Anonymous

From : Russian Federation

Good afternoon! Please read till the end.

I am the International Student at Xiamen University, master student on CSC scholarship. I study in Siming campus which is really beautiful, but crowded with tourists on holidays. The Uni is in the city center, which is also very convenient.
It is not easy to be a student here, some schools are really demanding.
Other students are really nice and friendly, you may meet great people here.

I just foud out that information about students` accomodation in Siming campus is far from reality. Xiamen University only provides photos of XiangAn campus, which is located in the village far from the city center.
In SiMing campus ALL of the students cannot choose double rooms and are accomodated in 4 people room with really dangerous living conditions. In fact, only Phd students are accomodated by one. Bachelor and master students are forced to live four in a room, sleeping on bunk beds and using a washroom that has a squatting toilet instead of the normal sitting water closets most international students are accustomed to. The dormitory buildings are a danger to the health of students as there is mold on the walls and furniture, cockroaches, and even fungi growth as a direct result of the lack of natural sunlight and aeration.
It is still not clear when the dormitories will be repaired.

Off-campus accommodation nearby is usually starting from 1600-2000Y/month for a room, depending if you want to rent alone or with someone.

Be careful when you apply here, cause on the official website this information cannot be found.

Anonymous

From : Rwanda

I am studying in Xiamen now is really a good campus to learn so many things, good people for foreigners students.

Anonymous

From : South Korea

In 2017 I was awarded a scholarship for master degree at Xiamen University.
That moment I was really happy, cause all my previous year I was preparing all the documents
and spending a lot of time and efforts to go there. And I really wanted to study in China. But when I finally camethere, I have just realised how awful this university was . I was staying there only for 6 days and it was enough for me. After that I came back home. Not to be very talkative I will describe it in some points.
1. Accomodation - the students prison in reality. It is just a box with beds for 4 people (they lied about the room for 2 persons for masters, so dont believe them). There was nothing in this room, they provide no pillow, no matress, and the worst there was no light. To say nothing of a bathroom where was no toilet, but a hole in the floor. Also you will find a lot of different insects there such as fleas, cockroaches both: small and big size as my finger. I was stressed and didnt know what to do, cause I arrived at the university nearly 1 a.m. I was exhausted after 4 planes and all I wanted just to have a rest and sleep. I have informed them beforehand about time of my arrival and they didnt say anything about this shit. Finally I had to find and spend a night in the hotel. I stayed in this dorm only for one night and then moved outside the campus to the flat.
2. Administration in the office. They dont help, dont know anything (or just pretend to do it) and just dont give a damn what problems do you have and who you are. So you should rely on yourself and if you are lucky on other students who are willing to help you. Some teachers were rather helpful but it is only like 10% of the rest. Because of their secretary I failed to choose my courses. She didnt explain me what should I do in time so the system where I should do it had already closed. Her attittude was as I came to her home and annoyed her for no reason. Her facial expression was so tired ( p.s. that time she just have returned from the lunch. Such a tough thing I should say). It was really terrible.
The 2 only good things about the university:
1. friendly students (Chinese and foreign), many of them helped me so much. They are really cool guys
2. Xiamen is very beautiful city near the sea and with a picturesque nature.
The one purpose of this feedback is to warn other students. I highly recommend you to choose other universities in China, cause there are better choices than Xiamen university. And always collect all the information about the university, as many as possible.
I hope that this message will be useful for someone. Good luck to everyone!

