| Hey there. To be honest, my experience with Chinese at Notre Dame is different than most, since I studied Chinese for several years before coming to Notre Dame and have only taken 2 semesters of the language at Notre Dame. However, I am working on a Chinese supplementary major and will be taking Fourth Year Chinese in the fall. I am also president of the Chinese Culture Society, so I'm pretty familiar with the program.
I really enjoyed my Chinese class at ND and my professor (Yin laoshi) was awesome. She was really enthusiastic and gave us other opportunities to practice Chinese and participate in Chinese cultural activities. The Chinese program at ND is relatively new, but its growing and improving fast and, after talking to my friends at other universities (Princeton, Mt. Holyoke, and Haverford), the coursework is pretty comparable (we all used the same book for 3rd year Chinese).
I didn't find the workload to be too much, but I have a lot of experience with learning Chinese. Some of my friends that have started Chinese at ND have found it to be very difficult to get the hang of if you're used to studying Western languages, others have adapted relatively easily. If you do end up taking Chinese, and need some study tips, I'd be happy to help.
Also, 1st and 2nd year Chinese is only offered as intensive, which means that you meet every day. Because of this, it will naturally be more work. After that, the courses are regular 3 credit classes that meet three times a week.
As for the practicality of the language, Chinese is a VERY useful language to know nowadays. This is especially true if you are in business. I think ND prepares students fairly well for this. When I arrived at ND, I tested into 4th year Chinese (ended up taking third year because it fit into my schedule) and I am at a conversational level. Not fluent yet, but I could survive in China. Granted, most of my Chinese education was before ND, but the other students in my class were at a similar level. Most of the classes focus on conversational topics. You start to study some newspaper articles in 3rd year Chinese and continue using real-language sources in 4th year.
Unfortunately, being a biochem major, I haven't been able to study abroad. But I've heard nothing but good things about the Beijing and Shanghai programs, as well as the summer Taiwan program.
As a side note, a lot of the people who start studying Chinese just because its practical or because they are used to being good at learning languages and want to throw Chinese into the mix end up dropping out after 1 or 2 semesters. Its those who have a genuine interest in Chinese language and culture who end up sticking with it.
I hope that wasn't too long and rambly. Let me know if you have any other questions. | 
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