Pepperdine University

Graziadio School of Business and Management

Pepperdine University is a school founded by Christians. It is situated in the very beautiful location, in Malibu CA, which is considered by Americans one of the best places to live. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Las Vegas, and the other famous places are situated not far from Malibu and can be easily reached by car. The weather in California is almost always sunny and very warm.

University campus is also very beautiful and clean. The campus is situated not far from the Malibu beach. There are a lot of palm-trees on university campus as well as in a whole California state. You can see deer walking on the campus pretty often. Campus is well equipped with various facilities, like tennis and basketball courts, baseball and football field. Also there is high class outside swimming pool with Jacuzzi. In Malibu people are very nice and it is very safe place.

First days until the beginning of classes, I asked myself, how people can study in such wonderful place, which is supposed to be a place for the vacations. However, when classes started, time spent outside was reduced highly. The length of one class is 4 hours with breaks. The number of assignments depends on each particular class, but, in general, the load of studies is pretty high. Most of classes are held in form of class discussions with individual and group assignments.

The semester is divided in two sessions for 7 weeks each. There is one week bread between the sessions. I recommend taking 3-4 classes for each session to be able perform better. As I mentioned above, there are a lot of good sport facilities for relieving the stress or exhaustion from the studying.

There are nice Faculty members at Graziadio School of Business and Management, who work with Exchange and International students and help a lot.

Some tips:

It’s much more convenient to live on campus in the dormitories; however, it’s more expensive than living outside the campus. The best advantages of living on campus are a very nice view on the ocean and higher commitment to the students’ life. It’s much more difficult to communicate with students when you live outside the campus. Also there is a fitness center for the dormitory residents.

Public transportation in California is really bad, so almost every one has his or her own car. It is highly recommended to rent or buy a car. Faculty members can give an advice how to do it. You MUST have a car, even if you live on campus. The Graduate campus is distant from the main campus and is situated on the hills, so it can be difficult to walk. Also there is only one cafeteria on Graduate campus which serves only lunches. So you should have car or ask somebody for a ride to go to grocery store or somewhere else.

Malibu is very beautiful place and it is really quiet there. However, it’s situated not far from interesting places, where you can easily go by car. Pepperdine University is very beautiful school with a high reputation.

December 11, 2008

Artem An