International Students Testimonials

Lijia Lin, USA

National Research University – Higher School of Economics

I want to be an expert in Russian relations

I had two reasons for coming to the Summer University. First, I’ve studied Russian for one semester in my university – the Russian language has always amazed me by its word usage. I am very interested in learning Russian, which is a rather difficult language, so I came here to study Russian.

And my second reason was to research Master’s Programmes in Russia. After I finish my Bachelor’s in the US, I want to apply to a Master’s Programme in economics or politics in Russia. I feel like Russia is a rising power, so I want to become a specialist in Russian relations. There are no such specialists in China or the U.S. at the moment. I think that if I want to get this knowledge, I need to come to Russia and learn it here.

My situation is very complicated: I am Chinese, but I study in the US, so I get information from both sides. In China, Russia is viewed as the most loyal strategic partner, while in the US the media demonises Russia. I wanted to find out what Russia really looked like, and at the same time I wanted to come here to HSE to see how the Master’s Programmes are organised and which programme might interest me the most.

At the moment I see four interesting programmes: Financial Economics, Applied Economics, Comparative Social Research, and Applied Economics & Mathematical Methods; two of them are partially taught in Russian so I will need to improve my Russian.

I am thinking of coming to HSE after I graduate this December to take an intensive 6-month Russian as a Foreign Language course. Hopefully, by the end of the programme I will have a sufficient knowledge of Russian.