Three students of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta achieved ‘Best Foreign Student’ in Foreign Student Graduation at SIAS University on Friday (24/6). They were Sitta Wahyu Qurana (an International Relations student of batch 2013), Diana Setiawati (a Law student of batch 2012), and Ferdiana Rachmawati (an Economics student of batch 2014).

They were UMY’s students joining student exchange at SIAS University of People’s Republic of China for a year or a semester. Sitta stated that the award was based on students’ performance and grades.

“Of 137 students, there were 15 students, one student or two students of each class, received the reward or becoming ‘outstanding student,” Sitta conveyed in an online interview on Thursday (21/7).

Besides, Sitta won the third place of Chinese Speech Contest for foreign students organized by SIAS University.

“Nine participants passed to the final round of the speech contest. The winner was a French student, the runner up was from Laos and Republic of Korea, and the second runner up was from Indonesia, Brazil, and Tajikistan. The other participants were from the United States and Thailand,” Sitta mentioned.

She also became top 3 of the highest score of Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) of level 4. ‘HSK is like Chinese TOEFL. At SIAS, top 3 of HSK of level 4 achieved HSK scholarship,” Sitta said.

She told that she gained a lot of experiences during her study at SIAS University. She took Economics and Management Department in the first semester. “Besides taking Mandarin class, I also studies English Composition, Economy, and Management. I studied from Monday to Friday at 8 am – 5 pm,” Sitta asserted.

Sitta expressed that she did not find huge difficulties even though Muslim is minority in People’s Republic of China. “I personally could not stand with the pollution since I got asthma. Food was not the big deal because there were several halal food courts, but my friends and I preferred cooking ,” Sitta ended the interview.