The Semester, miUBP and Visas

Wednesday, August 6

Today I had to process a lot of information at the university. We had three meetings today. The first one was about this semester- the guidelines and they system.  In order to do well here, good grades are not all that matter.  Attendance is very important. A student's academic standing depends on both elements.  There are four types of academic standing here- Promoción directa, Promoción indirecta, Alumno regular and Alumno libre (direct promotion, indirect promotion, regular student, and free student). Each of these categories have criteria based on grades and attendance, and incentives as well.

Direct promotion is for the student who has at least 95% attendance and test grades of 8 or above on the grading scale of 1-10. This is the best academic standing category, and the incentive is the student does not have to take the final exam.
Indirect promotion is for 80% attendance and at least 7s on tests, and the incentive is that the student only needs to take the oral part of the final.
Regular student  is for 75% attendance and average grades, no incentives here.
Free student is for less than 75% attendance and for poor grades (below 4). You don't get credit for studying here if you're in this category.
As you can guess, I'm shooting for the direct promotion!

After talking about all of this and about some of the classes offered here, we went to the computer labs and were introduced to miUBP, the online portal for the school. That went by quickly, and afterwards, we went back to talk about the process of getting student visas.  It's quite a process, and I'm not really looking forward to it, but oh well. We're all going on Friday to start the process together.

After all of this, I went home. My host mother told me about a place that unlocks phones, so I got ready and set off downtown...