Studying at Bilkent University

I hope it won't suprise you, but I did actually not only travel, eat and stroll around the whole time, but I also studied in Ankara.

Bilkent University is so different than the European University of Flensburg(EUF)/ University of Southern Denmark (SDU).

Campus:

The campus looks exactly like those in American films. Everything is located on the campus – the dorms, the classrooms and the library. Also, there are around 20 restaurants and cafes all around the campus.

In the dorms literally everything is forbidden – you are not allowed to have alcohol, porn or someone of the opposite gender in your room, and friends of the same gender were only allowed in a special time and had to register; especially for some Erasmus students this was kind of a big issue.

The central meeting point of everyone or – how someone called it- "the epicentre of drama" was Bilka; Bilka is both, a restaurant and a kiosk and nobody of the employees minds you spending there several hours.

I was there literally everyday and even studied there, since I can’t study in silence and Bilka had the most perfect level of background noises.

Courses:

At Bilkent the choice of elective courses is way bigger than here in Flensburg where only 7 courses are offered.
The size of the courses is as big as the SDU language-and-society courses ( around 30-40 students), however, the way of studying is way different:
The Danish double degree track of International Management is mainly dominated by SDU and the Danish system. That means that there are only few lectures ( there was no semester I had more than 2 days of Uni) and everyone is responsible to study the required "pensum" on their own; the lectures are there to wrap up what you read during the week.
The courses at Bilkent are pretty like secondary school: There is a full day of lecture everyday and compulsory attendance. One has homework due to the next lecture and sometimes they will be checked with quizzes. So marks are not only a result of one exam, but all the homework, quizzes, participation, attendance,midterms etc. together.

We have a very friendly relationship towards our Danish lecturers; we will call them by first name and use the informal German form of you ("du") while speaking to them. Even if we were small courses at Bilkent, there was a huge distance between the lecturers and the students and the atmosphere was by far not as friendly as it is at the University of Southern Denmark.

Also, as Germans we will always knock on our tables at the end of the lecture as an appreciation for the lecturer's effort.
So guess who was stared at by the whole class after the first lecture?

Exams:

As already mentioned there is not only one final exam, but also midterms during the semester. 

In Flensburg our exams are conducted by the University of Southern Denmark and thus Danish regulations are applied.

One big difference is that all our exams are written on a laptop which I personally actually prefer to hand-written exams.

Also, to keep pressure away from students, the lecturer of each course is not allowed to be present during the exams. In Bilkent this was absolutely the opposite: The lecturer was always present and gave some instructions at the beginning.

Students were also allowed to ask questions to the lecturer ; back in Flensburg we are not allowed to ask any question to anyone. 

There was actually one policy that I still do not understand and which is not the best thing for students:
Everyone has to write their full name on the exams and therefore it is absolutely not anonymous. Thus students who are not the lecturer's favourite students might be disadvantaged and are not only assessed after their actual performance.

To put it in a nutshell, it was nice to experience another kind of education system, however, I personally are in favour of the Danish one and think that it is one of the fairest ones!

And for those who are just here for the photos, here are some photos of the campus(: