Things You Should Know Before You Go On ISEP

ISEP is a wonderful experience and I think more people should go for it. It doesn’t matter if you’re shy or outgoing, single or taken, or if you’re just terrified of being on your own; the ISEP experience fits everyone and if you can afford it, you should do it. I was also afraid of going but fear really shouldn’t stop you. One semester goes by really fast and before you know it you’re back home.

So here are some important tips:

Choose your classes very carefully. If you’re in the process of choosing classes, you’ll know it’s really hard because they have hundreds of classes. I spent several hours looking for the ones I needed. After I had chosen them, they rejected many because the course description was not the same as in UAM or because the class had pre-requisites that at UAM don’t even exist. So what does this imply? If you don’t take the same classes you would as if you were at UAM things might get a bit complicated.

I’m supposed to graduate in December this year but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. I have 12 classes left, so six for each semester. However, you know CUSE only offers a class once a year unless you get the number of people required to open it. So now I have 12 classes left, 9 are from this ongoing semester and 3 for my last semester. In order to graduate I have to find 4 more people that want to take the classes I need from this semester so we can them next semester.

Sign up for classes ahead of time. As a procrastinator, I signed up for classes until the very last minute. At LSU, each class is offered in several different schedules so I could’ve chosen the time I wanted. But because I signed up really late, for one of my classes the only time available was 7am because every other class was already full.

You can fail a class there and you won’t lose your scholarship at UAM. I think people say classes in the U.S. or anywhere else are much harder than at UAM. So I avoided taking some classes because I was afraid I would fail and lose my scholarship. I later found out that you can’t because the class won’t transfer here unless you pass it. Also, I don’t think classes are harder, the only difference is that everything’s up to you. They don’t care about attendance so it’s up to you whether you want to go to class and pay attention or just stay in bed sleeping.

Finally, if you’re interested in taking international business law, global economic geography, or productions & operations management or if you have any questions, please contact me at scarleth.roque@gmail.com!

- Scarleth Roque