Anyone study at Mandarin House before?

[AdamSoong]

I was searching for schools and came upon Mandarin House (http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/)

I am interested to study Mandarin for 6 months and their tuition fees is 43200RMB and accommodation is 27600 for 6 months. Is this a good deal? Anyone with experience? Thanks alot.

[yonglin]

Sounds quite ridiculously overpriced imho.

[fanglu]

I'm at Qingdao university at the moment, tuition is 7000rmb for a semester and accommodation 1600 per month.

[anon6969]

You can get a decent apartment in Shanghai for 2000-3000rmb per month. If you share with others that can be as low as 1500 if you just want a simple place (you will be a student, after all).

It looks extremely overpriced for the Chinese lessons too. I have no experience, but my advice is that if you want to do a 6 months course then look at JiaoTong University or if you haven't excluded Beijing then the Culture & Language university there.

Mandarin School, from what I can tell is one of the many private Chinese "schools" in China that "teach" Chinese to foreigners working in Shanghai for a really high price tag (usually their companies pay for their Chinese lessons).

One hour of 1-to-1 tuition in Shanghai cost somewhere between 80-150rmb per hour. Obviously this may be different if you are doing a set course.

Sorry I can't help more. Find some other foreigners who have more experience than I!

[imron]

Just for comparison, 20 hours a week for 24 weeks (6 months) at RMB 100 an hour is RMB 48,000.

See also this thread and this thread, for some more background on why private schools are more expensive, although not necessarily less value more money.

Not that I know anything about this school in particular, but just saying that often cost is not the only factor to consider in choosing where to study.

[anonymoose]

Sounds quite expensive to me. Of course you have to compare exactly what the course content is, but for comparison, I paid something like 19000 for 1 year at Jiaotong University.

[Hanyu Al]

Yes I have. The environment is quite good, modern offices, they train their staff to work to a program of sorts.

FIRST BIG WARNING. Check the fine print about class sizes and get some guarantees in writing about the lesson times that you personally will get. When i signed up in December they told me that winter time was not as busy as summer so there might only be 3-4 people in my class, which sounded pretty good. Their terms and conditions on their web site read in effect that if there was only one person in the class that the class time would be reduced to 30 minute per class from the promoted 1 hr. I thought that this was fair as it would essentially mean that I would be getting a private lesson.

After I paid and arrived, i was in a class of 2 people and shocked (as was my classmate) that our group class was only 30 minutes per lesson. We were told that their terms and conditions changed and apologised for us receiving the wrong information. The NEW terms are that if the class has less than 3 people then they had the right to reduce the lesson time.

No matter how much we complained they kept coming back with a lame proclamation that they guarantee the wee will learn just as much. This was utter BS!! as the teacher was clearly under pressure to cram material into the short time and we were being rushed through. Some days so much that I felt it was a total waste of my time (and money of course)! We could not get through to them that this was not the right thing to do to us, but they would not budge, and there was nothing much we felt we as students affected by this could do. SO BEWARE of MANDARIN HOUSE!!. Don't think Intensive 30 means 30 hours per week, its means 30 lessons, which are 50 minutes each, (not 60) and if you have a small class they may just cut is to 30 minute per lesson.

SECOND BIG WARNING. They are not just in the business of making money from teaching. If you plan to study for a while and to take one of their accommodation offers, I would suggest that you commit only for a short time and look for somewhere else. I paid about RMB5,000 for one bedroom for one month in a 6 bedroom apartment. Admittedly it wasn't fully occupied (just me and 3 others and a family of cockroaches) but I found out from the real estate agent below the apartment building that the whole apartment rents for about RMB7,000 perm month. Secondly Mandarin House offers studios for RMB8,800 per month a fair way from the school. After my month was up I moved into a large modern 1 bedroom close to everything for only 3,300 per month. There are loads of short term lets available if you do a bit of web research. And remember there's a recession, rents are falling and there's a lot of vacancy.

Hope the above helps you to avoid a potentially bitter experience.