Details

• Canada
• MAMark-21
• Graduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 4 months

1. Preparation

Kingston is a relatively small city in Canada, as it only has about 150,000 inhabitants. I chose to fly to Montreal, but most other students chose Toronto as their arrival and departure airport. I spent a few days in Montreal to get over jetlag and explore the city in all it's glory in the middle of August. It was super warm (I underestimated how strong the Canadian sun is) and it was a great start to my experience. About four days before the start of our program, I travelled to Kingston to start moving in and getting adjusted to my new surroundings. Since the MBA program started earlier than most other programs at Queen's the city was still quite empty the first weekend, but with every day that passed, more students arrived and the city felt more lively. The weather was really nice and warm up until mid September, so definitely bring your bathing suits and go enjoy the pier. The fall was really nice, it didn't rain that much but after Halloween it got pretty cold and people started wearing winter jackets. Make sure you have a good one (but honestly you can also buy one in Canada, that is what many people did). Temperaturewise I experienced everything from -25 to +30 so try to think about that when packing. I would say packing is the most difficult part of the preparations, as for example a Visa is not needed and you can just apply for the eTA which costs like 6€ and you are getting it instantly. Also, be open-minded and I'm sure you'll make friends super quick! Kingston is small but there's so many students that make the city the best place!

2. Accommodation

Looking for accommodation in Kingston isn't easy, but everyone I spoke with eventually found a good place to live. I lived close to West Campus and paid significantly less than my friends, though I was a bit further from the main action. Honestly, for the price, it was perfect; I had a 25-minute walk to class, which was really enjoyable in the nice weather. The bus is free and runs quite often, so I could get to uni or downtown in 20 minutes at most. I stayed in Portsmouth, one of the older parts of Kingston. The harbour and Lake Ontario Park are close by, so I found many nice walking routes. I loved my area—it felt very safe with lots of families, even though I was right behind the Queen's football stadium. I started searching in late March, but didn't find good options until July. The process is different for everyone, but my advice is to check Facebook frequently (try to keep the time zone difference in mind) and don’t hesitate to ask other exchange students if they know of any rooms available. I ended up in a shared house that was split into two apartments of three people each. One of my flatmates knew the girls upstairs, so we basically lived in a six-person house with two kitchens and two bathrooms, which was great. Our house was relatively new compared to some places in the 'Student Ghetto,' so I was happy with it. I paid around 550€, which was much cheaper than what most of my friends paid, even if I was a bit further out. Honestly, it took most people 15–20 minutes to get to uni regardless, and I often walked home from downtown after parties; safety was never a concern, even for me as a girl walking home alone for a kilometer at 3 a.m.

3. Academic life at host university

The Queen's campus feels like straight out of a college movie and I loved being there. Smith School of Business is a really nice building and has two great cafès for light meals and snacks. One thing that I was missing a bit compared to WU was the lack of open study spaces. There are rooms you can reserve however and there are multiple big libraries to make up for it. The library setting is way more chill than WU's so I actually spent a lot of time there. The MBA program only has one classroom which means you will not struggle to find your classes, but sometimes it can also feel a bit boring if you have back-to-back classes and can't switch rooms. The room was shaped in a semi-circle and had really comfortable chairs. The MBA for me constisted of around 80 full-time students and 35 exchange students, most of them from Europe. Academically, the program is heavily team-oriented with frequent group projects. Many full-time MBA students were prioritizing their job search, so group work motivation did sometimes fluctuate, since for them the semester was basically over even though we just started (Full-timers only have elective courses in the fall term). Grading is a bit tougher than in Marketing, though earning an A+/A/A-, which transfers as a grade of 1 at WU, is definitely achievable. One crucial tip: most of your fellow exchange students are graded on a pass/fail basis. If you care about your GPA, it’s helpful to communicate this to program management before groups are finalized. Attendance is taken seriously and absences usually require justification. On the bright side, the teaching is highly interactive, and the professors are accessible, engaging, and deeply knowledgeable, which makes the classes genuinely enjoyable. The professors were also very kind with some of us being concerned about our grades and offered e.g. a re-take exam in Sales Management or graded some students on their personal performance instead of the group's results. I took the following courses: - Sales Management (the professor Jim Hamilton is one of the best in his field, very funny, but also a tough guy when it comes to grading, but at the end of the day I really enjoyed this class) - Consumer-focused Marketing (if you are in the Marketing Master at WU this will be quite easy for you, although Monica LaBarge also taught some sessions on topic I hadn't encountered before at WU. She was really nice and her classes were enjoyable) - Global Strategy (It's one of the smaller courses, being only 1.5 credits instead of the typical 3 credits. It was a very interesting course and Michael Sartor taught the class in a way I hadn't experienced before. It was case-based and participation was 50% of the grade but he made the athmosphere feel safe so everyone truly was able to speak up.) - Creating & Executing Market-Based Strategy (This was probably my least favourite course, but I still overall learned something new and David Kincaid and Ken Wong were really good professors with lots of expertise in their fields. The main deliverable was a consulting project which teams got assigned to three different businesses. Honestly, the challenges these three companies wanted us to find a solution for were not comparable at all so it felt a bit unfair, but at the end of the day, they were grading in a fair way.)

