Studying in Basel: language, housing and what to establish

In your first term, student life in Basel will be structured by the programme that admitted you rather than by the city. The fixed points are your teaching hours, the dates on which work is due, and the travel between where you sleep and where you study. The rest of the week arranges itself around those. Pin down the date teaching starts, whether a welcome or orientation programme exists and whether you are expected at it, and the earliest date any housing arrangement could run from. Those answers make the difference between an arrival that works and an arrival that has to be improvised.

No page can tell you what a week here will feel like, and it is sensible to distrust any that offers to. People are the better source. Ask whether student services can introduce you to somebody already on your programme, find out what a students' association puts on for people who have just arrived, and treat individual accounts as individual rather than representative. Our study abroad section follows the same approach of setting out what can be established and being open about the rest.

No institution is named here, so comparing them is your task, and the comparison worth making is about fit. Establish which language your teaching, coursework, examinations and any supervision are conducted in, and whether that stays constant across the whole programme or shifts as you progress. Ask separately which language the department around your programme works in day to day, because a programme taught in a given language can sit inside an environment that runs in another, and both facts affect you in different ways.

Then ask the ordinary academic questions with the same directness. How much of the week is timetabled and how much is independent, how work is marked, what happens if an assessment goes badly, and how a student reaches a member of staff with a question. The programme handbook or course description carries all of it, and the programme office will send that over if it has not been published. Our universities section explains why we describe environments and leave the judgement to you, which is also why the questions below are the same for every institution you consider.

Housing deserves the most attention because it is the hardest thing to change once teaching has started, and because it is where the language question becomes concrete. Listings, viewings, agencies and agreements run in whichever language local administration runs in, which may not be the language your programme uses. Establish that early, and the search stops producing surprises. Begin with the accommodation office: ask what it operates itself, what it only signposts, what it can and cannot promise a student who has not yet arrived, and how it advises students searching in the private market.

Establish the timing as carefully as the substance. Ask how institutional housing applications sit against the offer cycle, whether an application can be made before you have formally accepted, what becomes of it if your plans shift, and what the office advises somebody who lands before an agreement can begin. That gap is common and quite manageable when it has been planned for. Our student housing section sets out how the search itself works. Our guide to finding student housing abroad covers doing all of it at a distance.

Then be deliberate at the moment of signing, which is the point where enthusiasm and paperwork meet. Establish what is due before you receive keys and what part of it returns to you, what is included and what arrives as a separate bill, how long you are committed and what ends the commitment, whether the room is furnished, and who else is named on the same document. Where the agreement is written in a language you do not yet read with confidence, ask for a version you can read, or arrange for somebody to work through it with you before your signature goes near it.

Work out the journey between your housing and your teaching in time rather than in map distance, and check what getting home late looks like as well as getting in early. Ask which travel arrangements or season passes are available to students, who issues them, and whether any part of that is arranged through the institution. Whatever the relevant transport authority publishes is the version that governs, so work from it directly rather than from somebody's account of it.

Much of a week turns out to be paperwork in instalments: a bank account, a phone, whatever registrations are asked of you, and correspondence that arrives with no warning. Find out in advance which language such letters normally use, then treat every envelope as something to open on the day, whether or not you can read all of it immediately. Our guide to handling language barriers covers the habits that make this manageable, and the list below covers the paperwork most students meet in their first weeks.

Meeting people is easier when it is organised rather than hoped for. Ask what runs and when: a students' association, societies attached to subjects, sport, music, volunteering, faith groups, and the tandem or exchange arrangements that pair people who are each learning the other's language. Ask student services for whatever list it keeps, and note which things begin at the start of a term, since most are easiest to join then.

Give it time as well as effort. Whoever you meet in your first days may or may not still be around by the end of the programme, and either outcome is ordinary. Repetition is what turns acquaintances into friends, so pick something that meets on a schedule rather than something you would attend when you remembered, and pick something connected to your subject if you can. Being the person who suggests meeting is usually less awkward than it feels in advance, and it becomes easier every time you do it.

Arriving from elsewhere brings paperwork with it, and this page will name only the categories. There are things to register, records to keep and offices that expect to hear from you in a certain order, and which of them apply to you depends on where your documents were issued and what you are coming to do. The international student office handles exactly this every term and will tell you what your own situation involves. The relevant official authority is the only source whose answer is final, so take anything consequential from there.

The rest of adapting is quieter work. Expect a period when routine errands eat more of the day than they once did, when working partly in another language leaves you flat by the evening, and when you doubt abilities you have never previously questioned. That is common, it eases as routines and vocabulary become automatic, and it is not a verdict on your decision. Our guide to dealing with culture shock sets out what tends to help, most of which comes down to routine, sleep, and asking sooner than feels necessary.

Locate support before you have a use for it. Ask what health arrangements apply to a student in your situation and who confirms them, ask how you would see a doctor about something ordinary, and ask whether those services can be used in a language you are comfortable in, since describing symptoms is harder in a language you are still learning. Ask as well what the institution runs in the way of counselling, what adjustments for study it can arrange, and what exists for students whose finances change without warning.

Then ask early rather than late. Students who find out where support sits during an ordinary week tend to use it when something happens, while students who wait often decide their situation is not serious enough to trouble anybody with. If you cannot tell whether a situation qualifies, proceed as though it does. Write the contact details somewhere you can reach quickly, tell somebody in your department if your studies start to slip, and remember that these services exist for students in exactly the position you would be in.