This page names no institution, quotes no fee and states no entry requirements. Those things differ by programme and by applicant, they are published by the bodies that set them, and they change; repeating them here would mislead you at the moment you relied on it. What follows is orientation instead: the questions worth asking, the order in which they tend to matter, and the office that holds each answer.
Language and housing come before everything else. The language your programme teaches and assesses in is not automatically the language your landlord, your registration forms or the counter at a pharmacy will use, and you want both answers before you travel rather than after. Housing usually takes longer to arrange than students expect, and it is the hardest decision to reverse. The sections below follow the same order on every country page here.
Student life in context: what to establish before you picture it
Student life takes its shape from the institution you join and from how you arrange your own week, far more than from the country printed on your offer letter. Establish the practical frame early: when teaching periods start and finish, how the breaks fall between them, whether your programme expects you on site most days or in concentrated blocks, and whether anything is organised outside teaching hours.
Ask as well where students spend the time between classes, since that follows the institution rather than the map. Some places hold people through the day around a library or a shared building, others empty as soon as teaching stops. The answer tells you what to look for in housing, how much travelling you are taking on, and how much effort meeting people will need.
The academic environment: ask about your programme, not the brochure
What will actually shape your week is prosaic: how teaching is delivered, how your work is assessed, and how reachable staff are when you have a question. None of that can be inferred safely from a photograph or borrowed from a friend on a different programme. Put the questions to the department that runs your courses, and ask about those courses rather than about the institution in general, because the answers often differ between them.
Assessment deserves attention, because it decides how your term is spent: whether marks come from examinations, from work submitted through the teaching period, from group projects, from an oral defence or from practical work, and where each of those falls. If that pattern is unfamiliar, our guide on adapting to a new academic culture is a sensible starting point.
- Language of teaching. Which language each module is delivered in, and whether the reading and the assessment use the same one.
- Contact with staff. Who your academic contact becomes once you enrol, and how questions are normally raised during teaching periods.
- Independent work. How much of the workload sits outside timetabled hours, and where you are expected to do it.
- When something goes wrong. What happens if an assessment goes badly, whether work can be repeated, and who decides that.
Administration: map the sequence, then ask the office
There is a category of task that has nothing to do with study and everything to do with being free to get on with it: papers to gather, papers to have translated or certified, forms that only make sense in a particular order, and offices that will not act until another has. This page deliberately holds none of the contents, because what is asked of any one person is published by the body that decides it.
What you can do is map the shape of it. List the tasks, name the office that owns each one, and then ask the international student office to confirm the sequence and the timing. Establish what belongs before you travel, what can only happen afterwards, and what waits on a document somebody else issues. Our preparation guide explains how to build that list without guessing at its contents.
Housing: begin earlier than feels necessary
Housing deserves more of your attention than anything else on this page, because it is slow to arrange, awkward to undo, and it quietly sets the shape of your week. Start with the institution: ask whether it manages accommodation of its own, who may apply for it, when applications open in relation to your offer, and what it advises applicants it cannot house. Ask even if you intend to rent privately.
If you do rent privately, treat the search as a sequence rather than as one decision. Establish how places are advertised and viewed, whether anyone stands between you and the owner, what a listing means when it says furnished, what sits inside the rent and what arrives separately, and what is asked for at the start and what returns it to you at the end. Our guide to finding student housing abroad works through that order.
Read the agreement before you sign it, and if it is written in a language you do not read confidently, do not sign on the strength of a spoken summary. Ask the accommodation or student services office whether someone will go through it with you. Establish how much notice either side gives before ending it, what happens if you leave early, who handles repairs, and how anything you hand over at the beginning comes back to you.
- Somewhere to land. A place to sleep for the early stretch, so the search for something longer is not done with your luggage in hand.
- What is included. Whether heating, water, electricity, internet and building charges sit inside the rent, and in whose name the accounts stand.
- The journey. How long the trip to your teaching site takes at the hour you would really make it, and what the return looks like late.
- A paper trail. Photograph the condition of the place on the day you take it, and keep receipts and messages about repairs.
Money and tuition: the components, not the figures
You will find no figures here, and it is worth being wary of any page that offers them, because tuition and living costs differ by programme and are published by the bodies that set them. What helps is knowing the components: what the published tuition covers, whether it is charged across the programme or per teaching period, which fee category the institution places you in and how it decides that, and what is billed separately.
