Academic Development
The academic system at SJTU is quite different to UQ, where academic and life matters are communicated through Wechat group chat rather than emails, which is more convenient to catch up with all the time due to the higher frequency notifications. The challenge for me is that the course CI300 was taught in full Chinese and we had to do many readings and hand written homework in Chinese, which was a slight challenge for me because I haven't been in Chinese classes for a very long time. However, as I lived in Shanghai, I ultimately got used to the environment and the language and became more comfortable with speaking and writing Chinese. The workload is similar to UQ studies, as there was one handwritten homework everyday, an additional 2000 word report and a group debate at the end of the course. All of the three assessment tasks require time and effort to be inputted in order to achieve high grades.
Budget
I attempted to control my expenses within $200CNY per day (which is approximately $40AUD). Overall, for the entire experience including accomodation, course fee and food approximates around $10000AUD.
Accomodation: $4600CNY (~$1000AUD)
Course fee: $4800AUD
Transportation at Shanghai (bus, taxi, metro): $200CNY (~$40AUD)
Plane ticket to and from: $1900AUD
Food: $3000CNY (~$600)
Advice/Top tips
I would recommend to other students participating in this experience to start applications early (cheaper course fees and more flexible time to choose courses), look out for WeChat messages (because the school organises a lot of extracurricular activities for us to participate in, such as badminton competition, karting, summer parties and many more) and enjoy the experience and the city's beauty.
