Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM)

things are more expensive than in australia. also I tended to go out and travel a lot so that meant I spent a lot of money

Courses at this university are a joke. Don't bother doing any important subjects, you won't learn anything. Just take a few electives.

Facilities are very old and dilapidated eg: library small and poorly resourced, computers are out of date (10 years old some of them!) and constantly broken. They could be much better organised at this as well. Enrolment is not until the third week of semester and there are no timetables so it is utter chaos to begin with and hard to work out where the hell the classes are. They force you to get your student card from one of the banks on campus which takes over a month which is bloody annoying since you can't borrow library books/do research until you have it.

i wish I had have known a lot more about finding accomodation and the classes I would be taking

Madrid and Spain are great but this university is terrible. Badly organised, and don't care about their international students (especially if you come from a country where they don't get many students). They don't have any kind of orientation to help you settle in/find your classes/meet people (very unusual - I studied abroad in mexico and there were heaps of parties and information sessions at the start of semester). The locations sucks as well - way north of Madrid, over 40mins train ride from the central station. At the end of my studies they sent the wrong academic transcript to my home university so I haven't been able to get credit points for the courses I did yet. I have tried contacting several professors and administrative staff at the autonoma but they are not very responsive (a teacher from one of my classes rudely ignored me entirely) and so they have still not sent me the correct over six months after I got back home. NIGHTMARE!

apartment is the only choice really. there is an erasmus residence on the campus, but the campus is in the middle of nowhere with limited public transport so it is no good if you wanna go places/have a social life