Bar-Ilan University: Ramat-Gan

One student review of Bar-Ilan University: Ramat-Gan

• Eli says:

  October 9, 2016 at 5:48 am

  Bar Ilan University, which has a good reputation as a high-quality institution, has an international program taught in English which offers two degrees: Communications or Social Sciences. In comparison to American colleges, it is very affordable and you get your Bachelors in three years, however, be prepared for some administrative headaches. The organization of the international program is not well done–students are not informed of changes in the curriculum or graduation requirements until very late, class locations were unavailable until the last minute, some courses necessary for graduation were not held or were replaced at the last minute by other courses held at a different times, and transcripts and graduation degrees were only available months later. You need to be patient and know how to deal with burocracy. Another difference to American Universities is the way the tests are held. They are often only at the end of the year and cover a whole year of material. You can retake any you want in fall, but your grade is then that one–even if you did better the first time around. Also, sometimes the directions to the test are in Hebrew rather than English. You are given points on a scale up to 100 rather than a grade.
  Be aware that there is an official graduation requirement of participating in a certain number of research experiments done on campus. It was an impossible requirement to fulfill because a) students were not told of it until their second year, and b) there were not enough experiments to participate in for English speakers. We were tgen told we will not need these experiments afterall. A second graduation requirement is to pass a test in Hebrew. This was also only told to students sometime at the end of their second year, and it caused a lot of stress because if you don’t pass you have to add a lot of courses in Hebrew, which makes scheduling difficult. A third requirement for Jewish students are a certain number of Jewish courses, things like Jewish philosophy or Jewish Ethics. If you are not Jewish, you do not need these courses. A fourth negative point is that you do not have a lot of freedom in choosing classes–the mandatory courses fill up most of the schedule and there is not much offered as extras in English. Also, there was some attempt to offer a bit of extracurricular activity, but these were very minimal. If you are an active person, you will probably do better by getting involved in off-campus things.
  Some of the positive aspects of the Bar Ilan International Program are the professors–most are great and really care. The location of the school is also good–everything is closeby and public transportation is easy. The campus is beautiful and diverse (Jews, Christians, Muslims) , food is cheap, and Israel itself is an exciting place to live. You are also free to take classes in the Hebrew section of Bar Ilan, which is a large university offering a lot of interesting courses, but in Hebrew. Just go with a lot if patience and don’t be too shy to ask and insist where necessary.

  Overall Score: (2.91/5.00)
  
  

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