One of the best year in my life!!!

In 2008 I decided to apply to the Erasmus Exchange program with my university Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. It is preferable to start early if you wish to go abroad, because by the end of January you have to give back your application form and by March you know which university you will be sent.

Also, starting early in the year will allow you to put some money aside for next year.

The University of Birmingham was my first choice and I was really pleased when I found out that I was selected to go there. But this was just the beginning of everything.

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Before you leave

Between the day you know you are going there next year and the moment you actually arrive in Bham, you will have to go through a lot of administrative procedures. The paper that stresses most students is the application form you have to send to the University of Birmingham and the paper that you have to give to the French administration with the list of lectures you have chosen.

Concerning the application form of the University of Birmingham, do not worry! This is not a new stage in the selection process. Indeed, your home institution has already taken care of that and it is taking the responsibility of sending students who can follow a year in a British university.

So basically whatever happens, you are sure that a position is saved for you next year. Still, you will be contacted by the Maison de l’International and you will be invited to send an application form to the University of Birmingham. Be careful: firstly it will require a signature from the person responsible at La Sorbonne, so do not start taking care of that paper at the last minute; then, as you can imagine, the sooner you send this application the sooner you will have an answer from the university. So it is better to start taking care of it straight after you have received that email from la Maison de l’International.

In the application form you will have to send a list of lecture you wish to follow. Again, do not worry. This not a definitive list and actually you will probably not follow it once you are there. You need to go on the website of the university, pick lectures that sound interesting and match the French ones, and that will be ok. Once you have arrived at the university in September, you will be given the full list of lecture available for international students and the timetables. Then you will be asked to fill a new list of lecture which this time will be the true one.

For the French form that you have to give to the administration, just copy this list of lectures and that will be ok. This one is purely administrative and they will just keep a copy of it, you will keep the original.

It is preferable to get as much information on Birmingham before you leave. If you wish to find a private accommodation you need either of hotel or a youth hostel. I personally took that option and I stayed at the Backpacker youth hostel. Overall it was ok; not the best I have ever lived in, but it does the trick.

It sounds stupid to say that but: do not forget to take the address of your hotel/hostel! Believe it or not I met several people at the airport that did not know where they were going, thinking that their hotel was the only one in the area!

Have a look at a map of the train network, so you will know how it works and where the university is.

And finally take a little bit of money with you.

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Accommodation & co

One of the most sensitive subjects is finding your accommodation in Bham. As you might already know you have the choice between private accommodation and hall of residence. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. All depends on what you want.

If you do not wish to have to worry about finding an accommodation it is better to apply for a hall of residence. One of the main advantages of halls is that you will have a roof over your head when you arrive. Unfortunately, most people taking that option the year I was in Birmingham were disappointed. Indeed hall of residence are quite expensive for the comfort they offer and a lot of people try to leave them a couple of weeks after their arrival. Also the students you will find in hall of residence are usually first years and they happen to be very VERY noisy. So you will probably not find the nice atmosphere you are looking for. Also, most of halls are regrouped in the Vale Village, about twenty minutes away from the university, on a road that has very little public lighting at night.

Also be careful: once you have agreed on renting a room in a hall of residence, you cannot go away unless you find someone to replace you. This is very hard to do and so far I have only met one person who managed to do that.

If you think you can handle the stress of having to find an accommodation, you can try to find one in the private sector. In that case you have many options: you can either find a studio, but it might be very expensive (more than £100 a week); or you can find a room in a house (between £40 and £80 a week).

If you have the possibility, I would advise you to spend a week in Birmingham at the end of August or at the beginning of September. Although you might have heard that all the best accommodations are already taken, this is actually a good moment to find an accommodation.

Most British students look for a place to live around February the previous year. But by September, some of them might decide that they want to change universities or they have a fight with their friends and do not want to live with them. In that case, because most tenancies are joint tenancies, they have to find someone to rent the now empty room. That is why you will find a lot of rooms available in already occupied houses. You can find such rooms by consulting websites such as Studentpad or Gumtree.

