Where to Study: Taiwanese Universities

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Hey guys, first time round here.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking the forum the entirety of yesterday, and was wondering if I should take undergrad’s economics at NTU or NTHU. I heard there isn’t a lot of difference overall in most top schools, from a friend who graduated from NCHU, but I am still pretty muffled about which one I should go to. My choice for now obviously leans towards NTU, but reading Icon’s post a while back about it being very competitive and the like again stirred fear in me (like everything always do unfortunately).

It might be a useful note to say that I really have very, very basic Chinese, and I can’t write anymore for the life of me, let alone traditional Chinese. The only aspect of Chinese that I’m confident of is the pronunciation and tones, that’s it. I’m planning to take the Chinese lessons offered at night in the university, so I’m wondering if that’ll be hell for a while.

Last, dorms or not dorms? I’ve seen the dorms with my own eyes before (stayed in CYCU a few years back), and I’m not sure if I should get into the dorms for the supposed camaraderie or whatnot.

Any feedbacks will be greatly appreciated, thanks! :smiley:.

2

NTU probably has more English-instructed classes than NTHU, although if you went to NTHU you’d be able to claim that you went to “Tsinghua” which may sometimes be mistaken for the Tsinghua in China :smiley:

Are you trying to do an undergraduate degree in Taiwan?

3

I am not sure how it is in Tsinghua, but in NTU undergrads’ courses are all in Chinese. I can’t imagine to make it through without Chinese. Maybe there is one or more class in English, but usually it means that readings are in English, but all people speak in Chinese and write baogao in Chinese, too.

I would just go directly to the department that you want to study in and make sure, how the situation looks like. Each department is different within one university.
Good luck!

4

[quote=“Vindurinn”]Hey guys, first time round here.

Anyway, I’ve been lurking the forum the entirety of yesterday, and was wondering if I should take undergrad’s economics at NTU or NTHU. I heard there isn’t a lot of difference overall in most top schools, from a friend who graduated from NCHU, but I am still pretty muffled about which one I should go to. My choice for now obviously leans towards NTU, but reading Icon’s post a while back about it being very competitive and the like again stirred fear in me (like everything always do unfortunately).

It might be a useful note to say that I really have very, very basic Chinese, and I can’t write anymore for the life of me, let alone traditional Chinese. The only aspect of Chinese that I’m confident of is the pronunciation and tones, that’s it. I’m planning to take the Chinese lessons offered at night in the university, so I’m wondering if that’ll be hell for a while.

Last, dorms or not dorms? I’ve seen the dorms with my own eyes before (stayed in CYCU a few years back), and I’m not sure if I should get into the dorms for the supposed camaraderie or whatnot.

Any feedbacks will be greatly appreciated, thanks! :smiley:.[/quote]

NTU is competitive because the Taiwanese there are the top guns in tests. However, as a foreigner, there will be a lot asked of you in many ways, not only academic, as a foreign student in Taida or Tsinhua.

I know NCCU has addded a lot of economics courses in English these few years, so I guess Tsinghua -that also has a very good MBA taught in English- should also have some undergraduate, as they like to build up their reputation. NTU has lagged a bit behind in this trend, but it makes up in otehr aspects.

One thing: you do not go to the dorms for “camaraderie”, you go to do group work easily, share homework and class assignments, prepare for tests collectively and in summary, join forces to defeat evil bad grades.

Camaraderie is what you do outside of dorms. :smiley:

ps.
no need to fear, just stay on your toes. ther is a lot of fun to be had, but don’t neglect the work

5

Yes, I find that there is not much companionship and stuff when it comes to dorms in Taiwan. I haven’t really heard of a “double room” here and it seems people do not share rooms here unless it’s with someone they know all their lives. The only time I ever got close to that was in the military service, but then it’s not really much of being friends but everyone working against you (either they’re afraid of you because of your seniority or is giving you a hard time due to your inferiority) while assigned to a normal unit. Things were better during boot camp though.

6

Sincere thanks for the replies! :slight_smile:

@catfish, yep, I’m trying to get an undergraduate’s in Taiwan.

@horo36, to be honest, I really can’t as well. It’s more of a self-imposed thing for me to learn mandarin. If it’s any plus though, I heard that you can talk to some professors to give your assignments in English, since most professors are educated abroad or something. Can someone maybe confirm that fact?

@Icon, thanks for the answer. I guess I should’ve applied to NCCU but I didn’t know they had a pretty good business school at the time. I guess I’m too late to apply now :P.

Hmm, if I were to live in dorms, would 6 months be enough for me to kind of start being coherent in Mandarin?

