Universidade Nova de Lisboa Spring 2017 UG School of Business and Economics Exchange Report - 482835
Contents Preparing for the exchange... 3 Exchange Studies... 3 Key Dates During Semester... 3 General Course Information... 3 Enrolment and Dates... 4 1210 Entrepreneurship UG 7,5 ECTS... 4 1211 International Management UG 7,5 ECTS... 4 1212 Global Business Environment UG 7,5 ECTS... 5 1402 European Law UG 7,5 ECTS... 5 Free time and Other Information... 6 General Information... 6 Costs... 6 Getting to Know the Other Students... 7 Pro Tips for Leisure... 7 Final Comments... 8 2
Preparing for the exchange Preparing for the exchange was easy. The school sent the first emails beginning of the autumn semester, including also the credentials for moodle/email/etc platforms. It is important that you start to follow your Nova-email as soon as you get the credentials. Even though they sent most of the infoemails also to my aalto-mail, for some reason they did not do so with the first call to course registration, so I almost missed it. During the autumn semester, you had to email them a few documents and courses were selected in December. Courses had no participation limit, so everybody got the courses they wanted. In February, beginning of the semester, there was a period to make changes to the choices you initially had made. As European citizen, travelling to Portugal is also super easy and not much preparation was needed. I would recommend though, to do at least the following for your own convenience: Book dental care appointment before you leave with YTHS Make sure your vaccination is up to date Get Eurooppalainen Sairaanhoitokortti Get travel insurance Start looking for the flat/room 2-3 months in advance to maximize the selection If you book the flights around 6 months in advance, you can fly one-way for around 100 euros, whereas booking a month in advance, you end up paying 240e. Same works for travelling home, but gets little bit more expensive due to high season during summer. Overall, the preparation was easy and can be done without much planning or stress. Both Aalto and Nova were super helpful in the process and sent a lot of emails about the stuff that had to be done. Exchange Studies Key Dates During Semester The spring semester started in terms of orientation, arranged by Nova Student Union, on 8 th of February and lasted till 12 th. It included a few different hangouts and a dinner, where all the Erasmus students got to socialise in very laid back manner. 12 th of February there was a sightseeing tour in tuk-tuks, again organised by the SU. In the middle, on 9 th of February the university arranged a welcome session with some general information. Classes started on 14 th of February and ended on 19 th of May. Exams took place 29 th of May to 19 th of June and resits 27 th of June to 5 th of July. General Course Information All the courses run both in English and Portuguese and you can pick which ever. In my experience on the English ones, the ratio of locals to exchange students were from 30-70 to 50-50. The course selection is wide, but then again if you go during your 3 rd year last semester, at least in bachelor, you have most likely completed most of the courses, and thus do not have that much of a choice. Nova SBE offers only two majors to my knowledge, economics and management. As a finance student, with minor in economics, I ended up doing mostly management and some law. This was not a problem since the courses were mostly high quality with good lecturers, and easily manageable work-load. 3
Enrolment and Dates The courses were selected through online platform called Netpa starting 8 th of December, and enrolment was open for a week. The initial instructions and dates were only sent to the Nova email that I received earlier during the Autumn, and only the last reminder 24h before closing of the enrolment, to my Aalto-email. So, I would suggest you to follow the Nova email during the whole Autumn. On the other hand, there did not seem to be a limit of participants per course, and to my knowledge everybody got the courses they wanted, even the changes they made during the change-up period, which took place during the first week of lectures. Also, there is no restrictions into picking courses, except that UG students can only pick UG courses (this is from Aalto though, not Nova). 1210 Entrepreneurship UG 7,5 ECTS One of the best courses I have ever taken. Instructed by Miguel Duarte, entrepreneur and innovation consultant to some big international companies, such as BMW, Santander, McDonald s, Nestle, etc. The course was built around the lean startup ideology and consisted lectures, presentations and practicals. The idea was first to learn a piece of Business Model Canvas (theory&practical, in total 3 hours a week), then go to the market and use it and after that return to class biweekly to present your results (1,5 hours a week presentations, most of the people attended only the weeks they were presenting). Grading Biweekly presentations in total 30% Peer evaluation 10% Final pitch 30% Final exam 30% The course requires fair amount of work, but it s also easy to get good grades with minimum effort. Internet research is almost completely forbidden, and every input to your business model, that you re presenting biweekly, must come from the market, mostly from personal interviews or pitches of your product to the actual potential customers. Point being that you need to work throughout the course to be able to pass it. If you deliver the biweekly pitches (3 minutes each), both the final pitch (also 3 minutes) and the final exam will be easy. The exam was 50-50 about the canvas, that you learnt during working on your project, and how you applied the canvas to your project. The lecturer is nice and supportive, does not require attendance, inspires and is happy to help and gives good constructive feedback. Also, the groups were big, 4-6 people, and not all of the members had to be present even in the presentations. 