Southwest University of Finance and Economics

[roddy]

This topic is for discussion and reviews of Southwest University of Finance and Economics. Accommodation, courses, on-campus facilities and activities - anything to do with Southwest University of Finance and Economics goes in here. If there's a lot of discussion about any one particular topic we might split it into a new thread and leave a link here.

[dane_chengdu]

I had SWUFE as my number one priority. I hope I'll get a CSC scholarship.

Do you guys have recommendations regarding housing, sports, social life, the city, etc? I really like to play badminton and soccer so I hope they have some good school teams.

[Angelina]

This University is supposed to open a Confucius Institute at my alma mater. Unfortunately, that's all I know.

[VeraR]

Hi everyone! This is my first post here. I have applied to SWUFE for 1 year Chinese language program that will start this September. Now I'm waiting for the local government approval. The international admissions are very helpful and quickly respond. They said they are short on dorm rooms, though. I am still waiting to contact the official who deals with accommodations. The admissions lady told me that I applied at a relatively late time and suggested me to come on a tourist visa and then change it to student visa. Has anyone done it like that, does anyone know if it is safe? Thank you:)

[alkhdaniel]

For Chinese language students:

The book that is used is called "Road to Success", the dialogues are OK, the grammar point explanations are quite bad.
Some teachers are good, some not so good. I guess same as everywhere else.
Students are composed of roughly 30% moroccans, 15% africans, 15% thai, 15% russian-speakers, 15% westerners, 10% rest. Don't quote me on that though.

Tuition is 7000 yuan per month making it one of the cheaper universities in a big (t1,t2) city these days.
Dorms are 800 yuan per month, it's a private room with private western toilet. Very good value. The dorms are right next to the classes. 2 minute walk to the subway. Wired internet is 20 yuan per month. You need a mosquito killing solution in the summer, Chinese don't know how to construct windows so mosquitoes will get through even if you have your windows closed. Visitors are allowed, officially visitors need to register their name in a visitors book and are not allowed to stay over the night, but I have never heard of someone registering and I'm not sure if the book even exists, overnight stays hasn't been a problem for anyone either as far as i know.
There's a gym on campus for I believe 500 yuan per year, it's not too great but not too bad either. Outside campus you'll be paying 5-10 times that.

The international office is easy to deal with and speaks English well, also located in the same complex as the dorms.

Chinese classes are in Guanghua campus, this campus is closer to the city centre (~15-25min by subway to tianfu square / chunxi road) than Liulin campus. If you are studying something else it's very likely your other courses will be in Liulin though. Guanghua is not too interesting in general and there's not too much to do in the immediate area, lots of nearby cheap restaurants though, the school cafeteria is not too bad either.

There's not too much going on in the campus except classes. Language students are very segregated from the rest of the university, except for 5 or 6 decent culture activities during the course of a semester you probably won't have many interactions with Chinese students. You can sometimes find Chinese students in one of the only (the only?) nearby bar called Mojar, hassling people in the campus probably works as well but i haven't tried that.

You can no longer change a tourist visa into a student visa (you probably could in 2015 when the last post was made though). If you are here on a tourist visa you can (depending on your nationality) hop over to Hong Kong to make a student visa there.

Overall a fairly good experience here with the biggest negative being that the campus and surrounding area is not too exciting.