You can also decide to go through renting agencies. You will find a dozen of them on Bristol Road. All you have to do is go there and ask them to take you to houses. They will either give you an appointment or they will arrange a visit straight away. Prior to that, you need to have an idea of how much you want to spend in the rent and if you want a joint tenancy or an individual room.

This an important aspect of renting in the private sector. You will find that you can either rent just a room in a house (and you will be responsible for only your room) or you can rent an entire house (and you will be mutually responsible for each other’s rents and the common rooms like the living room, etc. )

Individual rooms in good houses are hard to find. They do exist, but they are very hard to find. If you find a house that you can rent with a joint tenancy, it means that if it is not already fully occupied, you will have to find other people to rent it with you. For that you can go on different websites such as Studentpad, where an entire section is dedicated to finding roommates; or on the Gumtree website. It is easier than it sounds. Just a small advice if you put an advert in Studentpad: put your email address and your mobile phone directly on the add. It will not be erased by the webmasters and people will be able to contact you faster.

Finding good roommates is a lottery. You will never be able to know if they are totally honest and that you will get along very well with them. But most of the time everything goes well.

If you decided to find an accommodation in the private sector but you regret making that choice, you can still apply for a hall of residence. What you do is you go the housing service of the university and you ask them for empty rooms. There is a surprising amount of rooms that are not taken, so you might find something. Also, you can ask around for people who wish to leave a hall of residence. This happens quite often, especially with international students.

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Personally I had an interesting experience on house hunting! I first arrived on the Monday and decided to have a look around the university and the town. I sat a couple of appointments with different agencies on the next day and also had several visits.

The first visits could have panicked anybody: the houses where in bad conditions, quite dirty, etc. I met two girls who were second years and who were saying that there were no more accommodations available, that it was a disaster, etc. Basically not such a good first day.

The second day I went for the visit with the other agencies. I was with two other people (a father and a son) and we visited places that were decent and where I could see myself live. Then the two people left and I was left to visit a last house: my house for the year.

Unfortunately it was a joint tenancy. So I had to find three other people with who I could live. I first phoned the two girls who told me they had decided to go for hall of residence (after only a day of searching for an accommodation! ) and then the two men, who had found something on their own.

I went then to the Housing Service to explain that I was looking for people. They showed me Studentpad and I tried almost straight away to find people.

To go on the Internet I was going to the library. If you are a future student, you can access to the library by showing your acceptance letter (this is really useful to know. ) I struggled for a day because the add I put took a lot of time to appear.

I was still going to different agencies to find something and I saw a really good house which was perfect, but a bit far away from the uni… The same day someone phoned to ask to visit the house that I had found. Those two girls ended up being my two first roommates!

We visited and we all agreed that we wanted to rent the house. We were missing one last person, but after a day without any success, we managed to find an agreement with the agency: we would rent the three bedrooms in the house and then we would find the fourth person later.

We signed the agreement and by the time the year started, the agency had found someone.

I cannot hide the fact that the three days between the moment I found the house and the moment I finally sign the contract were very stressful days. But in the end I was really satisfied.

Bills & co

You have to know some important facts about bills before doing anything. The first thing is that the name on the bill says who is paying. If it is not your name, you don’t actually have to pay or if it is your name people do not actually have to refund you. Therefore it is better if each roommate takes a bill under his or her name.

Also the day you arrive: Do a meter reading. Find the meter and take note of the number on it. You might not have time to call your different providers straight away, but this will be useful when you do.

When you arrive, it is important that you know which company is your provider. You have a phone number (I don’t remember it, but I am sure you can find it easily on the Internet) where you can get this kind of information. You have to phone them to give a meter reading and give the name of the person who is going to take care of the bill. If you do not do that, you might end up having to pay for bills of the previous tenants.

If you receive one that has the name of the previous tenants, again you do not have to pay. You give it to the renting agency so they can contact the person and you call the company to tell them that the tenants have changed.

Once you leave the place, again you have to call them to say you are leaving and pay the last bill.

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