Anonymous

From : South Korea

In 2017 I was awarded a scholarship for master degree at Xiamen University.
That moment I was really happy, cause all my previous year I was preparing all the documents
and spending a lot of time and efforts to go there. And I really wanted to study in China. But when I finally camethere, I have just realised how awful this university was . I was staying there only for 6 days and it was enough for me. After that I came back home. Not to be very talkative I will describe it in some points.
1. Accomodation - the students prison in reality. It is just a box with beds for 4 people (they lied about the room for 2 persons for masters, so dont believe them). There was nothing in this room, they provide no pillow, no matress, and the worst there was no light. To say nothing of a bathroom where was no toilet, but a hole in the floor. Also you will find a lot of different insects there such as fleas, cockroaches both: small and big size as my finger. I was stressed and didnt know what to do, cause I arrived at the university nearly 1 a.m. I was exhausted after 4 planes and all I wanted just to have a rest and sleep. I have informed them beforehand about time of my arrival and they didnt say anything about this shit. Finally I had to find and spend a night in the hotel. I stayed in this dorm only for one night and then moved outside the campus to the flat.
2. Administration in the office. They dont help, dont know anything (or just pretend to do it) and just dont give a damn what problems do you have and who you are. So you should rely on yourself and if you are lucky on other students who are willing to help you. Some teachers were rather helpful but it is only like 10% of the rest. Because of their secretary I failed to choose my courses. She didnt explain me what should I do in time so the system where I should do it had already closed. Her attittude was as I came to her home and annoyed her for no reason. Her facial expression was so tired ( p.s. that time she just have returned from the lunch. Such a tough thing I should say). It was really terrible.
The 2 only good things about the university:
1. friendly students (Chinese and foreign), many of them helped me so much. They are really cool guys
2. Xiamen is very beautiful city near the sea and with a picturesque nature.
The one purpose of this feedback is to warn other students. I highly recommend you to choose other universities in China, cause there are better choices than Xiamen university. And always collect all the information about the university, as many as possible.
I hope that this message will be useful for someone. Good luck to everyone!

Пономарёв Вадим

From : Russian Federation

Oh my god, this place is seriously so messed up. I mean come on, how can a university in China have no Chinese language classes? This must be the only university in the whole country that doesnt offer this basic element.

Ok, so they have 1 semester of pinyin class where you can learn to say the 4 mas. 1 semester out of a total of 6 semesters. And if you already had any Chinese class before at all, you will not get or need this class. Like me with HSK 5 already but theres no chance to improve it here. Everything is in English, which of course I can expect but at least they should provide some Chinese classes.

I had to move out of the dorms after 1 day. The place is completely like a prison and is not suitable for human beings to live in with mold growing on the walls and on the beds. They spend a lot of money recently on the local Chinese residents houses inside the university to show off to Putin who will visit here soon. But we Russians all know its all fake money and they spend nothing at all on the dorms for us. They just make the outside windows of the local people look nicer for when Putin drive past, but the inside will be as terrible as always.

The classes are very low level and very easy. I feel like this is not even a master degree, how can they give it this name I dont know.

Do yourself a favour and choose a different university. My friends all think the same as me.

Goncherenok Evgeniya

From : Belarus

Definitely has to be the worst decision I am making in my life being to study MA Economics there. This university is be like a joke. The classes are supposed to be at master level but they are like kindergarten. For example, for my exams I can take all material with me and discuss with my classmates during exam and nobody say anything.

The accommodation is like a prison cell and 4 people 1 room. I move out immediately and find my own place. Do not believe the lies about scholarship give nice place to stay.

The canteen food is very cheap but very unhealthy and people get sick often.

Do not go to here, Wuhan and other place are very better.

Goncherenok Evgeniya

From : Belarus

Definitely has to be the worst decision I am making in my life being to study MA Economics there. This university is be like a joke. The classes are supposed to be at master level but they are like kindergarten. For example, for my exams I can take all material with me and discuss with my classmates during exam and nobody say anything.

The accommodation is like a prison cell and 4 people 1 room. I move out immediately and find my own place. Do not believe the lies about scholarship give nice place to stay.

The canteen food is very cheap but very unhealthy and people get sick often.

Do not go to here, Wuhan and other place are very better.

gyabeng maxwell

From : Ghana

am satisfy with all the activity of xiamen university

Anonymous

From : United Kingdom

There are nice teachers who graduated from American universities but that's where the positives end. Many of these teachers have never taught before so much of your experience will be like a Guinea pig for testing new teachers. This is especially true since foreign students are very much outsiders at this university. There is no support for foreign students and you will turn up to class to discover that all the Chinese students already have fake printed copies of the textbooks and you don't even know the name of the book. Although the classes are taught in English, my director told me that only 1/3 of the Chinese students understand English so they are also provided the Chinese versions of the textbooks. The courses are fully mathematical for the same reason, there are no essays or reasoning or explaining government policy on an Economics degree, only calculations and maths to cater to the Chinese student body. This Chinese student body will be better than you at maths. I've often heard the joke that a middle school student in China can go to Europe and teach high school maths whereas a high school graduate can go and teach third year university maths. I know this is true from my undergraduate study at home where Chinese undergraduates get direct entry into third year. The tutorials and will be done in Chinese when your major mandates it should be English. 7/8 of the teaching assistants won't even be able to understand English making it impossible for the supposed English TA sessions to exist. There is no administration to help foreigners at this university and moreover the health insurance is fake and impossible to claim to you should arrange your own prior to arrival. You will be living in a 4 person bedroom which resembles a prison cell while the university invests he money it received from the government on your scholarship. Every foreigner at this university is simply a 'token', you will be there but not there. Although you exist, nobody will know or care that you exist. You are there so XMU can say to the world hey look we have foreigners. There is a very good reason that graduating from XMU does not qualify you to work at XMU. Let that sink in, graduating from this university does not qualify you to work at this university.

