‘We are in the Netherlands after all!’

"My first impression of the campus was quite strange, because I noticed that a lot of the buildings here look a lot like the old communist buildings in the Soviet style architecture. This was in first a little weird to me, but I did like to combination with those ultra-modern buildings, like Polak," says Stoiko Stoev (22), a Business Information Management student at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM). Originally from Bulgaria, Stoiko came to Groningen to do his bachelor and is now finishing his master at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

"Of course, I mainly came here for the study programme and the good reputation of the university, but the international environment and diversity also played a big part. The fact that there are people from all over the world is a really strong point and made me want to be a part of that." But despite this international environment you can still notice a distinction between the Dutch and international students, according to Stoiko. "I feel like here it is a bit more popular to be part of those fraternities and sororities than what I noticed in Groningen. International students cannot really join those organisations, so we are kind of missing out on this in our student experience. But on the other hand, this is not in the university itself, so I would rather say this is something in the extracurriculars than the university. In the university the only thing I can think of that might come across as not inclusive is things like for example events only for Dutch students. We had such a career event in our studies where only Dutch speaking students where invited. Not everyone was very happy about that, but I wouldn’t really complain, because they didn’t say they only wanted Dutch people, but just the skill of speaking Dutch was required and that makes sense. We are in the Netherlands after all."