Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Porto
speciality: Psychology

Catholic University of Portugal (Porto) is an excellent university. Actually, it is the best university in Portugal! As a student, I feel challenged by the programme, the teachers, the classes, and my colleagues. To my mind, the programme was designed in a very smart way, as it includes a lot of practical classes, which, I feel, validate my knowledge of psychology and research (both of which I love). That gives me the confidence I need to continue to move forward in my path. It is important to refer that I was able to join the Human Neurobehavioral Laboratory (HNL) of the university from day one and that is a privilege. Also, I love that we, members of the HNL, were given the opportunity to organize an online international congress on psychology (CIEL-Psi), during the covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, I believe I’m learning everything I need to become the professional I want to be, as I am surrounded by hardworking, empathetic, highly motivated, and devoted teachers and colleagues. I would love, though, to have more in-person classes, because, despite the teacher’s huge creativity, the online classes don’t do justice to the quality of the classes we have on campus. All in all, I would highly recommend the Catholic University of Portugal (Porto).

I came from Brazil as a Psychology student to learn new cultures, subjects and exchange experiences, but I was disappointed. The classes are one of the two: too simple or too complex without further explanation. The classes from the First year are understandably introductory, but the overall curriculum was, in my perspective, weak. I am not a first year student, but in my first years overall in my home country’s college I felt a lot more challenged and felt like I was truly learning something. Some knowledge I acquired was indeed new, but honestly it felt so specific that being all in one subject was puzzling. One subject I had and one subject I did not choose initially but ended up accidentally attending a few classes were very introductory, and in a good way, but they could easily be put in one subject so that the students can learn more in the further years. It didn’t feel challenging, and the subject that did (Neuroscience) was poorly taught in class, given that the teacher had 50+ slides to present but spoke so many things outside of the curriculum that we were only able to see 10 of the slides and learn all of the very other complex concepts alone. The practical classes were enlightening though, the teacher was very nice and a very good professor.
One of the subjects disappointed me a lot, Memória, Motivação e Aprendizagem was simple and nice, but the day of the test was incredibly disorganized. The subject overall was very easy, but on the day of the test, I had an important meeting an hour after the beginning of the test. We got in class, the assistant made us look straight at her, with our mouths shut for half an hour after the beginning of the test time without explanation, and the teacher arrived very late because apparently he was still printing the tests. Because of the meeting, I had to do the test incredibly fast and in a poorly manner. I did not achieve enough progress to be approved even though I got max grade on the practical component and the work given by teacher Bárbara. To make the substitute test, I even had to pay almost 100€, which I did not because the test happened in a day I wasn’t in town anymore. The overall situation left me very dissatisfied, because overall I’m a straight A student and the situation happened from lack of organization and communication, not knowledge.
My area of future expertise is Psychology and Justice, on which I had a subject in. It was, in my opinion, a shallow curriculum for a Third Year subject. We could have learned a lot more and the things taught didn’t feel incredibly useful. Overall, the students didn’t participate whatsoever in class, which made the experience monotonous, given the fact that a class where nobody seems interested to learn unmotivated me greatly, and every time I asked something I was answered, but the question didn’t feel welcomed.
Honestly, I expected more and I was very disappointed.