Anonymous

From : India

Hey everyone! im Sam! & i am doing my MBBS from here! if you are still looking for a university to study? then look no more! just come here! trust a stranger! you wont regret coming here!

Anonymous

From : United Kingdom

This review is for those intent on pursuing Master level study in Economics at Xiamen University (WISE) under the Chinese government scholarship.
In short: DONT!
The long version:
The "Master" degrees here are not real Master degrees. They will not be accepted as such anywhere in the world as expert knowledge on Economics. At best they can serve to demonstrate international cultural experience in a foreign country.

Firstly the courses themselves are not Masters level. In fact, you will be sharing all of your classes with junior undergraduates. If you have previous experience in Economics (which you should have if you are applying for a Masters degree) you will find that there is absolutely nothing over the 2 year programme that you have not done before. Indeed, your Western undergraduate programe is much more difficult and detailed than what Xiamen has to offer.

Secondly, there are no entry requirements for foreigners at Xiamen University. Many of your classmates will never have studied Economics (or maybe anything) before in their life and so will be quite easily deluded into the value of the courses they are taking. Yet, with your experience you will never have to open a book, not even for subjects you have never encountered before because the level is so low. I would call it below undergraduate level but theres apparently undergraduates here doing the classes with you.

Thirdly, the accommodation. The university will lie to you and say that you will get a free Masters dorm with 2 people at most. There is not a single person on any of the programs at WISE who received this fabled accommodation. You will instead be housed in 4-person bedrooms with undergraduates who may only speak Chinese.

For Chinese government scholarship winners, the scholarship affords Xiamen University 1000RMB per month to provide you suitable accommodation. Yet the accommodation provided to you will be worth 240RMB per month, and you will further be required to regularly pay to "charge" your prison cell with electricity on top of that. This totals to a net saving of 760RMB per month per student by Xiamen University from housing international students in such conditions. In fact, the 1 person bedrooms here cost around 980RMB per month, well within the limit of the Scholarship money they have received. There are many other universities across China providing international students with their own bedroom and I advise you to choose one of those universities instead. Xiamen University will tell you, if you dont like it you can choose to live outside and we will give you 700RMB per month to find a place. However Xiamen is one of the most expensive places in China, you will be lucky to find something for less than 3000RMB.

Xiamen has nobody you can complain to, there is nothing you can do about sleeping on a piece of wood in a room that is lockable from the outside. The best thing you can do is to stay as far away as possible.

Anonymous

From : India

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Anonymous

From : Turkey

It is one of the worst universities I have ever been to. The administration does not care about anything, I had to sleep on a wooden bed without a maittress for a week and everyday I had to go to the dormitory office to ask for a bed and the guy just gave me a maitress after I began shouting by grapping his colar... They put all the foreigners in Chinese language program to the Xiangan campus which is one and a half hours to two and a half hours (depending on the trafic) from the real Xiamen city, and after ten p.m there is no bus. The cafeteria is not the best but you won\'t starve to death. If you are Muslim or Jewish you will have a lot of dietary problems... There is basically nothing around the campus, so it is more likea study camp version of a labor camp. And during winter and summer holidays, even the cafeterias close... The university does eveything possible to not let you practice Chinese. Do not expect to mak Chinese friends or an atmosphere where you can practice Chinese. In my case I had to go to the city center and find a Kendo gym which I have been practicing for a long time to make Chinese friends who are willing to speak Chinese with you. The local people speak Minnan which has nothing to do with Mandarin. And the only Chinese students who will spare time to make foreign friends are the ones who want to practice English with you, so mostly they try their best not to speak Chinese with you. There are no social activities or student clubs that you can actively participate, the campus is unnecessarily large which makes it compulsory to buy a bike, otherwise you will have to spend more than an hour everyday to go to the classes, eating lunch etc. The buildings are beautiful and empty, I feel rather like in Mongolia without many people or things to do, so if you want to live like a hermit for a while it can be a good choice. But probably you will be bored to death after a month... There was not even a library until the end of this semester and the huge building that they call library is more like a reading room with seven floors. As everything else it is also an unnecessarily huge building without a purpose. As a PhD student I mostly have to buy the books I need from Amazon, and the foreign stuents cannot borrow books from the library. The classes are crowded with thirty to fifty stdents per class, so at least at the beginning of the semester it is more like a kinder garten than a Chinese course until people who came to China for holiday give up coming to the classes. In short, Xiamen university does not give you what you expect, do not believe in the advertisements and the beautiful photos, you will be far far away from civilization, forget about social life or even a decent cup of coffee or any other basic social activity if you come here, and you will not be able to improve your Chinese as well...

