Thread: Universities: UNC-CH or UVA?

Has anybody here studied in the Russian-EES/Slavic departments at either UNC-Chapel Hill or UVA? I'd just like to get some opinions about the quality/experience...

Hey. I'm a Sophomore at UNC-CH, and have been taking Russian there for about a year and a half.

I think that our deparment is quite good, although that might just be vanity talking. Other than the choice of texts (Начало, which I don't particularly enjoy), I've found the instructors to be top notch. Much better than my Chinese professors. They actually do care that you learn Russian; I recently spent 6 weeks working with a Professor and extra hour and a half a day, three times a week for 2 months to skip Russian 4 (as I'm in China at the moment, and this course is only offered in the spring). The biggest drawback is that the department is comparitively small with others on campus, and the course offering could be better, but there's still much more than you could ever fit into an Undergraduate career without only taking Russian/Slavic studies courses.

The other sort of interesting thing about the department is that all Central European language majors are required to take another Central European language. Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Czech and Russian are being offered at the moment, but Romanian, Macedonian and (I think) Bulgarian have appeared when in demand. So if you're going to be majoring in Slavic Linguistics, be prepared to learn 2 semesters of something other than your focus language.

As study abroad goes, I only know about the programs for Russian. There's options to do semester, summer or years abroad in Petersburg, Moscow or Vladimir. In Moscow, you have the option of matriculating directly into the МГУ.

In any case, I suppose that's my plug for UNC-CH. Let me know if you have any other questions, I'll be happy to answer them when I can get to a computer.

Awesome -- thanks for all the info. I was actually looking at grad programs, but that's still helpful. Do you know anything about the MGIMO study abroad semester, by chance -- it looks like it hasn't been offered for a couple years according to the site? And it seems like you think so, but I'll ask it directly: does the program overall seem to be a "serious" one -- small isn't necessarily bad -- but I'm wary of a program that has lazy professors, out-of-order course sequencing, minimal funding, etc.?

There is also a Russian club. I didn't go last year but previously there were both Americans and Russians in it, not all students. They organize movies too - we watched Брат. Not my kind of film, unfortunately.