This page carries no costs, no entry requirements and no institution names. That is deliberate. Those things change, they differ from one programme to the next, and they differ between two applicants sitting in the same room reading the same page. The only source worth acting on is the institution's own website and the office behind it, and that website is the single thing verified here.
What follows is orientation: what a student moving to Nova Gorica has to establish, and who to put each question to. Housing carries most of the weight, because where you live shapes nearly everything else about time away, and because it is the decision most often left too late. Company carries the rest, because arriving somewhere nobody shares your history means building a circle from nothing.
Student life in Nova Gorica
Begin with the shape of an ordinary week rather than the highlights of a good one. Where will you study when the building you normally use is closed. Where will you eat on the evenings you cannot face cooking. What is open at the hours you are actually awake, and what is not. Students who settle tend to be the ones who worked out that ordinary layer early, rather than the ones who arrived with a list of things to see.
Scale and rhythm matter more than arrival guides usually admit. If the daily pattern where you are moving is one you have not lived in before, the adjustment is real, and it is easier to plan for than to discover. Ask current students what a weekday evening looks like and what a long weekend looks like. Our wider notes on how a student week takes shape cover what tends to hold anywhere.
Universities and the academic environment
Nothing academic here is stated as fact about any institution, because what matters is set at programme level and changes. Establish first, in writing and from the institution itself, the language in which your teaching and your assessment are actually conducted. A programme's advertised language and the language used in seminars, group work and daily administration are not always the same, and that difference is invisible until you are there.
Then establish how you will be assessed and how you are expected to reach the people teaching you. Ask whether marks come mainly from written examinations, from continuous coursework, from group work or from something else. Ask how supervision works, how staff prefer to be contacted, and what a student is expected to do when a subject is not going well. Admissions can answer some of that before you apply, and a programme coordinator answers the rest afterwards.
Housing: the question to settle first
Housing carries the most weight on this page because it is the decision hardest to undo from a distance, and the one most often left too late. Put a plain question to the institution: does it operate or allocate student accommodation itself, does it work with a partner organisation that does, or does it expect students to arrange their own. Your whole timeline follows from that answer, and what to look for in student accommodation applies here as anywhere.
If institutional accommodation exists, establish how you apply, when the process opens and closes, whether a place on a course and a place in a building are decided separately, and what happens to applicants who are not allocated a room. If it does not exist, or you are not allocated one, you are on the open market, so ask how rooms are usually advertised locally and in which language, because that alone decides how much of the market you will ever see.
Whatever the route, the same cautions hold. Do not sign an agreement you have not read in a language you genuinely understand, and do not send money for a place that neither you nor someone you trust has seen. Ask whether the accommodation office will look over a contract, whether it keeps a list of providers it has dealt with, and whether short-term arrival accommodation exists while you search. Finding housing from another country sets out the order to work in.
- Who provides it. Establish whether a room comes from the institution, through a partner organisation, or entirely from you, and whether being offered a study place tells you anything at all about being offered a bed.
- When the clock starts. Ask the accommodation office when its process opens and closes relative to admission decisions, and what students do who are still searching once teaching has begun.
- What is included. Furniture, bedding, kitchen equipment, internet access, heating and the handling of utilities can each be included, billed separately, or simply absent. Ask which, in writing.
- How it ends. Read the end of an agreement as carefully as the start: notice periods, the conditions for getting a deposit back, what counts as damage, and what happens if your plans change partway through.
Transport and the ordinary week
Work out the journeys you will actually repeat, which are rarely the ones on a visitor's map: home to teaching, the trip to buy food, and the way back at the end of an evening. Ask whether each is one you can make on foot, by bicycle or on public transport. Ask what the timetable looks like at the hours you would genuinely travel, and what changes when the weather does.
Set up the ordinary administrative layer early, because it is the part that quietly eats the opening weeks: how you pay for things day to day, how you receive post, how you get a phone connection that works locally, and which of those cannot be arranged until you have an address. Ask the international student office in which order students usually work through this, since the order often matters more than the steps themselves.
