

Ask HN: Where should I study abroad? - ntide

I'm in the third year of my undergrad CS degree, and it's only recently occurred to me that I should study abroad while I have the opportunity. I'm a native English speaker and I understand 90% of Mandarin Chinese conversations, though my Chinese speaking skills have withered away. I'm open to learning an entirely new language. Where do you think I should go?
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mtowle
Analogy:

>If you ever do find yourself working for a startup, here's a handy tip for
evaluating competitors. Read their job listings. Everything else on their site
may be stock photos or the prose equivalent, but the job listings have to be
specific about what they want, or they'll get the wrong candidates.

>During the years we worked on Viaweb I read a lot of job descriptions. A new
competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork every month or so. The first
thing I would do, after checking to see if they had a live online demo, was
look at their job listings. After a couple years of this I could tell which
companies to worry about and which not to. The more of an IT flavor the job
descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the
ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You
were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted
Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting
to sound like a company where the technical side, at least, is run by real
hackers. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would
have been really worried.

If you're on HN and state plainly that language is no obstacle, I assume you
have an interest in meeting driven, energetic individuals like yourself.
Whether that's because you're interested in meeting others who will help you
grow intellectually/emotionally/spiritually/etc. or because you're interested
in meeting the Larry to your Sergey will help guide your specific choice, but
either way you'll be able to apply the above principle. Whatever you do, pick
a place with high barriers to entry. How high? What kinds of barriers? Depends
on what kinds of people you want to meet. If you want to meet other students
who, unlike yourself, were unwilling to learn a new language, study abroad in
the UK or Australia. If you want to meet some ballsy-ass motherfuckers, study
abroad in Shanghai. Etc. You get the idea. (Really though, I met a couple who
just came back from 3 years in Shanghai, and they both said anyone and
everyone there who spoke native English was somebody worth getting to know.)

This isn't to say there won't be many, many other factors involved in your
decision. Certainly, all other things being equal, cities with tech industries
are preferable to cities severely lacking in tech, cities with angels/VC's are
preferable to cities without, etc. But if you just weigh things like that, you
may as well "study abroad" in SF, no?

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ronyeh
If you're worried about your Chinese withering away, you should definitely
study abroad in China (e.g., Shanghai).

If you want to go to a different/interesting/pretty city, study in Kyoto. I've
met folks who studied at Kyoto University. There's a tech industry there,
since Nintendo is in the area (and small game startups have grown up around
senior folks who have left Nintendo). Or you could live in Tokyo or Osaka (big
cities with tall buildings).

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thesteamboat
With classes in English but really solid technical courses, you might want to
consider one of: Budapest Semesters in Mathematics Aquincum Institute of
Technology Math in Moscow

The first two programs are both in Budapest, and the second one focuses on
computing while the first one is (obviously) more focused on mathematics. If
you have a theoretical bent these are good choices.

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spuiszis
I spent a month traveling throughout Europe this summer after graduation- it
really is so easy to travel about in if you want to see a lot. This would be a
list of cities I try to study in (obviously depends on the program you choose)
but you can't really go wrong with any: 1\. Zurich / Rome / Prague 2\. Berlin
/ Amsterdam 3\. Paris / Budapest

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creativeone
Come to Israel. You can meet world class professors at Tel Aviv U, Hebrew U,
and of course, the Technion in Haifa. And check out:
<http://mappedinisrael.com/> for a list of startups in Israel.

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saiko-chriskun
This is a mostly a case of personal taste, isn't it? :P

I would love to travel to both Japan and South Korea, but I'm sure they're not
for everyone.

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ntide
Not at all! I've lived in the same state for my entire life, and I'm open to
suggestions from those of you that are more well-traveled. :)

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jfaucett
I'm a little biased but I'd say buenos aires :)

~~~
saiko-chriskun
I have an Argentinian friend and will probably visit at some point in the
future :). How is it?

