A review on CEA in Paris, France

Reviewed by MissBritstudent(Washington State University - Pullman) on October 03, 2012

A semester in Paris

I will start out by being honest - CEA was not my first choice. Originally, I was set to go with Abroadco to study in Paris, but literally 2 weeks before I was supposed to leave, my school's education abroad office contacted me to inform me they were having issues retaining transcripts for the students who studied abroad with Abroadco.

Talk about stressful! But this is when my journey with CEA begins. They were able to secure a spot for me with CEA in Paris. Everyone there was very friendly and flexible about helping me through this extremely last minute change. Arriving in Paris was great. We were met by students in the airport (French students!), and taken to the main head quarters where we were given our living assignments, maps, and general information we will need to know. Then we were taken to our living situation. Because I joined so late, I was placed in a dorm which turned out to be much nicer and larger than expected. The room was larger than a typical dorm room, and it was a single so I had my own private space. There were over 15 people who lived in the same dorm, most of which on the same floor, so it was really easy to get to know the students who were studying abroad as well.

They were extremely well thought out in their method for helping us become accustomed to the city. I had been to Paris once before, so I had some familiarity with it, but they took us on multiple walking tours throughout the first week which, at the time seemed tedious, but something I came to appreciate very much once we were on our own.

For the most part we were treated like adults, although it was a little annoying to be constantly reminded about attendance. There were about 90 or more students in the program, so it was very easy to find people to travel and hang out with. Overall, everything was very well organized, but I do wish we had a little more say in our excursions. We get to choose one cultural activity out of five (we rank them 1-5 and then are placed based on spacing etc),then have 4 excursions - 3 in France and one was in Brugge, Belgium. With those excursions in France itself, it would've been nice to at least vote as a group on one of them. It was still a lot of fun and I got to see places I wouldn't have thought to choose on my own.

As far as schooling goes, I took one class through CEA - a drawing class- and then I took French Language and Culture through the Sorbonne. Sorbonne classes were intense, but I learned so much. The drawing class would have been better had I had a better teacher. The woman they had teaching it seemed to have no prior experience teaching a drawing class, especially to a large group of novice artists like myself and I would leave class frustrated because regardless of how many times I would ask her to explain what she meant or show me how to do something, she either would not or she would repeat what she said. Hopefully, CEA will find a better teacher for the drawing class, especially since so many of the students have very little drawing experience.

Other than that, the staff was very friendly and helpful. The overall experience was wonderful, and I would definitely go through CEA again to study abroad.