u/Proud_Dare7994

Hi guys,

I recently got rejected from my application of a bachelors degree in Leiden. No specified reason but I might know why. I didn't apply for a student visa on time but this wasn't even my fault.

I applied originally with a non-EU citizenship but weeks before the visa deadline, I managed to get my EU citizenship (spanish) and send them the proof to the admission and student affairs office. No response from the start, which made me wonder why.

So, is the fault mine for not applying for the visa or their fault because they didn't register me with the new citizenship?

I'm currently disappointed and frustrated as Leiden is my only choice of study as I already rented a room and booked the flights...

I just send them another email and hope this can be solved but I'm really disappointed...

I hope you guys see this as advice rather than a simple tantrum of mine.

Once I finished middle school, I knew I wanted to do the IBDP, as it is a better-recognized diploma than my country’s high school diploma on an international level (Spain). After doing deep research, I found an IB centre that seemed to be the right choice, but that was a huge mistake.

Overall, this school was not only not qualified to teach IB at all, but it also offered fixed IBDP subjects taught by non-qualified teachers with degrees that had no educational background in the subjects they were teaching.

We are a class of barely 13 students (each cohort is more or less the same size), and there is clear evidence that all of us are disappointed with our school’s teaching system.

All bad practices from my school and teachers are hidden from students and teachers alike; it is a niche centre. None of our teachers had an IB teaching certificate or anything similar. Imagine that...

I will divide this into subjects:

1. Literature SL: This is the only subject that you cannot change from your curriculum. From the start, we knew literary analysis is subjective, but our teacher was so subjective that her criticism was based on how much she liked a student. No physical books. Personally, I felt good when she told me I was doing really well from the first day, until I noticed that was what she told me every time. There was no way to improve, since no tips or corrections were ever made. During mocks, she basically read the analysis only once after stating a speculative mark that made no sense at all. All sources provided at our school are pirated, and our teachers make us sign forms so we search for them ourselves. Then, after she gave us the sources, she specified that we should not tell anybody about this, when everyone in our school already knows it. The worst part is when the IO comes. She asked us to search for the fragments, the topics, and make a full script to memorize, and she would mark us based on that. No wonder people say the mean score in this subject is below 5 in our school, since this is allowed...
2. English B HL: Another non-changeable subject. No books. Similar to the previous one: pirated sources, speculative scores. Our English teacher is a native English speaker, and that is it. I would dare to say he is the most underperforming IB teacher ever. All writings, listenings, readings, etc. are not graded except when mocks come around. Our classes were basically listening to songs he liked, and that was it; there was no way to improve... He recently acknowledged that IB scores were weighted out of 7 and not out of 10 (like the Spanish GPA system) after 5–6 years of ongoing IB curriculum in our school. We never even practiced our IO until a single week before, which was, in my opinion, disgusting, as the teacher never bothered to care whether deadlines were approaching. He also gave us ChatGPT-generated exercises that he did not even bother to hide.
3. Business HL: Same English teacher. No books. The reason I am highlighting his underperformance is that he has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, nothing else. He is teaching English (which makes sense, since he is a native speaker) and Business?? I know it is an easy subject, but rather than actually helping us, he just made us read and listen to YouTube videos for business terms and gave us RD and Save My Exams exercises for us to mark, plus ChatGPT-generated exercises that he did not even bother to hide... For our IA, all of us had our IAs finished by the end of IBDP1, but thanks to our lazy teacher, we did not get our first feedback until November of the same year, and then we got two feedback rounds week after week in the last weeks before the deadline. There are teachers telling us to get rid of IAs as soon as possible, but how are we supposed to do that if teachers do not put in effort too? During a big chunk of the first year, this teacher was absent almost every day of the week because he broke his arm, but that was not an excuse for the school to give us a proper replacement and instead encourage us to learn by ourselves...
4. ESS SL: This subject was a complete mess. We were the first cohort in ESS to have both ESS SL and HL, and our teacher started teaching us the full HL content at the same time just because “her speculation believes there is HL content that is going to appear in SL exams,” which makes no sense at all, as IB is older than she is and should not be making such silly mistakes. On top of that, she had a degree in Biology and started teaching us content that was not even aligned with ESS, as she was focusing all the time on HL content and chemical compounds from another subject. It was not until IBDP2 that we started putting everything together by ourselves for the subject to make even a little bit of sense, as we were not even following a fixed structure of topics. I would say that most of the topics were not even taught, as this teacher was absent a lot as well (less than the one before), and we had to learn by ourselves. Time did not allow us to relearn things, as more content was constantly being added. The same happened with the IA: we had our first versions in IBDP1 and ended up working on it until days before the deadline. She did not even guide us during the whole process, and weeks before the deadline we realized that there were sections of the IA that needed to be included but were not. What a complete mess of a teacher and subject.
5. History SL: I would say this was the most stable IB teacher in our entire school, but with certain limitations. All topics and exercises were clear from the first day. It was a fun subject, of course very challenging, and the teacher was pretty qualified to teach it. My marks were not high, but at least I felt like I was learning properly. The sad part is that we only followed a timeline-learning approach rather than a “cause and consequence,” “to what extent,” etc. style, focusing on IB analytical nuances rather than purely traditional descriptive ones. Everything was good until IBDP2, when we spent class learning about the history of Spain from the early 1800s until the late 1990s. Our topics were the causes and consequences of 20th-century wars and authoritarian states, so this was completely unnecessary content added for students who did not need to examine it through the Spanish national college entry exam. That meant wasted time and less productivity. At least the IA was graded correctly and on time, so this is the subject I was most satisfied with.
6. MAI HL: Where to start... Our teacher was absent the whole first semester of IBDP1 due to paternity leave, and we were replaced by even more under-qualified teachers, while we learned 2 topics (out of 16 in our book) in a whole semester. This made me go insane, because I wanted to build a strong base to score higher, as math is the most challenging subject for me (spoiler: it did not go well lol). After he came back, we had less time to learn more content, and we were rushing through topics with no time to revise anything. There was no possible way to improve as time went by 😞. At least the IA was fine, since the teacher gave us constant feedback and help, but the subject syllabus was a complete disaster...
7. ToK: Nothing to argue here. The subject was taught by the IB coordinator, and I think I can let this one pass, though I have a lot of subjective opinions about the teacher’s morals, which is not the topic.
8. CAS: Long story short, everyone cheated with experiences and all AI responses.
9. EE: My subject was English B. My teacher did not even give us any guidance during the whole IB experience and rushed the feedback with ChatGPT in front of us in the last weeks before the deadline. When I explicitly asked for help, he just read what ChatGPT wrote him in the chat. Complete mess of a teacher, I swear. I am so disappointed in him...

