Despite my negative evaluations for USIL, I would like to say in advance that I am very happy that I did the semester abroad and would do it again at any time. It was an absolutely great and enriching experience, even if I was upset about some things and some things went wrong. But now I also think that this is part of my experience abroad, in a country that is so different from Germany as Peru. You face many challenges that you have to master. But that only makes you stronger and enriches you in the long term, even at home in Germany.
The application on MicroEDU worked very simply and easily. Tatjana, who is responsible for the application at USIL, is very nice and helpful and answered my thousands of questions in a friendly and detailed manner when I called for the fifth time and spoke well to all of my concerns. I sent all the forms I needed to MicroEDU, just called and asked if I had any questions to fill out or required evidence, and then MicroEDU did the rest. I then received an acceptance from USIL relatively quickly.
Unfortunately, I cannot personally report that positive about USIL itself. Cristhiam, the employee of the International Office who was responsible for me, was positive. He was very friendly and helpful and always asked with interest whether I was feeling comfortable, what the language progress is doing, etc. But since I was one of the few students there who was not there through a university partnership, I was not in the e-mail – Distributors of the International Office and somehow they didn’t manage to get me there until the end. In any case, I received a lot less info emails than the others. And at first I didn’t have an ambassador, a kind of buddy who would take care of you. But that was quickly changed when I pointed it out andmy ambassador was really nice and met me directly for dinner.
Learn more information about Peru and South America on sourcemakeup.
The university is also really okay in terms of equipment. Everything looks quite modern and it is very clean. You can actually always see cleaning staff somewhere doing the cleaning.
Now for the lesson: In general, USIL is very schooled. Everyone sits in a row, there are attendance checks at the beginning of each lesson and you can only miss 20-30% (depending on the course) in total, great value is placed on group work and there is weekly homework that is graded. You have to get used to it first. But in Peru you can start studying at 16 and most of them come straight from school and, in my opinion, still need these strict instructions.
I was placed in the Intermedio Spanish course based on the language assessment test. This course was the best and most helpful of the three courses I took. The teacher was very determined and strict, but nonetheless nice and linked language learning with interesting topics and some cultural studies. I also have “Introduction to Social Sciences”And” National Reality and Globalization “, both of which were taught in English. But unfortunately the level here was really seriously below the level at my German university. In the first course, the English level of the Peruvian fellow students was really very low and the focus was on learning English instead of social sciences, so I felt more like a language course. But when I complained several times, the teacher changed her teaching style about halfway through the semester and it became a little more demanding. Which was bad for the Peruvian fellow students and I also regretted it.
The other course was taught by an elderly professor who was hard of hearing. Due to his hearing loss, he usually didn’t understand what we students were saying and unfortunately we didn’t really understand him because he spoke very indistinctly and had a very strong accent. That made teaching in this subject really exhausting and unsatisfactory. And the group work with the Peruvians was unfortunately usually very cumbersome, as German work ethic met Peruvian work ethic. Deadlines were rarely kept and the submitted work did not correspond to our understanding of a university paper. But they still got top marks for copied full text from Wikipedia. In addition, there was no recognizable red thread in the choice of topic and we were very confused
I talked to other students about whether their courses were that unfortunate and often got similar testimonials. However, the level of the subject matter was probably significantly higher in the courses in Spanish. Therefore, I would recommend taking Spanish courses when choosing a course. Even if you still feel unsure about your Spanish. You learn very quickly. If you have level B1, that is probably doable.
