E-mail: m.j.m.leeijen@tilburguniversity.edu
Study Program: Human Resource Management
Exchange semester: Fall 2015
Academic year: 2015-2016
Host University: Corvinus University of Budapest
Country: Hungary
I GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Corvinus University is situated in Budapest. Budapest is a beautiful city which is divided into
two parts by the Danube, namely the Buda side and the Pest side. The Buda side is the less
densely populated part of the city and has a lot of hills. The Pest side is the more lively side of
the city. The city has a lot of sights. For example at the Buda side you can visit Fishermen’s
Bastion, Matthias Church and Buda Castle from which you have a beautiful view on the pest
side. On the pest side you will see St. Stephen’s Basilica, hero square and maybe the famous
building of Budapest: the Parliament building.
Corvinus University has a campus on both sides of the river, however all students of Tilburg
University who come to this university will study at the campus which is situated on the pest
side. On this campus three faculties are located: The faculty of economics, the faculty of
business administration and the social science faculty. I took courses of the last one.
The Pest campus consisted of three buildings. The old building, the salt house and the new
building. From the buildings you have a beautiful view on the Danube because the campus is
situated right next to the river. The campus is close to Kalvin Ter where you can find a lot of
places to eat and drink but there is also a cafeteria at the university itself.
The lectures were quite different from the lectures we get in Tilburg. All the lectures were in
normal classrooms with about 20-30 students. The classes were very interactive, which I think
made them more fun than the lectures we get in Tilburg where you most of the time only have
to listen. Another advantage of more interactive classes is that you get to know more people
and that we spoke about the differences in cultures and how things were different in our home
countries. In most of my classes the majority of the students were international students.
In total there are approximately 14.000 students studying at Corvinus University and about 700
of them were exchange students.
II PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Before I arrived in Budapest I already received some information about activities that would
take place in the first weeks we would be in Budapest. I also got an email of a girl who lives in
Budapest herself and who studies at Corvinus University, she was going to be my tandumpartner. If I had any questions or problems, she would be there to help me.
In my first week in Budapest ESN organized the hostel week. During this week there were a
lot of activities so you could get to know other students. Every night we met the group at a
certain place and from that place they showed us some pubs and clubs. During the day there
were some sightseeing activities. I recommend new students to participate with a lot of
activities during this week, it is a good opportunity to get to know a lot of people.
In the second week after my arrival we had an introduction day at school. We got some
information about the city and university and about some documents that we had to pick up at
our own faculty.
Housing:
The university doesn’t provide housing to the international students, so you have to search for
an apartment yourself. Some students stayed in a hostel for the first few days/weeks so they
could get to know other people to search for an apartment with and they would search for an
apartment together during the first few weeks. I decided that I wanted to have an apartment
before I would leave to Budapest so I would be sure I had a good place to live. Via a girl who
lived in Budapest before for her exchange, I got the number of a landlord. He had some
apartments available where I could choose from. I put a message on Facebook if anyone was
interested to live in one of the apartments with me for the semester. In the end I found one girl
and one boy who became my roommates. Feel free to contact me if you are searching for
housing in Budapest, my landlord has a lot of apartments for international students and he also
organizes activities to get to know other international students who live in his apartments.
We had a really good looking and big apartment right next to Vaci Utca which is the big shopping
street of Budapest. It was located in the fifth district, which is the city center of Budapest so the
location was very good. We paid a little bit more than 300 euro a month.
I liked the fact that I had arranged an apartment before I left but the people who searched for
an apartment during their stay also all managed to get an apartment before the lectures started.
Living costs:
I financed my exchange period by saving some extra money in the year before I left. During the
summer holiday I worked some more so I would have more money to spend in Budapest.
Besides that I also got some pocket money each month of my parents.
I think my living expenses in Budapest were a little bit higher than in Tilburg but this is because
I did quite a lot of trips to other cities and we went for dinner in restaurants quite often. On
average for example the rent, the restaurants and going out are cheaper than in the
Netherlands, it is because of the extra activities that we did that I spend some more money.
For example during my stay in Budapest we made some trips to other cities in eastern Europe,
we went to Vienna, Belgrade, Bratislava and Krakow and we also visited some cities inside
Hungary.
I tried to make a rough estimation of my expenses:
- Housing: ± 300 euro a month
- Food and drinks: ± 500 euro a month
- Transport: 12 euro a month
- Miscellaneous: 100-150 euro a month
Social Activities
Most of my friends in Budapest were other exchange students. In the first week we participated
in the hostel week of ESN and that is where I met most of my friends. With this group of friends
we went out and we did a lot of trips. For example, in the weekend before our classes started
we rented a house in the south of Hungary and went there with about 20 people. Later in the
semester we also organized some other trips outside Hungary such as to Krakow and Belgrade.
