Sciences Po Paris (IEP)

They organized a month long integration course before term actually started. Finding accomodation in Paris is a nightmare of psycopathic inducing anger. I used the month to find an appartment, but i was put up in a student accomodation campus for that period whilst searching. Science Po had organized this months provisional lodgings but also has a service which tries to help students find accomodation. The university can only give you advice and sometimes a few addresses. You will end up slogging it out with the rest of the student population of Paris if you want somewhere reasonable to stay, unless you have contacts or have started looking in the January before you come over.

ninguno

Get a laptop, and ask loads of stupid but intelligent sounding question in class. In a room full of foreigners who have difficulty understanding what you are saying, you will be seen as intelligent and witty.

Comparing my experience to friends who went to other universities in the Erasmus context, Sciences Po seems more difficult. They have an expectation of a high level of proficiency in the french language before you come over. It is not seen as somewhere that teaches the french language as such. You go there to learn the Sciences Po method of doing things, to open new fields of academic interest etc. Being relatively fluent in the language is almost taken for granted by the university and those that dont struggle a small bit, although this is only in the first months of "acclimitisation".

buy the metro student all year pass the second you get there. it will save you a packet. Drink is really cheap in the supermarkets. Drinks in nightclubs arent.