I hope you guys find this revealing experience informative, and I hope you are not suffering from the same thing as me. The moral of the story: choose your IB centre wisely, please. Do not make the same mistakes I did by choosing the school so poorly.

Hi everyone!

I'm planning to stay 39 days in my trip to China but somehow last time when I went back (back in 2023), none VPN's worked for me such as NordVPN. Maybe because of my iphone was a chinese version or I was in a slightly more protected province (Fujian)? idk....

I somehow was able to buy a HK sim card with roaming in mainland china of 10GB which I was able to navigate the western network, but not sure if this is still available and don't know if I can still buy it in my home city rather than going explicitly to Hong Kong...

If someone can update me with VPN's that actually can work (updated, as I saw a lot of VPN's were banned systematically such as LetsVPN) or if the HK sim card is still functioning and if I can still buy it without displacing myself to Hong Kong.

My iphone doesn't support esim's as it's a dual physical SIM card version bought in china.

I hope yall can find me a solution and Thank you!

Hola a todos!
Soy español, tengo un viaje sólo apenas 1 mes antes de cumplir la mayoría de edad en El Prat.
En el aeropuerto me pueden denegar la entrada si estoy viajando sólo siendo menor?

Bon día!
Soc local i tinc un viatge en avió en el q vaig sol sortint de l'aeroport del Prat. Em poden denegar l'entrada si tinc 17 anys i falta 1 mes per complir 18? Soc espanyol.

All prospective students from BA of European studies can DM me for the WhatsApp and Instagram link through private only, do not publicly post the link under no circumstances.
The previous one got banned due to the bots.