Eötvös Loránd University

How a year feels is decided mostly by structure rather than by atmosphere: how many contact hours a programme has, how they sit across a week, how much reading or laboratory or studio time is assumed between them, how assessment is spread, and whether teaching is delivered in a single location or across more than one. Those things are set at programme level and are revised over time, so they are worth asking about specifically rather than in general. The student services office can say how it currently works for the programme you are looking at.

Around the teaching sits everything else: societies, sport, student representation, volunteering, and the informal life that grows around a subject. Ask what runs, when a newcomer can join, what taking part costs, and who helps a student who does not yet know anybody. Ask as well what language activities are run in, since that is a practical question about your own week and nothing more. How a circle of people actually forms is the general version of the same problem, and the answers there apply here too.

Accommodation has its own timeline and benefits from being started before anything else is settled. Establish whether the institution operates housing, how it is applied for, how places are allocated, and what the position is for a student who is not offered one. Establish separately what a private arrangement in Budapest would ask of a tenant: documents, any guarantee, the length of the commitment, what a deposit covers and how it is returned, and what the rent includes as against what arrives as a separate bill.

The reason to do this early is that an address is the hinge for registration, banking and most administration that follows, and that what is available tends to change as a term gets closer. Ask the accommodation office what temporary options students use when nothing can be signed in advance. If you will be sharing, settle who holds the agreement and how costs are divided before anyone moves in. A checklist for any student tenancy is the same wherever it is being used.

Coming from another country adds categories rather than complications, and each category has an owner. The institution owns the question of which category it places you in, how a qualification from elsewhere is assessed, what documents it wants and in what form, and what language a programme is taught and examined in. The international student office is where all of that is answered, and it is the office to write to before assuming anything from a general source, however plausible that source sounds.

Language deserves its own line, purely as logistics. The language a programme is taught in and the language its administration runs in are separate questions with separate answers, and knowing both in advance turns a series of surprises into a series of arrangements. Ask which forms, portals and appointments are handled in which, and what help exists for students who need it. Practical ways of working around a language you do not yet have is the general treatment.

Everything to do with entry, residence, health cover and working while studying belongs to the relevant official authority rather than to the institution or to this page. Ask the international student office which body handles each, and how much time to allow, then follow that body's own guidance and nothing else. Keep copies, note dates, and treat an account from another student as a reason to check rather than a reason to relax.

The route to what applies to you is short and unexciting: the institution's own admissions pages, for the programme and the level you want, for the intake you would actually be joining. Those pages are maintained by the people who make the decisions, which is what makes them worth reading in preference to any summary. Nothing of that kind is repeated on this page, in either direction, and nothing here should be treated as standing in for them.

Where your case is not covered, the admissions office is the place to ask, and it is worth asking in writing so that you keep both what you were told and when you were told it. If your situation is unusual, say so plainly rather than trying to fit it to the shape of a form. This site sets out what it will and will not state about an institution, and the same principle is a good one to read by generally: prefer the body that decides to the body that describes.

There is no fee figure on this page, by design. Amounts are set by the institution, vary between programmes and between levels, and change on a schedule that nothing outside the institution controls, so a figure reproduced here would misinform somebody eventually. Possibilities worth raising directly, either of which may or may not apply to you: a state-funded place and a fee-paying place may be charged differently, and programmes taught in different languages may be priced separately.

Beyond the fee, establish what else is billed, when each part falls due, and what a published amount is understood to cover. It also helps to keep the fee and the cost of living in separate columns, since they are set by different people and move for different reasons. Why the two are worth budgeting apart explains the habit. For the amount itself, go to the institution's own fee pages for the relevant year and for your programme, and take those as the only version worth acting on.