1211 International Management UG 7,5 ECTS One of the worst courses I have ever had. Even though it should be intermediate management, it still was pretty much rehearsal of Porter and Hofstede, but in the context of international business, which felt quite common knowledge. The course was taught by Milton de Sousa, PhD in management and associate professor in Nova. He was a good guy and good lecturer, but the course content was so easy and slides so good, that going to the lectures was not necessary. The lectures consisted of 3 hours of theoretical lectures and 1,5 hours of practical lectures a week. The practical lectures ended up being just extended theory lectures, and no cases nor assignments were done in them. 4
Grading Theoretical classes o Final exam 50 % o Business & Society case 20 % Practical classes o Internationalization strategy case analysis 30 % B&S and the internationalization case were solved in same groups, that students were assigned randomly by the professor. These cases were the most useful part of the course, since instead of just memorizing the different frameworks, you had to put them in use and contemplate what do they mean. Final exam consisted of multiple choices, and two essays, max two pages in length. Overall, easy credits with reasonable grades almost without any effort at all. If you have not studied management any more than the basics on your first year, as I had not, this still could be an OK course to take, since it was good rehearsal of the basics and there was also new content and context. 1212 Global Business Environment UG 7,5 ECTS Interesting course, taught by the ex-minister of foreign affairs of Portugal, Luis Brites Pereira. Topics ranged from globalization to political economy, the development of trade agreements and regional economic integration, without forgetting monetary systems etc. Course consisted of 3 hours of theory lectures a week, which were interesting and Luis was inspiring lecturer, but the content was easy enough to learn on your own. The course also had 1,5 hours of practical lectures a week, that consisted of each group of two presenting an article they had studied, and then other groups asking questions about it. All the articles were recent ones full filling the content learnt in theory lectures, which was really impressing to me and gave a thorough outlook to the political and economic situation of the whole world today. Grading Reading discussion 10 % (the presentations/questions asked in practicals) Analytical essay 15 % (individual) Business report & presentation (team) Final exam 50 % The course also included a business report & presentation, where you had to pick an existing company, and relocate it to another country entirely. You had to argue why you are relocating, and prepare a thorough micro and macro analysis of the target market, and a business plan for it. The teams were up to 5 students and were formed by students themselves. Final exam was just one essay question, so thorough preparation and learning throughout the semester for top grades were required. On the other hand, the Portuguese students write their first essays on this course, so the bar for grading was set pretty low. The exam is open book, but you have only 2h15min so you have time only for checking your sources, not actually reading the material. 1402 European Law UG 7,5 ECTS One of the best courses I have ever had. Instructed by Leonor Rossi, who was an inspiring and fascinating lecturer. She is a good story teller and easy to follow. The biggest themes of the course were sources and supremacy of EU law, free movement of goods, and public access to EU documents. The course was taught through interesting and mind captivating stories of EU history and the different ECJ 5
cases related to it, in theory lectures (3h a week), and more thorough analysis of public access to documents in practical lectures (1,5h a week). Grading Midterm 30% Final exam 60% Practicals 10% (attendance) The course was quite demanding, but super useful and interesting, also not too much to handle even in exchange. I would recommend to attend all the theory lectures, and make notes, Rossi is such a good lecturer that after reading the notes, it was enough to skim through the cases for the final exam, which was open book. Free time and Other Information General Information Overall Lisbon is beautiful place to make your Erasmus. City is small, but dense enough to include a lot more culture and activities than e.g. Helsinki, which is the same size population wise. Locals are super nice when confronted, even though they might be a little bit racist behind your back. Lisbon is also super safe, I heard stories about early weekend-morning robberies, but never witnessed even a fight myself. Climate is also super nice. February is often quite rainy, but nothing compared to autumn months of Finland. Still, I would pack again a winter coat and boots that can handle water. The cold is moist cold, and also all the buildings are really cold inside during the winter/early spring. After that it starts to quickly get warmer and April was already warm. Costs Even though cost of living is cheaper than in Helsinki, I would recommend to budget at least double the money you are thinking in advance, if possible. The government student grant, 500e a month, plus student loan, 700a month, did not fulfil my needs. Some examples of prices: Studying o Some exams are open book, and for those I would recommend to print out all the material. School has a print shop where you can do this pretty cheap, depending on the amount of pages. I think you get around 1000 pages for 8 euros. Smaller amounts cost a little more. o Cantine offers a decent, quite greasy, definitely not the best lunch, for 4,5 euros a menu. Includes soup, main course, dessert and a coffee. 3,5 euros for only the main course. Living o Even though you can get a room as cheap as 200e per month, with convenient location and good quality room plus apartment, you most likely end up paying 400e a month. o Location wise I would suggest blue and red metro lines, and would avoid using buses completely. o I lived in Sao Sebastiao, which in retrospect was the best location with 10-minute walking distance to uni, 10-minute metro ride to city centre (blue line) and all the necessary services close by. Mobile 6
