Zhejiang university VS Mandarin capital

Mandarin Capital (http://www.mandarincapital.cn/)

Overview

Teaching Quality: Variable but the degree of flexible enables you to do things your way: any time, any teacher and any method you like.

Cost: A little bit expensive but when you do the math it is MUCH better value than Zheda, the accommodation isnt crash hot, but finding a place in china for 1500 (zheda rate) should be easy

-------------------------------VS---------------------------------

Zhejiang University Chinese Studies (http://www.zju.edu.cn/english)

Overview

Teaching Quality: variable, class sizes too big, only good for grammar and some listening (things you should be able to study at home), speaking will need to be developed elsewhere.

Cost: Relatively cheap, but not good value for money 9,000 semester, accommodation RMB1,500 for a piece of crap, the party-hardy environment is the upside (i guess).

--------------------------------THE TALE--------------------------


I spent one semester at Zhejiang language school learning at a 3.5 level (whatever the hell that means) and i was royally unimpressed.

Why? :

1) Reading, Grammar, specking, listening must all be taken at the same level (level 3 for me)

So while i breezed through reading and grammar, listening was WAYYYY above my head (class size shrunk to 2 people from 20 because it was so fucking hard). Other chinese universities have more flexibility here and this unevenness didnt correct itself.

2) Class sizes too big and full of deadbeats

By deadbeats i mean people who mostly miss class, don't try, talk in class and generally pull everyone else down to deadbeat town. It is true large unis complete with student campuses are going to be full of party animals who think they are on holidays. The serious should stay away unless they are endowed with spartin like dedication.

Classes ranged from 12 to 20+ people, not good value for money! On the class size, during speaking class you for example will perhaps say 1 or 2 things (probably from the text book).

3) Quality is uneven

Some teachers are bad, some good, there is no flexibility to escape the bad ones. My reading teacher would simply enter tell people to read and then not speak again until the end of the lesson .

Soooooooooooooo im out of here then.

But wait the new visa system prevents me from trying out smaller schools because they are considered 'businesses'. Its a racket because zhejiang wayyyy overcharges and is the only game in town to offer student visas. I dont know if this has something to do with the olympics or no.

Enter Mandarin Capital: I pick the teachers, i pick the course content and I pick the times. One on one tutoring 10 hours a week = 3000 (you'll need to fight for this rate), zhejiang was about 9000 for 3-4 months (admittedly more hours, 15ish, but half of them were a waste). I now around spend 1.5 hours a day fixing all the tonal errors that i have when i speak fast.

But it hinges on this places ability to get me a student visa (otherwise back to Zheda I go).

Ill expand some more later when the visa thing goes down.