Application process

The application process was made extremely easy for me through MicroEDU. You just fill out a few forms, submit your certificates and choose your courses. MicroEDU will do the rest for you. It only took me two weeks from filling out the forms to being accepted at the university.

Studies / courses taken

In Kamloops I took two business courses, a politics course and Spanish. I was extremely satisfied with three of my four courses. According to Abbreviationfinder, TRU is the abbreviation of Thompson Rivers University.

Learning a new language (Spanish) was much more demanding than in high school, which was partly due to the fact that I had to learn the vocabulary from English into Spanish, but also because the pace was much faster than one is used to. However, I was able to pass my course with the top grade due to my experience in other foreign languages.

I also really enjoyed the Management Information Systems course. Here, however, the level was not that high. With the right learning methods, you could easily achieve good results.

Overall, I liked Comparative Politics best as I was the only exchange student in this course. This was by far my most demanding course. It is assumed that you prepare 100 textbook pages per week, which is impossible if you want to enjoy your free time. Instead, each time before class I went through the presentations that the teacher put on the internet the night before. It was also expected to write an essay on a regular basis and submit it for grading.

I didn’t like the last course, Organizational Behavior, at all. This one was so simple that you couldn’t take it seriously anymore. However, many students were happy to choose it because it was so easy to pass.

In all courses, one or two exams are written both in the middle of the semester and at the end of the semester. Overall, I was extremely satisfied with the course. Before you choose the courses, I would advise you to take a look at the professors’ rating on www.ratemyprofessors.com and choose your courses depending on this. I can recommend Josi Fischer, Jim Swingle and especially Robert Hanlon.

On-site support

The on-site support was great. First of all there was the introductory week, during which you will get to know many of the international students. Canadian students arrive on the last day of the induction week. If you have any questions, just get in touch with a teacher, classmate or an administration office. You will always be forwarded to the right contact person. You also have email contact with your International Advisor, who is responsible for European students. If you still cannot be helped, you can also contact MicroEDU, who are always happy to help.

Accommodation

I stayed at UCH (Upper College Hights), which I can only recommend. At the beginning you have to buy everything yourself, such as bed linen, crockery and cutlery as well as bathroom utensils. Here you live with three other, mostly international, students. However, you must be pretty lucky with your roommates. In the first week I lived with two students who had already lived there for 3 semesters. However, these two did not attach great importance to hygiene and were always busy with online games. So I decided to change my room for a fee of $ 50. Then I lived with two Danes and an Australian, with whom I did pretty much everything together. We had a lot of fun and even put on a van for the semester to travel on weekends and to go to the ski resort in winter.

I would advise against McGill Campus Housing. This looks like a prison both inside and out. The rooms are tiny and unclean.

Then there is the TRU residence, which offers the greatest comfort in terms of bedrooms, but also costs the most. I also lived here with my girlfriend for two weeks in January. The beds and the desk are much larger than in the UCH, but the kitchen is a joke. In addition, the residents of the residence are mostly freshmen students and they usually move out after two semesters there. In terms of price-performance ratio, I can recommend the UCH. If the money is enough, I would not advise against the residence either.

Leisure and excursion opportunities

There is always something to do in Kamloops. In summer / autumn it is up to 35 degrees warm. So you can go to the river and go swimming or just hang out with friends on campus. In addition, many different sporting activities are offered, which you can find out about at the university. In winter you can drive to the Sun Peaks ski area, 45 minutes away. The highlight for me, however, was the large sports center on campus, which has a swimming pool, two saunas, two fitness studios, basketball courts and a 200-meter running track. I also found the winter indoor soccer league and the countless opportunities to go out to eat, shop or go to the cinema to be outstanding.

I really enjoyed the semester abroad and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their language skills. I did my semester abroad right after graduating from high school and even decided to stay in Canada two months longer than planned. For a month I moved with my three roommates to Canada’s largest ski area, Whistler, and for a month I traveled around with my girlfriend, who I met at university.

Courses:

• Management Information Systems: A-
• Organizational Behavior: A-
• Comparative Politics: B.
• Spanish: A +