Vantaggi
- Full-ride scholarship including nice monthly allowance
- Nice on-campus apartments / off-campus villas
- Interesting cultural experience
- nice labs & resources
- decentish academics
- diverse student body
- nice winter weather
Svantaggi
- lot of free-riders in school management
- no-name university outside of UAE
- student & social life almost doesn't exist
- lack of democratic processes, student body has no real power or representation (can't vote about university policies)
- it is a dead end, you really need a car
- the whole Masdar "city" is about size of 3 football pitches / 10 buildings
- there is no grocery store with fresh diary, vegetables, fruits or meat
- the Student Affairs Office (SAO) is a big mess, everything takes forever (I was waiting 2 weeks for a one page transcript for which I had to pay), they are very unreliable & will screw you over (in terms of salary) if you don't fill up some forms that you've never heard of because they forgot to tell you about them
- it seems that the institute & city are running dry: gym got closed, swimming pool was never open
- students are very low at priorities ladder
- the place has no soul & spirit and can get pretty lonely
- various law/cultural restrictions if you come from western world