o WTF provided a good plan for 10 euros a month, which increased to 17e middle of the semester. o 1000 minutes, 1000 text msgs, unlimited use of all the social media, 5gb of data plus additional 5gb for Spotify and Youtube. Transportation o City wide monthly card for all the metros, busses and trams 36 euros a month. Big recommendation. o Train/Bus tickets to the beaches, 4-6 euros a roundtrip. Renting a car o Many possibilities from 10e a day (would not recommend since these rarely have wide insurance coverage and high security deposits) o Normal price you pay is 20e a day plus possible additional fee for drivers under 25 years old. o Most of the time need to have at least 900 euros of free limit on your credit card as collateral they are going to charge in case of an accident. o Cheapest one I found was Interrent which only required 300e limit. (Good for KY mastercard) Going out o Even though you can get a lunch for 3-5 euros and a dinner for 8 euros, you end up eating 10 euro lunches and 20 euro dinners. The cheap ones are rarely any good nor convenient. o Even though you can get beers around 1e per 0.5 litre, if you do not want to spend the whole Erasmus in Bairro Alto and Erasmus Corner (you should not, Lisbon nightlife is fabulous) you end up paying 4 euros. o Club entries 10-20 euros. Getting to Know the Other Students Locals are harder to get to know, as it is everywhere. I would recommend joining a club or booking some activities through the clubs for this purpose. I got the best local friends through surfing, by attending to the lessons and trips the local surf school for Erasmus students organized, called University Surf Experience. It is not a Student Club, but rather a company that is ran by Nova students. Erasmus students are easy to friend, but I would suggest attending all the welcome week events, since after that there was none organized by the Student Union, no parties whatsoever. I also would recommend to join both Erasmus organizations, ELL and ESN, and going their parties in the beginning, since that is a good way to get to know people from other schools. My best friends ended up being 50-50 Nova and other universities. Pro Tips for Leisure Surfing and clubbing. Portugal has the best surfing spots of Europe, closest ones being around 45-60 minutes away from the city. There is a plenty of good surfing schools and rentals. For beginners, I would recommend events organised by University Surf Experience, or booking a lesson from Windsurf Café in Carcavelos Beach. The cost is around 15-20 euros for 2 hours of good quality instructing in small groups, equipment rentals included. If you get hooked, as I did, I would recommend to buy a used long-board as soon as possible, you can find those around 150-200 euros each, and a brand-new wetsuit, around 200 euros. Wetsuits usually last a year or max two in regular use, so I would never buy a used one if I did not know the seller in advance and trust him. You can get your money back from the board 7
when you leave, and most likely to sell the wetsuit for good money as well, since it is only used for a few months. The night life of Lisbon is one of the best in Europe, especially for different genres of electronic music, Lux Fragil being one of the best clubs in Europe. After you get fed up with the size of Lux, I would recommend to check out at least Kremlin, Brownie, Lounge, ELA and EKA Palace. They always have good djs playing, mostly techno. Flow Records and Fuse Records have organised the best parties I have been to so you should also keep an eye for those. Principe record label is a local gem, but they did not have many parties going on in Lisbon while I was there. Final Comments I am more than happy to recommend Lisbon, and Nova, as exchange experience for all the Aalto students. Main reasons being incredible weather, cheap prices, amount and variety of culture, best surf spots of Europe, vibrant night life, and quality of teaching and university. If I were to go there again, I would budget more money for the trip beforehand. During the five months I spent in Lisbon, I learnt a lot about different European cultures, I made a lot of friends I m definitely going to visit later on. By learning EU law and global business environment I created a serious interest towards diplomacy, got a shining recommendation letter from the both professors and that way ended up doing an internship in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland next autumn. By meeting a great amount of different people from various backgrounds and cultures, I developed my own personality to be a lot more resilient and flexible. I also learnt to work without stressing out too much, since the grades were passed as only pass/fail to Aalto. I noticed that I accomplish a lot more when I m not stressing about working too much. I think it had a long-lasting effect on my working habits also here at home. Now, after the semester I feel a lot more relaxed about life and a lot readier to work abroad. 8