Great Opportunity - Project Assistant Masdar Institute Employee Review

Healthy environment and nice people

None that I can think of

- 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

- 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