Exchange Report
University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign
Shidie, Chen (Sherry)
2015, spring
Activity Log
January
The winter is freezing in UIUC, so I seldom have outdoor activities during this period
after arriving this new place. I arrived in Chicago and took the Illini Shuttle to the
campus, which is quite convenience if you book the ticket online. Since I rent the house
on JSM website, my friend and I took some time to buy some necessities from secondhand shop and Amazon. The apartment is comfortable, and the other 2 roommates
are friendly, while the only problem is the sound insulation.
I took the orientation during the first week, but there is no such special activities
because of the weather. I also met with exchange students from both business and
engineering school and graduates from HKUST, and we spend good times in Chinese
restaurants.
I took 4 courses here, including 3 business course and 1 course on museum. For
personal interest, I also went to an art course that teaches you to make jewelry. It is
very professional and interesting but requires too much time and has several
restrictions, so I dropped this course finally. Generally the course contents are useful,
and I would like to give a detailed introduction in the next section.
February
I went to Chicago during the first weekend with friends also during exchange though
it was still Chilly. The trip was very impressive, especially the Art Institute of Chicago
and skyscrapers. We also went to the pizza house that had the largest pizza over US,
and I cannot remember the taste but only the surprising size.
Moreover, the traditional Spring Festival came and we had dinner together with
Chinese seniors. They drove us to a very tasteful Chinese restaurant with Beijing Roast
Duck and many other delicious Chinese food.
March
Since most of courses here had 2 midterm exams, I was focused on study this month.
The undergraduate library here was a really good place for studying, with quiet
environment and books of all categories. The difference of courses here was that
professors prefer to give more percentage of grades on the weekly assignments, and I
like this method because it made you more impressive about the knowledge compared
to simply review before exams. Also, the final grades were depending on the absolute
score of exams rather than the ranking, so it was not that competitive.
In most cases, the questions of midterms were similar to the homework questions.
Thus, it was very important to put great efforts in finishing the assignments.
Then came the spring break. I traveled to New York, Washington and Boston. The trip
took around
7 days, and it was fantastic though the weather was still windy and cold. We went to
the most famous museums, sight spots and universities of these three cities, which
were representatives of American politics, finance and culture.
April
Spring finally came and it was almost the last month of classes. Topics became more
difficult and questions were comprehensive of all the knowledge over the whole
semester. Everything went smoothly since I had been very familiar of this place, and it
was nice to make new friends in the same class with me.
May
The last 2 week was final exam period. The 2 economics and 1 finance courses took
me some time to get good review, but generally it was not that pressured since many
weights were on assignments and 2 midterms.
I left Champaign on 17th, and it took me really great effort to pack up my luggage. It
was wasteful to throw such a lot of things out because of the limited weight I could
bring back, and I hope I had find a store or place that could recycle or donate the things
but the time was so tight.
I travelled to Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles during the next 10 days. The
trip was of great fun because of the warm weather, interesting parks and special foods.
It was a right time to travel to the west coast with less people and proper weather.
General Exchange Information
Courses
I took 4 courses only for this semester. Among them, 2 were Economics and 1 was
Finance and another was about museum. Though I planned to take more finance
courses before, it was restricted by the list of courses UIUC provided for exchange
students. But the economics courses were not included as business courses, so you
could select arbitrarily.
The details were as below.
FIN412 Options and Futures Markets
This course was about derivatives. The content involved market rules, futures, options,
option pricing models such as binomial tree and Black Scholes. It was a difficult course
because the professor had high requirement on the content but he wouldn’t gave
much instructions during class and he expected us on self-learning. So it was a must
to read the text book and learn from the questions he gave. There was a group project
of real case, required us giving recommendation on using derivative products and
equities to hedge the risk.
In general, it was a very challenging course because of the complicated content and
demanding tasks from professor, however it was also rewarding if you really put a lot
effort on it.
ECON 490 Economic Forecast
This was an interesting and practical course that closely related to a software called
eVeiws, one that developed exclusively for forecast modeling. The content involved
basic econ-forecast models: AR, RM, ARMA, ARIMA; and related statistic knowledge.
Furthermore, the Korean professor is very responsible, and all the exams are closely
related to his assignments.
ECON 471 Intro to Applied Econometrics
The course content is similar to the econometric courses of HKUST, and involved many
statistic and mathematic knowledge. If you unluckily met a professor that is not so
coherent in lecturing like me did, you could still learn this course by text book and
assignment questions.
Accommodation
I lived off campus during exchange. I found the house from JSM website, and signed
sublease contract with the original renter. One thing important is that if you decide to
live off campus, do not apply student apartment at the very beginning. Unlike UST,
UIUC didn’t give you chance to reject hall offer, and there would be high fine if you
reject the hall offer.
Climate
Winter is freezing and windy, and spring comes late. So remember to bring warm
clothes.
Health and Safety
UIUC required exchange student to buy health insurance, and get several vaccination.
You can go to McKinsey center to get those required vaccination, and apply for the
reimbursement as long as you pay for the health insurance.