School Life in San Diego

I am currently taking a Bachelor of Medical Science and Bachelor of Business. Time flies, in the blink of an eye, I have been staying in San Diego for almost half a year. San Diego is a wonderful city located in southern California which is immediately adjacent to the Mexico-United States border. San Diego is known for its pleasant climate, beautiful beaches and coastal area. There are many high-quality experiences with numerous outdoor activities such as hiking, surfing, and exploring the nearby coastal areas. One of the famous coastal is named as La Jolla (/lə HOY-ə) which is the spot of large colonies of sea lions and seal with amazing sunset views along the cliffs. My favorite activity is to go paragliding enjoying the ocean view with many unique designs of villas along the cliff.

As San Diego is a city bordering Mexico, there are many good Mexican foods and desserts, especially the Chamango is type of mango smoothie with Chamoy (Mexican sour and spicy sauce that is normally taken with mango or different types of fruit).

ENROLLMENT

I am currently taking a Bachelor of Medical Science and Bachelor of Business. During this program, I am taking 3 business subjects and 1 science subject. I am currently in my last year of the degree which has only 6 subjects left for me to take. It has limited my options in choosing the subjects studying at SDSU. I arrived United States about one month before the program started, however, by the time of the school orientation, I hadn’t gotten the subject approval from either UTS or SDSU. Due to the new system in SDSU, it has restricted the exchange students from choosing senior subjects that require pre-requisite. As our academic transcript was not recorded in SDSU system, we could not choose those subjects ourselves. Thus, we need to email the faculty to review our transcript in order to enroll in the subjects which also is not guaranteed. At the same time, as I am taking a double degree, I must at least take 3 direct equivalent subjects back to UTS. It had been a really challenging process for me, because there were so many uncertainties since I was not sure whether the subjects that I already got approved from UTS would be able to enroll at SDSU or not. At the end, everything settled down with so much support from both SDSU exchange faculty and UTS staff. I have taken 4 full subjects which is the visa requirement for a US exchange student visa and only 3 subjects will be credited back to UTS.

SCHOOL LIFE

I have experienced 2 different faculties here at SDSU, Science and Business. Personally, I really like my Immunology class which was taken in a lecture room with 200 students in the class. There are 2 sections a week, one hour each, and there were quizzes every week. However, it is an absolutely different teaching system with my finance subjects which all three of them are taking in small classrooms in the form of tutorials. The professors totally can make all the decisions on how the class is going to run. I have found out that it is a culture at SDSU that the professors prefer to wave the students’ grades when the class has not gotten a good grade for the exam. In one of the subjects, the professor really challenges the student by giving a really difficult exam tests. In just one hour, there are 40 concept questions and 30 problem-solving questions, which is impossible to finish. As a result, all students did not do really well while few students decided to finish the exam earlier. Thus, after the results came out, the professor announced that he would give extra points to everyone.

EXAM

All the exams are taken in the class with the professor and the time we study. Most of them are multiple choice questions, and the professor will require a specific ParScore Test form which makes them easy to grade.

Tips

The public transportation in California is not as good as in Sydney. Most of the people have their people car for transport since it is far from place to place and there is a limited number of public transportation.

Solyda Chhounseng
Bachelor of Medical Science Bachelor of Business
Autumn 2023 session at San Diego State University, United States