Also lastly, how heavy is the workload for economics in both? I know engineering’s is very heavy, but I heard from one of my friends that his mum did econs in NTU and didn’t find it heavy, but it was like over 20 years ago. :slight_smile:

Again, grateful for the answers. :smiley:

7

NCCU is number 1 in business programs taught in English. :smiley:

I’d rather not put a timeline on your Chinese abilities. Many people, in teh good old times, went to college with barely 2 years of Chinese training. It was hard but they made it. Now, there are more facilities, better understanding, and more room for negotiation. Nevertheless, if your Chinese is not that fluent, I would still reccomend you to pic a program heavier on the English taught courses rather than not. Six months of hard work will help your language skills but you alos have to prepare papers and other stuff.

Easy economics in Taida? Yep, that must have been a while ago.

8

Hello

This is my first post. I want to graduate in Taiwan and i have two options to choose. First - Yuan Ze University with master of finance and the second - NCKU with IMBA. Can you tell me sth more about these programms? Honestly, at this moment i prefer IMBA in Tainan. The scholarship is lower but NCKU is more prestigious. I menaged to get a lot of info but still i have some doubts. Generally i would like to ask how much money do i need to live a student’s life in Tainan (without counting dorm). I am thinking of quite normal life but without fireworks. Maybe what would be a safe background - 10 000 NTD?

I would like to stress that i searched forumosa but i couldnt found a concrete response.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Regards

9

If you want info about certain programmes at certain unis, the best place for getting it is from the universities themselves. Most people here are not TW university students or graduates. There’s also a Study in Taiwan website you can do a search for. Bear in mind that most of these sites are trying to sell their courses and won’t tell you that university study here is far more intense than in the west. In the UK, we are in class for 22 weeks a year, probably 10 hours a week, but it’s over 40 weeks here and virtually full time attendance.

Hope there’s something useful there at least.

10

[quote=“bravo18”]Hello

This is my first post. I want to graduate in Taiwan and I have two options to choose. First - Yuan Ze University with master of finance and the second - NCKU with IMBA. Can you tell me sth more about these programms? Honestly, at this moment i prefer IMBA in Tainan. The scholarship is lower but NCKU is more prestigious. I menaged to get a lot of info but still I have some doubts. Generally I would like to ask how much money do I need to live a student’s life in Tainan (without counting dorm). I am thinking of quite normal life but without fireworks. Maybe what would be a safe background - 10 000 NTD?

I would like to stress that i searched forumosa but i couldnt found a concrete response.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Regards[/quote]

Search for a discussion we had a while back on NCKU. Honestly, haven’t heard of anyone in Yuan Ze.

10K should be safe in Tainan, where cost of living is cheaper than Taipei. If you stay in teh dorms, and as you say, live a simple life -but not monastic, we are not here to go to heaven, but neither we will be on a Rolls Royce highway to hell.

Simple as treating yourself to a nice meal one a week, but having standard cafeteria or coffee shop fare from Monday to Friday. Do not attempt to live on Western food alone on 10K -unless you cook yourself, maybe. Once a month trips to the beach or even Taipei. Hobbies liek photography, music, etc. can be budgeted within reason.

Books are expensive, depending on your scholarship, may or may not be covered in the package, so read the small print. Remember NHI -national health insurance- has to be paid religiously. That would be the basic expenses.

11

I have discovered it’s not easy to find an English language PhD program in information management (I haven’t found one yet), and in fact PhD programs in any subject other than engineering, business, maths, or science, are almost non-existent even in Chinese.

12

I don’t think that is the case. You can do PhDs in pretty much anything here. A quick search showed a number of programs in Information Management (in Chinese).

13

Let me just say that I studied abroad for a year at TKU, taking like 22 credits for a long academic year and… compared to the West, the workload is a joke. You have MAYBE one paper or project and probably one or two tests, plus there is no enforced attendance policy. Also, the tests are super easy, and everyone just plagiarizes for their big projects in the classes taught in English (at the undergrad level). I remember in some cases people would smoke in the back of the classes, and professors of the undergrad programs were very impersonal except with foreigners. If you go to a Taiwanese school, with Western expectations, it’ll feel like a 4 year vacation. I took 22 credits plus the Chinese course 2 hours a day, and I never felt any stress or pressure. TKU is considered one of the top private universities in Taiwan, definitely ranked far above Yuan Ze.

14

I don’t think that is the case. You can do PhDs in pretty much anything here. A quick search showed a number of programs in Information Management (in Chinese).[/quote]

I said that not easy to find an English language PhD program in information management. I didn’t say there weren’t any in Chinese. I found one in Chinese myself. But most PhD programs here seem to be in the hard sciences, business, and engineering. I haven’t found PhDs on the same range of subjects available in the average Australian university even in Chinese, which is incredible given the number of universities in this country. The ‘Study in Taiwan’ website (which is pretty up to date), lists 75 PhD programs. Of those, the overwhelming majority are in the hard sciences or engineering. I saw one in Chinese literature, one in Asia-Pacific studies, several in medicine. The National Taiwan University of Science and Technology supposedly had a PhD in information management in English, but there’s no information about it anywhere on the faculty website.

