Free Dutch bank account for students – Rabobank

Are you a student and do you need dutch bank account? My experience with the process of getting bank account in Netherlands. What looks like an easy and fast thing can at the and be pretty annoying and long-run deal.

Rabobank, Source: en.wikipedia.org

I have several czech bank accounts, as I am quite sensitive to the services provided by banks. I hoped, that I will not have to create another one, but I had to. Reason was quite simple – I worked for the university at Master's open day. If you are forreign student and you do not have Maestro card, you will not be able to pay with your card in the shops, so you also would like to create a bank account. At Rabobank, there are bank accounts for students totally for free. The only problem – dutch bureaucracy and time horizon of several weeks. In order to be able to have a bank account, you have to have BSN/sofi number (social security number, unique identifier of you in Netherlands). Another complication for most of the foreign people will also be the language – everything is in only Dutch. Including Internetbanking, so be prepare for that. But let it take step by step, how the whole process looks like and what is an alternative to Rabobank.

GRE and PPI test – another experiment

By chance a friend of mine told me, that some people from psychology are doing some research and are seeking for people willing to participate. I was, because I enjoy beeing part of a research.

GRE, Source: www.ets.org

What has the research to do with GRE test and PPI? The traget of the research is to determine some qualities of students at Maastricht University. GRE® stands for Graduate Record Examinations and PPI for Personal Potential Index, both done my ETS®. GRE tests are used by universities as an adminision requirement, some universities are also using GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). The biggest advantage is its decentralization, meaning that you can take it in your home country at several places and you get universal result you can use anywhere. It's computer based test that acording to (Wiki) aims to measure verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, analytical writing and critical thinking skills.

As any other research, there was also offered a compensation for the four hours spent with the test and questionaires. I got 25€ voucher, that can be used at several places. Nice. And I will also get the official GRE results!