Umurhan Yensel

Review of La Salle BCN

Personally, as an international animation student ...

Personally, as an international animation student I have had a lot of difficulties here. Mind you, if you have a lot of information and about the animation industry and some good international networks and have a good level of Spanish and/or Catalan, I think you can pull it off but that wasn't the case for me. I think that university should help with this stuff but the language barrier was a big issue for me. What you will see most often is the upfront 1000 euro payment, which is heavily pressed on international students unlike the locals who just pay during the year. Next up is admissions, who weren't at all aware of what the Spanish consulate in my country needs for the student visa or how it works, abd honestly the same applies to the international students department whom failed to help me with my TIE renewal properly during my second year, so I had to get another student visa from scratch. During that time I had to fiercely email them for help and most of them got to office during early September which pretty much lead to me missing a month of school this year. There were some people with good intentions but as an international student I was pretty much on my own for the most part. This also applied to my classes, in which there were some international students but their native language was Spanish. The teachers for the most part didn't care for English with the exception of two I can think of off the top of my head and due to this, I and some international students I know basically had to learn Spanish just to be able to understand our teachers, who for the most part vanished into thin air after our classes and didn't return our emails. Some teachers when asked for feedback, which is essential for a branch like animation, gave it in spanish and if I was lucky classmates would translate them to English. The same applies for a majority of the resources we were given, which were either in Spanish or Catalan.

Overall, La Salle has a lot of potential for someone who has some previous experience with 3D Animation and can speak Spanish or Catalan especially on a native level, but I have had a lot of problems as an international students. Regardless, I am still thankful for having gotten to know two of my professors and some of the staff members.