Which is the most prestigious Chinese language program in China?

[CMM92]

Hello! I'm hoping to participate in a good Chinese language program in China and was hoping to get some advice as to which are considered high quality? I heard that Tsinghua University has one that's supposed to be very rigorous and will only accept students who already possess advanced knowledge of Chinese. Does anyone know the one to which I'm referring? I remember reading about it before but can't remember the name of it. Thanks for the help!

[ZhangKaiRong]

Tsinghua, BeiDa, Fudan are prestigious, highly-ranked universities. The sad truth is that the quality of the Chinese language programs does not correlate with the university rankings. It's a popular myth that good university = good Chinese language program, but it's no more than a myth. All of the language programs use the same four or five textbooks, with the same, very Chinese approach of teaching the language. Obviously, teachers and their preparedness and attitude can vary, but there are good teachers and bad teachers at each university, again, regardless of ranking.

 

My advice: try to pick a city instead of a university. The environment you're going to study is more important than the actual university, as on your journey to fluency, you need to do extra efforts on your own (e.g. self-studying, using the language in actual everyday situations). My philosophy is that a smaller a city is the better it suits foreigners to learn Chinese, as there are no English shortcuts in communication. But I also understand why can't most people bear spending a whole year in a boring city in Hebei/Henan province...

[roddy]

You might be thinking of IUP - it's not your traditional Chinese university course, and will cost you accordingly...