In September 2013 Wang Yiyang and Wu Hong were granted the national scholarship to have an exchange program in Catolica-Lisbon School of Business & Economics, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa. The business school is ranked by Financial Times the best 25 business school in Europe. During the one semester in Lisbon, Wang and Wu both attended Portuguese, Bank Management, Capital market and institution and Personal Financial Planning courses. Meanwhile, Wang also took Contemporary political thought: Europe in the 20th century. Wu took Portfolio Management course, which taught students how to use Bloomberg Terminal, a worldwide terminal used by financial institutions, to manage bond, equity portfolio.
UCP has very good facilities to support students and professors. For example, the school subscribes Economist and Financial Times and offers them for free at the entrance of the teaching building. The school also subscribes online Financial Times, so students and professors can get access to the latest, high quality reports through their phone or Ipad. Another amazing facility for business study people is the Bloomberg room where 10 Bloomberg terminals are available. Each of the terminal costs $20,000 every month and Bloomberg provides best services for users. The staffs from Bloomberg can go to the school and teach students how to use it, and they provide online instant supporting service 24 hours a day.
Professors in UCP are very impressive. They not only have a solid background of theories, but also have lots of working experience in the main financial institutions such as Barclays and Citigroup. Their practice in the industry helps them to understand economic theories with more practical thinking. They encourage students to read Financial Time or other media to get to know what’s happening every day and how it influences the economy. If students have any doubts, professors will try to search for more materials to explain the doubts and discuss with the students. Before any exam, the professors will hand out all the formulas students may need to use during the exam, because they don’t want students to become machine to memorize, their main purpose is testing weather students have understood and have known how to use it. At the end of the semester, professors would send an email to each of the students, giving students the right answers and feedback. Students can come up with their own answer and argue with the professors about the right answer. If the professors think the students’ answer is also right, they will give the students more credits.
During this exchange semester many international students were also at UCP to have exchange program. So Wang and Wu could work with international students and maintain a friendship with them. At New Year the Chinese embassy also invited them to celebrate Chinese new year with other Chinese scholars in Lisbon.