On the living side, assemble your own estimate from its parts rather than adopting a number somebody quoted you: housing, utilities, food, local travel, phone and internet, study materials, the one-off costs that arrive at the start, and a margin. Our money section sets out how to build that up, and the institution can tell you where its official figures are published.
Community: how people actually meet
Nobody arrives with a social circle. The students who settle tend to be the ones who treated meeting people as a task rather than as something that would happen to them. Ask what there is to join: societies, sport, volunteering, faith groups, language exchanges or student representation. Ask when they recruit, because much of that happens in a short burst at the start of teaching.
Expect the early stretch to be uneven. Swinging between finding everything interesting and finding it tiring is ordinary, and the flat patch often arrives later than people brace for. Keep one routine that has nothing to do with study, stay in contact with people at home, and give any group more than one attempt before deciding it is not for you.
Language: the classroom, the counter and the contract
This is the question to settle before the others, and it is several questions wearing one coat. The language your programme teaches in, the language it assesses in and the language your daily administration runs in are separate answers, and they are not always the same. A course delivered in one language can sit inside an institution whose forms and offices work in another.
Establish each answer specifically, in writing, and course by course, since a page written for prospective students is rarely as precise as a timetable. Then think about the counter and the reception desk, and what you will do when you and the person in front of you do not yet share a language. Our guide on handling language barriers treats that as a set of habits rather than a personal quality.
If you will meet a writing system you have not read before, treat learning to decode it as an early task with an end rather than a distant ambition. Recognising letters on a sign, a form heading or a shopfront changes how independently your early days go, long before conversation is comfortable. Ask whether the institution runs language classes for its own students, at what level they begin, and whether your timetable leaves room for them.
- Teaching. Which language each module is delivered in, and whether the reading and the slides match it.
- Assessment. Which language you are expected to write and speak in when marks are attached, and whether that is flexible.
- Administration. Which language the forms, the portal, the notices and the offices use, and whether other versions exist.
- Everyday. Which language you meet at a counter, on a bill or on signage, and your plan when you cannot read it.
Wellbeing and practical support: know the route before you need it
Find out who helps students before you need helping. Institutions usually have some form of student services or wellbeing provision, and someone whose job includes students new to the place. Establish what yours is called, where it sits and how you reach it, and write it down somewhere you will find it on a bad day. Our guide on when to ask for help is about lowering the threshold at which you do.
The practical habits are the ones any student uses anywhere they have not lived before: know how you are getting home before you go out, tell someone where you are, keep copies of your documents separately from the originals, and learn what the institution advises outside office hours. Ask student services what students usually do about health arrangements, and what happens academically if you are ill during an assessment period.
Common questions
- How do I find out which language my programme is actually taught in?
- Ask the department that runs it, in writing, and ask module by module rather than about the programme as a whole. Material written for prospective students is not always precise about individual courses, and teaching, reading and assessment are not always in the same language. Ask separately which language the institution's forms, portal and offices use, because a course in one language can sit inside administration in another. Keep the replies. If anything turns out differently later, a written answer is what you will refer back to.
- Should I arrange housing before I travel or after I arrive?
- Establish first what the institution manages itself: whether it has accommodation, who may apply, when applications open in relation to your offer, and what it advises applicants it cannot house. That tells you how much of the search falls to you. Many students find it easier to have somewhere to sleep for the early stretch, even temporarily, so that the search for something longer is not carried out with luggage in hand. Whatever route you take, do not commit to an agreement you have not read and understood.
- Why does this page not tell me what anything costs?
- Because any figure here would be wrong for somebody. Tuition varies by programme and by the fee category an institution places an applicant in, living costs vary by how and where a person lives, and both move over time. The institutions publish their own figures and the offices that set charges publish theirs; those are the sources worth trusting. What this page can usefully do is list the components, so that you can build your own estimate and know which office to ask for each part of it.
- What should I ask before I accept an offer?
- Ask these in writing: which language each part of your programme uses, how and when you will be assessed, what the institution can tell you about accommodation, and who your point of contact becomes once you enrol. Then ask what happens when something goes wrong, whether that is a failed assessment, a housing problem or illness during an assessment period. Institutions answer questions like these routinely, and a written reply is worth considerably more than an impression formed from a brochure.