Mykolas Romeris University

Almost everything people mean by student life comes down to how time is organised. How much of the week is timetabled and how much is independent, whether your days are spent with a steady group or a changing one, and how far apart the places you need to be sit from each other will shape an experience far more reliably than anything written in general terms about an institution. These arrangements also differ from programme to programme inside the same university, which is why the question worth asking is always about your programme rather than about the place.

Put these to the student services or student affairs office: how a teaching week is arranged on the course you are considering; whether attendance is expected in person and whether that varies; how societies, sport and student representation are organised, and in which languages they operate; and what is available to students in the period before teaching begins. Ask separately which language your programme is taught and assessed in, and which language day-to-day administration uses, since those can be different. If you are coming from another educational system, the expectations around independent study are usually worth reading about in advance.

Establish early whether the institution operates accommodation, how a place is applied for, and whether that application is separate from the application to study. Halls, where they exist, tend to run on a calendar of their own with their own opening and closing dates, and an offer of a place on a course does not by itself hold a room. Ask what an agreement covers, how long it runs, what is payable beyond the rent, and how and when it ends.

In the private market the questions are the same wherever you are: length, notice, what stands as a deposit and how it is returned, what is included, who is responsible for repairs, and whether anything can be signed before arrival. If you will be sharing, agree how costs are split and recorded before moving in rather than afterwards, since handling money with flatmates is far easier as a conversation at the start than as a dispute later. Arranging accommodation early is worth the effort because it is the piece of a move that is hardest to fix from a distance.

An applicant arriving from another country is dealing with several separate systems at once, and it helps to keep them apart rather than treating the move as a single task. The categories are: entry and residence formalities; recognition of the qualifications you hold; evidence of language ability where a programme asks for it; health cover; any registration expected after arrival; money, including how fees are paid and how an account is opened; and whether work alongside study is possible in your circumstances.

This page deliberately answers none of them. The international student office is the first contact for anything the university itself handles, including which application and fee category it records you under, and it is also the office to ask when you are not sure who owns a question. Anything determined by a public authority should be checked with that authority in its own published information, and checked close to the point at which you will act on it rather than well before.

It is also worth looking at the wider picture of where you would be living and studying, not to weigh places against each other but to know what to prepare for. Our country orientation pages and city pages are written the same way as this one, which is to say they point at official sources instead of summarising them. Keep the written replies you receive from every office you contact, with their dates, so that you can tell later what has changed and what has not.

How to find what applies to you, in order: identify the exact programme; identify the level of study; identify the application route that matches your situation; then read the entry information attached to that combination on the institution's own admissions pages. Anything pitched more generally than that is unreliable for an individual applicant, and that includes anything you might read on a page like this one.

Entry conditions, dates and processes are not reproduced here, because they change and because they are stated on the institution's own pages. Where those pages leave a question open, ask the admissions office, and if you are applying from abroad ask the international office as well, since responsibility for a single answer is sometimes split between them. Other orientation pages follow the same pattern, so the questions carry across a shortlist without needing to be reinvented.

You will not find a fee figure on this page. Fee information is published by the institution on its own pages, updated on its own cycle, and may vary between programmes and routes, so any figure carried on a third-party page risks being wrong in a way a reader cannot see from the page itself. The official website is what we verify, and it is where the current answer sits.

Before you go looking, note this possibility: programmes taught in different languages may be priced separately, and which rate applies may depend on the category a student is placed in. Whether that is the case here is a question rather than a fact this page can supply, and it is not to be assumed in either direction. Ask the admissions or international office which category applies to you, which rate follows from it, and where both are published.

Then read the institution's own fee pages for the year of entry you are applying for, rather than an older copy of them. Useful things to confirm: what the published amount covers, what is billed alongside it, when payments fall due, whether the amount can change across the course, and what happens if your circumstances change after a payment has been made. Questions to ask before paying tuition is a short list worth taking into that conversation.