It was quite easy to organize such a trip, we rented a car or bought train tickets and we had to
book a hostel, in Eastern Europe these thing are all not that expensive.
ESN Corvinus also organized some activities and trips. In the first week we participated in the
introduction week they had organized and a few weeks later they organized freshcamp, during
that weekend we went to Lake Balaton with about 150 international students. Later on in the
semester we preferred to organize trips and activities ourselves so we did not participate in a
lot of ESN activities anymore.
Culture and Language
I think the culture in Hungary, or at least in Budapest, doesn’t differ that much from the Dutch
culture so I didn’t experience some kind of culture shock. Of course there were some
differences, for example, Hungarian people are not as polite as people in the Netherlands,
you can notice this the most in restaurants and supermarkets. They are also not as organized
as Dutch people which was quite clear at the university and ESN activities, sometimes you
have to be quite patient. But these differences are not really hard to get used to. In the rest of
Eastern Europe I experienced quite the same differences as in Hungary, but these cultures
are all not really different from the Dutch culture.
Something which was really different, was the language. The Hungarian language doesn’t
have any words which are familiar to a language that I know. So in the end I did not learn a lot
of Hungarian words because the language was just too hard to understand and I also did not
do any language courses or something because I knew I was not going to use the language a
lot in the rest of my life. Fortunately more people than I expected were able to understand a
little bit of English so I did not really need the Hungarian language. Also at the university the
teachers and the students in my classes had quite a high level of English so I did not
experience any language problems.
Personal Development
During my exchange I learned more about different cultures which I think made me also more
open-minded. I think you also become more independent and you learn to arrange things better.
You get to know yourself a lot better and you can improve yourself on different fields. But the
thing that I liked to most about my exchange is that you get to know a lot of people.
I don’t think I would do anything different if I would go on exchange again because I tried to do
as much things that I wanted to do. My best experiences on exchange were the trips we made
to other cities, so I did not only see a lot of Budapest but also a lot of Eastern Europe.
III ACADEMIC INFORMATION
Academic level at a host university:
At my host university they offer courses in Hungarian, English and some in German. I only
followed the English courses, like almost all the other exchange students. I had to take
courses of the social science faculty, which I didn’t always like because HRM was actually
part of another faculty on that university so the courses didn’t always really have to do
something with my field of study. What I did like was the way of teaching. We had classes
with about 30 students and the lectures were quite interactive, in this way it was more
personal and also more fun.
I followed six courses, five of the social science faculty and one of the faculty of business
administration. All courses that I followed were quite ok but the courses that I would
recommend to follow are: conflict management and personality types and team dynamics.
The first one was a three ects course but was also easy, quite interesting and not a lot of work
and the second one was maybe the course I had to do the most for but was also the most
interesting and I really learned a lot in this course which also has to do with HRM. There were
also some courses where I did not really learn something which is relevant for my study, such
as for example in the course: organizational theory and behavior, we didn’t really learn a lot
about this topic but the classes were quite nice and it was a group with students with all
different cultures so we learned a lot about each other’s culture which for me was maybe
more important during my exchange than learning something about my field of study.
I think the academic level at Corvinus University is lower than the level on Tilburg University.
We still had to do a lot of assignments and exams but the grades that we got were a lot higher
than the grades they would give in Tilburg. Their grading system is different from the one we
use, in Hungary you get a mark from 1 – 5 and a two or higher means you passed the course.
For four courses I got a five and for the other two I got a four. I had to spend less time at
studying than I have to in the Netherlands, which meant we had more time to do a lot of other
activities and we could make a lot of trips during the weekend.
Course
Prerequisites
Exam
ECTS
Comments
Studies on Equal
opportunities
None
written
3
Mid-term, paper,
presentation
None
-
3
A written assignment
each week,
presentation
None
Written
6
Midterm, final, paper,
presentation
None
Written
6
Midterm, reports,
presentation
7SO30NGKF5B
Conflict management
7PE20NCKC3B
Personality types and
team dynamics
293NPSYV311
Individual and group
interviews
7SO30NCKF2B
Organizational theory
and behavior
None
Written
6
Midterm, final,
presentation
None
Oral
6
Presentation, final
7PE20NGKE4B
History of
international relations
from 1945
Tips for the future students:
I would definitely recommend other students to go on exchange. I also think Budapest is a
really good destination for an exchange period, it is a beautiful, lively city with a lot of nice
restaurants and places to go out. From Budapest it is also easy and not too expensive to
travel to other places and the costs of living in Budapest are also quite low. I would advise
exchange students to do as much as they can during their exchange and to really enjoy your
time abroad.