Taalas Sami Johannes

From : Sweden

Xiamen University is an excellent, traditional, old school style top university in China. The teachers are old-fahionably very good, rigorously hard working and demanding. This also applies to the students. If you are looking for a holiday this is not for you. Exams are given only once so you need to make sure you pass directly. More than 30% of the students fail their exams and do not get a passing grade. Your competition will be a mix of students mainly from East Europe, Russia, Korea, Japan and Indonesia. Teching style is traditional-style Chinese language teaching. Modern methods are not used but teahers normally use Power Points and whitboard as a teaching tool. Xiamen University moved the language teaching to outside of Xiamen Island Autumn 2013. Eventually, all teaching will be moved to this gigantic, beautiful new stone campus that features magnificant stone buildings and the finest Library in South China. Unfortunately the new Xiang´An campus is very far away, and not ready. There is nothing in the area. The nearby village is 8 km away but they have a shopping center and a supermarket. Some students live here to get away from campus, but it is also problematic because the bus line 761 is not reliable. Also, you can not really practise your mandarin there as people most people only speak dialects from far. The new Xiang´An campus will be under construction for years and it is located in a rural area in development. There is absolutely no night life, bars, restaurants or cozy areas nearby. Public buses run until nine, ten o´clock and are very cheap. Buses are packed during rush hours. It takes 1 - 1,5 hours to the city center from the campus. University has arranged conveninent coach buses for the teachers but students are not allowed to take them. Student activities are not many. During one year one one day class trip was arranged. There is an unheated swimming pool, and an underdimensioned gym that is open in the afternoon. The gym is good and full of people, but not really suitable for heavier training as they dont have enough weights. The food in the two several storey cantines is not expensive, but they make the same food every day. Dishes are well made, but tastless and oily. Complaints were not well received. Since you can´t cook in your room this is your only option. The dormitories are inexpensive, new and fresh, although you many not cook or have a heater in your room. There were serious problems with wall lice,insects, humidity and mold 2013-2014. However the cleaning crew is very fast to help you spray, disinfect, poison and clean the rooms and maddrasses. The winters are humid, windy and very cold in XiangAn despite the sub-tropical climate. All buildings including dorms and classrooms are unisolated and without heating. This is very good for the environment, and perfectly normal in South-China. But most of the students had a cold during the cold months november-march. March-may it rains almost daily and you need to be careful not get sick from humidity and mold. The everday sea winds and storms are bone-chilling. Even the classrooms were windy. So make sure to bring your warmest dawn winter clothes and super thick underwear - you will need them both inside and out. Many of the language students are leaving and there might be problems setting up classes next year. There are scholarships to apply, and you might want to apply for one since the tuition just went up over 60% from 8000Y to 13000 for Autumn 2014. Teachers and students were simply wonderful. However, I would recommend studies somewhere else. saminxiamen@gmail.com

Guthartz Pålsson Matilda

From : Sweden

The best about Xiamen is that it is a small city where pretty much all the foreigners know each other or about each other. It's a very beautiful campus with a lot of things to do, however, I feel it might be a bit boring once you've been here for a while, hence the grade. For the administration, unless you know some people who work in it, or people who know people who work in it, you might have quite a lot of trouble sometimes. How much you get for your money depends entirely up to you and how much effort you're willing to put into studying, but they give you everything you need to learn good chinese. As for me, my level have imporved a LOT since I came, mainly thanks to the teachers. The cafeteria is typical chinese, i.e only chinese food, rather oily as the food often is in the south, but very cheap and also pretty good. The accomodation is unfortunatelt not all that nice though if you don't have too high demands it's satisfactory and very convinient, BUT very overpriced if you come as a self-financed student.