Civil Aviation Management Institute (CAMIC). Thoughts?

[ord100]

The site www.expatsinchina.com recommends the following Beijing school to learn chinese: Civil Aviation Management Institute of China (CAMIC).

http://www.expatsinchina.com/studentlink/biem/index.html

http://www.expatsinchina.com/life/education/cnlist.html

Because googling the school yields little except "www.expatsinchina" links I am suspicious about the promotion (beware of people selling things on web!).

Any thoughts or comments on CAMIC?

thank you!

[kudra]

If you look up who owns the domain names

expatsinchina.com

cbwchina.com

II. Send all above prepared materials, with the exception of application fee, to the following address:

ASM Overseas Corporation

Asian Games Garden, Building No. 2-6A

No.12, Xiaoying Lu, ChaoYang District

Beijing, China 100101

Email:icic@cbwchina.com

at www.dnsstuff.com they direct you to network solutions lookup page

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

It looks like both addresses are registered by the same entity. As for the school, never heard of it. Your googling results are telling.

By the way, ord100, reported location Chicago, asking about Civil Aviation Management Institute of China, cute.

Unless you have your own plane or something, you might check out summer courses at UofC. I have no idea what level you are at.

https://summer.uchicago.edu/bookmark.cfm?Pag=/intensive-language-study.cfm

click on visiting student.

Basically for $1500 you can get 3 weeks of courses, 3 hours per day in the morning. The description says to expect 5 hours of homework, prep per day.

[roddy]

Got to love the biography of Deng Xiaoping under 'Orientation' on that site. . .

Never heard of the CAMIC. Doesn't mean it's no good, though.

[UC_nostradamus]

...and as a U of C student, I can vouch for the quality of their Chinese program.

[ord100]

Thank you all for your helpful comments on this school. The same web page for this "school" actually appears -- with a different school name at the top (not CAMIC) -- elsewhere on the web. Probably put up by the same promoter (clever self promotion actually!)

Thank you also for referring me to the University of Chicago... which is located about 10 miles south of where I am typing this. I will consider the 3 week "intensive" summer course there... although the idea of studing anything intensively in the summer makes me ill.

The major disadvantage of studying in Chicago is that I would not be able to drink huge quantities of Yanjing and Tsingtao daily, justifying the excesses as a part of a cultural learning experience, while fraternizing with the interesting types that have actually travelled from all over the world to Beijing. Come to think about it, maybe I should just have asked about interesting bars in beijing, rather than schools, but then I would be off-topic and barred by the friendly moderator.

:-)

[kudra]

drink huge quantities of Yanjing and Tsingtao daily, justifying the excesses as a part of a cultural learning experience, while fraternizing with the interesting types that have actually travelled from all over the world to Beijing.

It may be possible to do that in Chicago this summer, although perhaps it would need to be changed to "middle aged types ... that *had* actually travelled ... to Beijing." But only after you've finished your 5 hours of homework.

Besides, if you spend all that money to go to Beijing, you might feel pressure to take advantage of the potential immersion experience, and forgo fraternizing in English with the other world travellers. In Chicago you can drink and gab in English guilt free(assuming you've finished your homework).

[gclewis]

All,

I've been to CAMIC (twice)--it's a real school with a good (and affordable) Chinese program. They have students from all over, and you can generally stay on campus. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and I'm not sure why it doesn't come up when you google it (believe me, I've tried). The address of their current site is www.camicec.cn (Short for CAMIC International Culture Exchange Center (ICEC)). I also have photos up at www.friedpaint.com/china/study/2005/schools/camic.html.

The reason there are two websites with the same basic info is that the program moved from the Beijing Institute of Economic Management (BIEM) down the street to CAMIC. The info on expatsinchina.com is out-of-date. (As a side note, the first time I went was in 2002 at BIEM--I went to CAMIC in 2005 with the same instructors as '02.)

Here's the full contact info:

International Culture Exchange Center (ICEC)

Civil Aviation Management Institute of China (CAMIC)

No. 3 Huajiadi Dong Lu, Chaoyang District,

Beijing, 100102

icec@camicec.cn

www.camicec.cn

Phone:

+86-10-64721653

+86-10-58250522

Fax:

+86-10-64748782

Hope this helps! If it does, please pass along the word about this school.

- Geoff

[suthjans]

It exists!!

I also spent a year at CAMIC in Beijing as part of my University (Liverpool, UK) year out.

Quite a new place so they really look after you.

It has great teachers and can organise flats to live in before you arrive in China.

It also organises trips to various locations in China including Mongolia as well as extra curricular stuff like HSK training and testing.

The courses are intense but really rewarding.

There are not many western students in the school so you really have to speak chinese everyday and listen to it, it can get frustrating if you are a beginner, but is really good for learning

[heifeng]

Yes, this is an actual school, with a Chinese program.

I took 2 HSK exams here in the past. The staff was friendly and the facilities (we tested in at least) were brand new. My impression was this school was expanding their Chinese program or something. It is pretty easy to go to the school, you can just take the 656 from wudaokou towards Wangjing or the 939 from BNU...but it's a bit further from other student areas in BJ. It's good if you want to be away from the foreign student masses. Due to it's proximity to Wang Jing I'm sure there are a lot of Koreans there, but from what I've heard BJ's Korean population has dropped due the bad economy...so you may have a good student to teacher ratio...This is just a theory however. Other than my few hours of standing in line to register for the exam, taking the exam, and picking up results, I never really hung out around the school too much...

Edited February 26, 2009 at 04:53 PM by heifeng