HUT vs NTU

A criteria for an exchange blog: there must be a comparison of your home university and the exchange university. So here it goes.

HUT	NTU
Education
– "Academic freedom" – Boring lectures – Pretty free choice of courses and subjects	– Strictly controlled – Good lectures unless given by someone with a ridiculously bad Chinese dialect – Vast amounts of group work – Nearly every course has a project work
Facilities
– Some new, some old buildings – Very fast internet connections – Computer systems not very good - Supermarkets and book stores on-campus	– All buildings pretty new – Internet connection damn slow – Computer systems not very good – Gym and other sports facilities provided for free – Supermarkets, a computer hw/sw store and book stores on-campus
Transportation
– Non-existent on-campus transportation – An expensive but fast (15 mins) bus to city center	– On-campus busses but not very useful – Free bus to train station – Cheap but slow (45 mins) train to city center
Food and drinking
– A few canteens with just a choice or two per day – Food quality generally good, served with bread and fresh salad – A bar serving expensive beer – Canteens' open hours very poor, close at 4pm, no dinner possible	– Lots of canteens with at least 50 different choices of meals per canteen every day – Food quality fluctuating, sometimes downright bad (especially meat quality), sometimes OK – No bread or salad – Canteens open until 8pm or 9pm, some of them open on Sundays – McDonalds, Subway, Canadian Pizza and other chains – A bar serving cheap beer
Housing
– Single rooms or even studios – Usually private bathroom – Very cheap for Finnish students – Good cooking facilities	– Mostly small shared two-person rooms – Shared bathrooms – Air-con only in newest flats – Very cheap – Poor, shared cooking facilities

Clearly both have their plusses and minuses, and it's impossible to say which one is better. If I was starting my studies now and had a free choice over these two, I would probably go for HUT because of the freedom. Looking at the style the locals are studying here, fine-tuning their meaningless projects and memorizing whole textbooks at 4am, it does not seem like the way university studies should be.

While in Finland it is considered OK to pass a course with grade 1, but here, the perfectionists, which consists of 95% of the people, must always get an A. In Finland, work experience and other extra-curricular activities are valued more than a straight of A's. And I like it that way.

After graduation is a whole different story then, Singapore feels a hundred times nicer place to live than Helsinki with all its unhappy people, badly planned traffic, horrendous tax rate and miserable (or ridiculously expensive) restaurants, to name a few.