trevelyan on April 7, 2010 | reply

Hey Matt,

I'm going to kickstart this comment by making Gail unhappy. We were just talking about your post and she said, "BLCU is the worst choice. There are too many foreign students and not enough Chinese people." So that's a direct quote from a graduate and hopefully putting it up here will push her into commenting and telling us what she really thinks.... :p

To be fair, I actually disagree with her because I've been to BLCU and the quality of the instruction is much better than Tsinghua and most private schools. For most schools Chinese language instruction has traditionally been just a way to make money, with organizations like ISC existing as middlemen advertising the programs to students abroad. That said, if you really want to attend a Chinese university (either directly or through a middleman) the best choice in my opinion is Beijing University, because there are a lot more student activities there than elsewhere, they have excellent open lectures on many topics, and the vibrancy of campus life makes it easy to make friends, find interesting things to talk about, and speak Chinese outside the classroom, where most of the real learning happens.

On the money front, the last time I worked through the figures, I ended up with these figures. Going to a Chinese university ends up costing over 30 RMB per hour when you pay the university directly (no middleman). For this you'll get put in a class of around 15 to 30 students for a minimum of four hours of instruction daily. The last time I was at BLCU my class had 25 people in it. BLCU has a soft mandate to teach as many students as it can, so their class sizes are usually bigger than other places except at the beginning levels.

Private cram schools like "Global Village" in Wudaokou offer more heavily scripted classes for as little as 12 RMB per hour if you buy a number of classes in advance. They're a useful way to force yourself to study and I think it's generally a better deal to supplement your basic program with electives at these schools than paying for the "intensive" programs advertised by some universities. If you can afford it, it's even better to skip the cram schools and arrange for a private tutor. You can get an hour of private tutoring for between 25 and 60 RMB per hour these days in Beijing.

All that being said, you might want to write Echo and ask to give our online telephone tutoring a shot. We think it provides a lot more value than most of the private schools you'll find in Beijing, although it isn't as useful as getting a local tutor for face-to-face learning. No attempt to make a hard sell though. Maybe Echo and Gail can chip in with their own thoughts and recommendations.

$0.02,

--dave