CET Taiwan Fall 2023

TLDR: CET is difficult but overall a great experience

Taipei is an amazing city with so much to do from food to sightseeing to nightlife. It felt a little overwhelming at times, but it was mostly fun. Take advantage of the weekends to take trips to other parts of Taiwan with friends, like Jiufen, Hualien, Penghu, Beitou, and Tainan--those weekend trips were the highlights of my CET experience, but Taipei itself is great too. I came to CET with almost no Chinese language skills, and I improved rapidly with the language course through NTU. The electives I took were not my favorite--the 3-hour classes, even though they were only once a week felt really long.

The biggest piece of advice I have for anyone considering traveling to Taiwan in the future is consider what kind of study abroad experience you want to have. If you are really invested in improving your Chinese language skills or experiencing a different culture, I'd highly recommend CET Taiwan. But if you want a more laid-back, fun experience, CET might not be the right program for you (CET was fun but not in the traditional sense you imagine for a program in say, Italy). Again, I'd highly recommend CET Taiwan and just Taiwan as a place to visit in your life. It just depends what you are trying to get out of your experience.