Testimonials – Kaplan International Colleges

It’s been a great experience to refresh my English grammar and improve my oral skills. It’s nice to participate in a class with different cultures. The school’s staff are all very friendly and have always an open ear to help. In addition to the main programme, I had the opportunity to choose elective classes. It means you can be in touch with different teachers with different methods and you can improve your skills individually.

A small but welcoming town, Santa Barbara is the perfect place for improving your English. During my stay there, I could exercise my English skills. I met fantastic people with whom I spent fantastic moments. The school was very friendly and organised many activities and excursions. The teachers were all qualified and available if we had questions or didn’t understand something. The classrooms were large, with students from various countries. In the cafeteria, during the lunch break, there was a wide choice of dishes, from an American burger with fries to a chicken salad with the sauce of your choice. There were also Lasagnas. With a few dollars, you could have a balanced meal.

The school was located 10 minutes away from the town centre, in the State Street (Santa Barbara’s main street). The beach is a 10 minutes’ walk from the school, it was perfect for a nice afternoon with people from the apartments or from the school. For shopping addicts, there were plenty of choices. In the next town, Camarillo, there was a mall, just outside Santa Barbara, where you could buy American designer clothes at an affordable price, especially during the sales period. I visited many places like San Diego or the Mexican town of Tijuana, Los Angeles and Hollywood, the Universal Studios and the Vista Island. During the festival, you can see car parades and people wearing traditional clothes, and Santa Barbara’s inhabitants are very keen on this event. The night events in Santa Barbara begin very early, around 7 p.m. and end towards 1.30 p.m.

Still during the festival period, you can buy souvenirs of alls kinds on little stands on the beach. People are kind and polite there. In short, Santa Barbara is the perfect town for students who want to spend nice holidays but off the beaten track. My stay was beautiful and I might go back there.

I have been in Santa Barbara, California, for a month now and I am staying for another 2 months. I like it a lot here, the area is beautiful and so is the weather at the moment. My host family is really nice and people are usually open-minded and friendly towards us, the “foreigners”. I also like the SBCC Kaplan school. I meet many people from the whole world here and I love talking to them. The school is located by the sea and there are palm trees everywhere. It is beautiful and really different from Switzerland. Everything went really well: the flight, the transfer from the airport to my host family, and my adoptive parents gave me a warm welcome. Thank you for organising everything before my departure! I am very happy to be here and I am glad everything is going well. Thanks again! I am delighted to be staying 2 more months here. Even though time flies, I am enjoying every minute of it and improving my English skills day after day.