Denise
Q&A
I have always wanted to try living in another country and be immersed in a culture completely different than what I'm used to. I chose Summer in Cambridge because I have always been fascinated with the university and it is an English-speaking program, so I did not have to meet the language requirement that some programs have. Additionally, the summer term was a perfect introduction to studying abroad, as my program was only six weeks and I still had a full experience. In the future, I hope to study abroad for a whole semester and maybe in a country whose dominant language is not English.
During the day, I had 2-3 classes, visited museums and the various colleges at Cambridge, ate at their wonderful cafes, chilled by the River Cam, and went shopping with friends. At night, my friends and I went to pubs and clubs.
The courses were definitely more rigorous than at Berkeley due to the crunched time period we had to learn the material (less than 6 weeks). We had many essays and dissertations to write. One similarity is that we had seminars (discussions) along with lectures. It was a small program made up of only a few hundred students, so class sizes were small and the community was tight-knit
England has a wonderful train system that is cheap for students and convenient. I was able to travel to many different English cities during weekends. Staying in Cambridge was great too, as it is such a lovely city.