Université Jean Moulin: Lyon III

It's a good idea to be fairly near to an airport or train station, for easy access on arrival and departure with your large amount of luggage. Try not to spend all your time around people who speak your own language; try to speak the host language even with people who share your own native language.

There is truly no better way of learning a language than in a country where the target language is the native language of the people. Even without spending a long time looking in dictionaries and vocab books, I was able to improve my knowledge of French considerably.

Beware of the enormous deposit for accommodation that the host university may not inform you about. Mine was €1200 (about £750), and was mentioned in absolutely none of the paperwork that I was sent beforehand.

The university was helpful and friendly in finding me accommodation, however a few issues I had were that they did not give me a straight answer as to whether or not I would be sharing my room (indeed I did not find this out until I walked into my room for the first time); also there was no warning of the excessive €1200 deposit that had to be paid, and they would only accept cash for this deposit, which took about a week to obtain due to the ATMs not allowing you to withdraw that much per day. I had a very noisy neighbour, however this was obviously no fault of the university, and once I made a complaint, the issue was dealt with very well. The staff who deal with housing are all friendly and very well informed.

There are a lot of cafes, creperes, pubs, bars and restaurants in the old part of town. It is a beautiful area, day and night; the only problem is that it is expensive.