city. There are also a lot of activities which the international exchange office organized and we always had fun at these activities. The sports games are also a lot of much fun, especially the hockey games
from the Geneseo team. You will have a lot of free time if you schedule your school work properly. Classes in Geneseo take only 1 hour and 15 minutes, so a lot shorter than in the Netherlands. I had to take four courses and each course was twice a week, so I still had a lot of time left to plan nice things besides studying. However, you will have more homework than in the Netherlands. In the beginning I really had to get used to that because I was very busy with my homework, but the exams are not too difficult so that was very nice.
I traveled a lot during this exchange, because I worked a lot before I went to Geneseo and really wanted to see more in the USA and Canada. I went to Toronto, Rochester, Buffalo, New York, San Fransisco, Yosemite, Miami and Orlando. Geneseo public transport is not very well organized, the schedule is very confusing. We asked the bus driver to tell his boss and he would change it, so hopefully it will be more understanding in the future. Apart from that, the buses were always running and on time so that was very good. There were a lot of buses going to the main street of Geneseo or going to supermarkets (Walmart) or other stores.
The other public transport is quite bad, there are not a lot of buses going to other cities so you have to take a cap or Uber which is more expensive.
As I said before, you should save a lot of money before you go to Geneseo, because it is quite expensive and it is really nice to have the ability to travel around in the USA and Canada. It makes your exchange so much more fun. Once you have paid the €7000, you don’t have to pay a lot, only your personal expenses (for traveling) or things you want to buy for yourself.
Also, before you go to Geneseo it is really important that you know about the difficulty of your courses, ask the coordinator of Geneseo about more specific information of the courses. A lot of students (including me) didn’t know that there were differences in freshman, junior and senior courses (first years, second years and third years courses in Groningen).
In short, besides studying, travel as much as you can and make a lot of international
friends. It is a once in a lifetime experience and I had an extremely good time in Geneseo. If I could go again right now I would definitely do it!
