Going to uni was not a real choice for me as I kind of always knew that I would go as I’m more of a school person than manual work;

I’m also not the kind of person who would do something because everybody’s doing the same and not question it. So even if the logical choice of uni was Liège and 95% of the people in my class chose that city, I still research a bit around to see what would suits me best.

My research ended up being quite simple and not clever, but I still think I made the perfect choice but not for the reasons I had in mind.

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Basically, I chose Maastricht, in the Netherlands, to speak English. I still have no idea what I’m gonna do with this English, but I’ve known for a long time now that I wanted to speak a decent English. Also, I’m the less adventurous person you can imagine, so I didn’t want to go too far from home and Maastricht is exactly 22 minutes by car on a Sunday night from my house in Belgium to my room there.

The reasons, I now would give to someone to choose Maastricht are way better. The education system. Maastricht is based on “Problem-based Learning” which in a mathematical field just means doing exercises on a with board in class.

Still, this means that at least half the classes are tutorials instead of lectures. Tutorials are small discussion-based classes of 10 to 15 people. This is way more interesting than a simple lecture in a big lecture hall and you learn more too. Also, attendance is taken so you need to go at least 5 out of 7 times but I’m going to every class anyway so it’s not a problem for me.

This system requires you to be always up-to-date with your school stuff, you sometimes have homework and anyway, you need to read the chapters before going to class to be able to participate. Participation is important at Maastricht, either you have a grade for it or you can risk losing attendance checks if you don’t talk enough and don’t look prepare.

This kind of study could look scary for some people or just annoying since you can’t party as much as in a typical Belgian uni but I feel like it was the best for me and would be best for most people. And in such a way this also prepared me better to go to Whitworth where we have homework at least once a week for every class.

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Now, what is E&OR? The econometrics and operation research bachelor is a bachelor you can only find in the Netherlands (which is a pity, btw).

It is basically math classes (Analysis and Statistics) applied to real life (and so to the business world). In the first year we only had theory math classes and some micro and macro. Second year was more difficult but also way more interesting, we learned to program and use all kind of software to optimize pretty much everything.

I still have no idea where those study would lead me, but I just know it’s been so much love and fun, those last years.

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If at some point you end up on this website looking for a uni, and you’re interested in this, don’t hesitate to hit me up I would gladly answer all your questions here: elise.baguette@gmail.com