Arriving from somewhere else
Adaptation is mostly a run of small unfamiliar transactions rather than one large cultural moment. Registering with the institution, setting up the accounts you need, working out what a form is actually asking, learning what an ordinary polite request sounds like: none of these is difficult alone, and all of them at once are tiring. Ask the international student office for its arrival checklist, and ask which items on it students most often get wrong.
Language here is a practical matter and nothing else. Establish which language your teaching runs in, which language your programme's administration runs in, and which you will meet in everyday errands, because those answers are not automatically the same. Then ask what language support the institution offers, whether it is open to students on your programme, and when it runs. Working around a language you do not have yet is a skill you build.
Wellbeing and knowing where help is
Find out where help lives before you need it. Ask what wellbeing, counselling and student support services the institution provides, which languages they run in, how a student books one, and whether there is a wait. Ask the same about academic support, about advice when money is not working out, and about who to contact when something goes wrong outside office hours. Write the answers somewhere you will still find them on a bad day.
The practical side of feeling secure somewhere unfamiliar is unremarkable and worth doing anyway. Know your address and how to describe where you live. Know how you would get home if your usual route were unavailable. Tell someone when your plans change. Keep emergency contacts somewhere other than a phone that might be out of charge, and read our wider notes on looking after yourself away from home.
- Before you travel. Ask which support services exist, which languages they operate in, and how a student books an appointment. Those answers are much harder to gather at the point you actually need them.
- In the opening weeks. Complete whatever the institution asks you to complete, and ask its office which steps students most commonly forget or leave until they become awkward.
- If a parent is reading. Agree with your student where the institution's support contacts are saved, and what counts as a reason to call. That conversation is far easier now than in the middle of a difficult night.
Common questions
- Why does this page not list costs, requirements or institution names?
- Because they change, and because they differ between programmes and between two applicants whose paperwork looks identical from the outside. A page written once and read by everyone cannot be accurate about any of it, and a wrong figure is worse than no figure. What can be relied on is the institution's own website and the office standing behind it, so this page tells you which question to ask and who holds the answer.
- When should I start sorting out somewhere to live?
- Earlier than feels reasonable. Ask about accommodation in the same message in which you ask about admission, because the institution's answer determines whether you are waiting on an allocation process, dealing with a partner organisation, or searching the open market yourself. Each of those has a different timeline, and only the institution can tell you which one applies to you. Ask also what happens to students who are still searching once teaching has begun.
- How do you make friends somewhere nobody knows you?
- By repetition rather than by effort in bursts. Pick something that happens on the same day every week and go back to it, rather than relying on a welcome event that happens once. Ask student services what runs regularly through the teaching year, choose at least one activity that is not tied to your course, and choose one that puts you among people who already live here. It usually takes longer than arrival timetables suggest, and that is normal.
- Who should I ask when this page does not answer my question?
- Admissions for anything about applying, studying and assessment. The accommodation or student services office for anything about a room, a contract or a deposit. The international student office for arrival steps, registration order and language support. For anything official, the relevant official authority, asked directly rather than through a summary. Ask in writing where you can, and keep the reply.
Building a circle where nobody knows you yet
Moving somewhere nobody shares your history is the part students underestimate. Nobody knows the school you went to, the people you grew up with, the thing you are quietly good at, or the version of you everyone at home takes for granted. That is disorienting for a while. It is also the most useful thing about going, because you get to build a circle out of who you are now rather than inherit one from who you were.
The method is repetition rather than enthusiasm. Circles form by turning up to the same thing more than once, not by attending a welcome event and hoping. Ask student services what runs regularly through the teaching year: student organisations, sport, interest groups, volunteering, language exchanges, faculty activities. Then pick something that repeats weekly. Building a circle from nothing takes longer than arrival timetables imply, and it is normal for it to.
Be deliberate about mixing. It is comfortable to spend your time mostly among people who arrived when you did and share your situation, and there is nothing wrong with that, but ask which activities also bring you among students who already live here, and among people outside the institution altogether. Ask what language each of those usually runs in, so you can choose things you can take part in rather than only sit through.