5. Every day life in the host country

Public transport is free in Kingston and it actually works quite well in my opinion. Regarding safety, Kingston is very safe. I walked home for multiple kilometres alone during the night after going to the club and I never had an issue once even being alone and a woman in a different country. There are a few homeless people in Kingston, especially if you compared how big the city really is it is quite sad to see them but at the end of the day, they don’t really bother you if you don’t pay attention to them so I would say it’s similar to Vienna in that sense. Princess St is where most of the homeless people are and also more up to the north, but I’ve never been there so I have no experiences with that but on I have never been bothered by any of the homeless people in downtown. Kingston, even though being a small city has a lot of stores that we know for example urban outfitters Lululemon so shopping is actually not that bad in Kingston and also Kingston has the most restaurants per capita of all of Canada so expect to find many different food, options and cafés I couldn’t try them all cause there are so many but those that I did try were really really good and everybody says Kingston has a very good culinary culture. I really liked Laylow and northside for breakfast and my favourite coffee shops were Crave and DeMello. When I asked my Canadian friends before going to Kingston about the life in the city, the response I got from everybody was: “Kingston is the party city of Canada”. Going out is a very big part of life in Kingston I think most of the times me and my friends went out around 2 to 3 times a week, but it’s always been really fun and you mostly go to house parties and just stay there or go to one of the three famous clubs in the city. The clubs are all next to each other and they’re called Trinity, Ale House and Stages. Every club had a day where they had a special event so Trinity was hosting “Dollar Beers” on Tuesdays so you would get a beer for one dollar. Stages for example hosted “Stage Rage” on Thursdays, which meant that all long drinks were half price and only $3.75. If you like country music or wanna experience the North American country music scene definitely check out Ale House on Tuesdays as they host “Tumble Tuesdays” and play country music. Ale House is also really good on Fridays and just a safe choice for the weekend. The city of Kingston itself tries to host many events throughout the year to give a good life to its inhabitants. For example, at the end of August when we arrived, there was a movie night in the Square in downtown Kingston. It was a really cute event: they had a huge projector and showed a kids movie. It was free for everybody and it just gave me a very good feeling about the city that I chose for my exchange. this market Square in Kingston also hosts the cities ice rink that is also free for everybody, but you need to bring your own skates. I went skating once and rented my skates at trailhead, which is one of the outdoor stores in Kingston and it cost me around 10 CAD for 24 hours. There was also a Christmas parade at the end of November, so it was really funny to see how the is getting ready for Christmas. Sports wise I mainly used the Queens universities gym. It’s called the ARC and stands for athletics and recreation center. The gym is really big. It has four floors and the membership is free. Also, you can rent squash and volleyball courts as well as different equipment. Along with another friend an exchange, the two of us joined our MBA’s volleyball intramural team, which was really fun and basically intramurals is a way for you to play volleyball in a league against other Queen’s students and there’s different levels so it was really enjoyable to play and I had a lot of fun with my team and I would definitely do it again and try more sports in that way. Overall, Kingston was an amazing choice. The only thing that is missing is the airport. Kingston did have an airport, but it’s not active right now, which is quite sad so travelling meant taking a bus or a car to go to the airport but at the end of the day I got to see a lot of nice places, and I’m really happy. Also, Kingston comes very alive during Homecoming (HOCO) in mid October. All of the alumni are coming back to Kingston and just celebrating the weekend. It was really cool seeing former cohorts in their graduation jackets. There was people from all ages and it was very wholesome, but also the parties were really fun. The weekend after was “Fake Homecoming” (FOCO). It was basically a way for the undergrads also to have a HOCO since they have reading week during traditional HOCO. The third weekend of partying in October was Halloween and it was also really fun to see how Halloween is celebrated in North America. Our MBA events team organized for us to go to a haunted house which have never been before and it was really fun. Also, I really enjoyed going to watch Queens sports games. The teams are called the Galels and we watched basketball, hockey and football and all of the games were free for students and the atmosphere was really fun.

6. Testimonial

I really had the best time in Canada! The university experience sometimes felt straight out of a college movie, but the people I met and that I now get to call my friends really were what made it truly unforgettable. I got to go on so many amazing trips in Canada & abroad, seeing the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as well as going to the US, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. I love Kingston, it's a small but absolutely cute city and it has so much to offer. Canadians are the nicest people I have ever met and I really miss it a lot, so I'm hoping to be able to go visit again soon! P.S. Get ready to meet Kingston’s legend: the “free hugs” lady!