Was that at the undergraduate or the graduate level?

15

Try the Academia Sinica. Great reserach opportunities and several PhDs in English for years.
Or Tsing Hua, that has the MA in that specialty taught in English.

XinBiDe, most private universities here are famous for “slacking”, or at least, not trying as hard as public ones. It cannot be compared to the state ones, which funnel the rat race by grades since middle school.

16

Depends on the teacher. I enforce attendance, much to the students’ chagrin; on the other hand, there’s a case to be made for not enforcing attendance, since that reduces the number of students in class to just those who care, which makes things better in a number of ways.

Smoking in the back of classes?! That may happen, but it’s certainly not normal.

Taiwan university students do seem somewhat horrified by the idea of regular homework. The philosophy seems to be that the class time + maybe one project is enough. They figure they did the work in high school; university is vacation time.

The plagiarism is truly awful and happens throughout the system; it can become one of those “You just don’t understand Taiwanese culture” things. Many of the students truly don’t understand the concept and think that we westerners have this prissy idea about having to write your own work. I’ve had to go through a lengthy appeal process where I needed to justify failing a student who plagiarized for her entire final exam [open-book: last time I did that!]. I won, but I was told to make it MORE clear in my guidelines that plagiarism will get them a zero (I already had it in there, but I guess it wasn’t boldface or repeated enough).

One thing to understand about classes here is that they’re big - 60 is normal; conversation or composition classes will have “small” groups of 25 or so. Most courses, throughout undergrad but NOT in grad school, are what we’d call lectures in North America: seminars/ discussions don’t exist. The profs don’t normally have TAs for marking, so when a professor is supposed to mark the assignments for 60-90 students… not many real projects get done. Individual essays are very unusual; group presentations are more the norm.

(The above is for undergrad private universities, which is where I’ve had experience; I can’t speak to the public and theoretically higher-level schools.)

17

Okay, I just went to the website. When you search for PhD programs in English and Chinese it only brings up programs that are more than 90% in English for some reason (with the exception of one program in Chinese lit). So for NTU for example you only see a total of 7 programs mostly in science and medicine. NTU of course has PhDs in far more subjects than that. It is probably best to research each university individually. Hope this helps.

18

Depends on the teacher. I enforce attendance, much to the students’ chagrin; on the other hand, there’s a case to be made for not enforcing attendance, since that reduces the number of students in class to just those who care, which makes things better in a number of ways.

Smoking in the back of classes?! That may happen, but it’s certainly not normal.

Taiwan university students do seem somewhat horrified by the idea of regular homework. The philosophy seems to be that the class time + maybe one project is enough. They figure they did the work in high school; university is vacation time.

The plagiarism is truly awful and happens throughout the system; it can become one of those “You just don’t understand Taiwanese culture” things. Many of the students truly don’t understand the concept and think that we westerners have this prissy idea about having to write your own work. I’ve had to go through a lengthy appeal process where I needed to justify failing a student who plagiarized for her entire final exam [open-book: last time I did that!]. I won, but I was told to make it MORE clear in my guidelines that plagiarism will get them a zero (I already had it in there, but I guess it wasn’t boldface or repeated enough).

One thing to understand about classes here is that they’re big - 60 is normal; conversation or composition classes will have “small” groups of 25 or so. Most courses, throughout undergrad but NOT in grad school, are what we’d call lectures in North America: seminars/ discussions don’t exist. The profs don’t normally have TAs for marking, so when a professor is supposed to mark the assignments for 60-90 students… not many real projects get done. Individual essays are very unusual; group presentations are more the norm.

(The above is for undergrad private universities, which is where I’ve had experience; I can’t speak to the public and theoretically higher-level schools.)[/quote]

I guess you have never been to a State university in the USA… I went to University of Texas Austin for two years, which is one of the better university in the US (top 50). A class with over 500 students is not uncommon, especially in the freshmen year. When you get closer to upper division it gets a little better but even then there is still about 50-60 students in one class. However they do have TA’s for the mundane task.

19

I guess you have never been to a State university in the USA… I went to University of Texas Austin for two years, which is one of the better university in the US (top 50). A class with over 500 students is not uncommon, especially in the freshmen year. When you get closer to upper division it gets a little better but even then there is still about 50-60 students in one class. However they do have TA’s for the mundane task.[/quote]
True - I know that 60 isn’t big compared to the lecture theaters you see in North America; I was referring to the size more in the sense of “60 students x two exams x even 1 essay = A LOT of marking for one prof to handle.” I think that’s why the workload is so low in a lot of courses here; teachers just can’t handle the marking, and making the main assignment a group presentation saves a lot of time and energy.

20

So why is there no TA’s in Taiwan? In the US TA’s are usually graduate students so can’t they make some kind of a stipulation that a grad student should TA for a set number of hours and get a stipend in return?