If you’re reading this because you want to apply to Princeton, don’t hesitate, do it! If you’ve already been accepted, congratulations, once you’ve paid all the fines and filled out all the paper work, you’ll have the experience of a lifetime.

Being one of the top schools in the world, going to Princeton was a dream come true for me. The fact that it’s in the US and offers great opportunities for creating connections and delve into the research world only made it better. It’s not an easy process getting there though. Princeton wants you to send in an application which includes choosing which labs you would like to work in. Remember that the professors of the labs will read your application so make sure to put emphasis on any experience you have and show enthusiasm. Any questions you have about the whole process will be answered by the amazing exchange coordinator at Princeton, so never worry, you’ll receive all the help you need.

When you (finally) get fully accepted to Princeton they will send you a list of things to do. Most are straight forward and simply require you to fill in paper work but the VISA application and vaccination needs some extra work. Hopefully you’ll already have taken most vaccinations but for those you don’t have, book a time at Cityakuten Vaccination. They have student discounts and even gives some vaccines for free like Hepatitis B. Speaking of that vaccine, you have to take 3 shots and the last thing you want to do is take the last at Princeton and pay for it, so either get the first shot at least 6 months before you leave, or make sure your final shot is to be taken once you’re back in Sweden. The VISA application has several steps, all which include a lot of papers sent back and forth. Don’t worry though, both Princeton and the American Embassy work quickly so as long as you start when you receive your first form you’ll get your VISA in time. They also require you to go to the embassy for an “interview”. That interview last for about 10 seconds and is not something to worry about.

Princeton will give you a specific date when they want you to arrive, however that date is a week after the last course at Karolinska ends so if you want to you can spend some time in the US before you go to Princeton. Or you can plan to do so only to have your flight cancelled by a snow storm... If you’re going straight to campus the easiest way is to fly to Newark International Airport and from there you take the NJ Transit train to Princeton. This is the same train you’ll use if you come from (or later go to) NYC.

The Office of International Programmes will have dinners and small excursions which you can attend the days before courses and lab work start and I strongly recommend you to attend, not only for the information you get but also because you’ll meet the other exchange students with whom I spent countless of awesome evenings and weekends with. You’ll also be invited to the Davis International Center and they can help you with any paperwork and they also have events every week which are fun to attend.

Unfortunately, but understandably, going to Princeton isn’t cheap and it’s impossible to get away from it. Be grateful you don’t have to pay the tuition fee ($41,820/year). You have to live in a dorm at campus ($3,785/semester) and purchase at least the smallest meal plan ($1,665/semester). You also have to take their insurance ($950) and pay for the vaccination and flight ticket. However you can get a pretty good and cheap flight (just over 3000kr) if you book it in time and I saved money by not buying their bigger meal plans and instead going to events which offer free food which also makes your time even better by experiencing more of Princeton and the American culture. It’s also much cheaper to eat out in USA than in Sweden and if you need to make big purchases there is a free TigerTransit bus on Saturdays leaving from campus to a shopping area with Walmart and other stores.

If you plan on travelling (which you should) you can keep the costs down by looking for cheap bus tickets on Megabus (they sometimes sell them for only $1) to NYC and try to get some friends together and rent a car when going to Philadelphia, or Washington, DC. It is both cheaper than the train and much faster.

Princeton will arrange a dorm room at campus for you, meaning you’ll save a lot of time both not having to look for a place to live and having walking distance to everything on campus. It does mean that you don’t have much of a choice concerning money and standard. You do get to choose between an Upperclass Dormitory and Residential College. Only Juniors and Seniors live in Upperclass dorms and I lived in one called Pyne Hall. I shared bathroom with the floor and kitchen with the whole building, but rarely saw anyone in the kitchen anyway and the nice thing with not having your own bathroom is that you don’t have to clean it. Most all dorm halls have a free laundry room as well. Residential Colleges are for all undergraduate students and most exchange students live in them. In my opinion it is more convenient to live in Residential Colleges as an exchange student because they have common rooms and students whose job is to help you if you have problems. You can also ask for a single or shared room and if you want a single you are very likely to get one. If you haven’t shared a room before, or have and would like to not do it again, I recommend that you ask since it’s nice to have your own space and it doesn't cost you extra.

When it comes to food, Princeton has 4 dining halls at which you purchase a meal plan. You may have heard that the food in America will get you fat and it certainly can, but if you can resist the temptation of eating pizza, burgers and dessert every day at the dining halls and instead eat their “normal” food, which is very good, that won’t be an issue. If you had plans to cook your own food, rethink it. First off, the kitchens are few. Second, you have to buy all the cooking equipment and considering you’ll only be here for 4 months it’s barely worth it. Finally, there are no grocery stores nearby, except really expensive ones. But don’t worry, you won’t starve, you'll have a meal plan and then just go to events and subscribe to the FreeFood listserv.

I conducted my final senior thesis at Princeton University. My supervisor worked both at the Department of Molecular Biology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB). Because my interest was in genetics I worked at EEB together with the professor and a PhD student at his lab. The department had many events and seminar talks and I attended as many as I could, not only to gain knowledge about the different fields but also to make connections for the future. They are also a great way to make friends and get invited to dinners with your co-workers, creating a nice bridge between work and your social life.

In contrast to most of my fellow students from Karolinska, I did not do wet lab work. Instead I did computational work which meant I did not have much previous experience from my bachelor studies and a lot of new things to learn. The first weeks consisted of a lot of reading and learning how to work with something I’d never done before but I found it very enjoyable and fascinating how much computational work had to be done and that I could actually do it. However if it's wet lab you want to do there is plenty of that at Princeton as well.

I consider myself very lucky with the lab I got to work in and the people there. Since everything was done on the computer I could choose my own working hours. Being a morning person that fitted very well with me and I chose to come in early in the morning and thus could go home before dinner every evening. I was expected to be able to plan my weeks myself to get the work done and to come with ideas for analysis methods and not just follow a protocol that someone gave me, something I appreciated since my worked felt a lot more like my own project and not something someone just handed to me.

“Work hard, play hard” is a saying that is used in USA to describe their academic culture but I found my lab to be much more relaxed than I would have expected. I was at work between 8 and 9 hours a day and did not have to come in during weekends. The hierarchy between students and professors was not very strict either. The professor in my lab did not want to be called by his title, however I would recommend that you address your supervisor and others as “Professor” until you get a good feeling for how your lab works.

For your actual thesis I suggest you start writing the introduction early on and that you by the end of the day make a detailed description of what you’ve done during the day. That way you’re also writing your methods and it’s much easier to go back in your notes to even pick up things for the discussion. Since you’re working for several months it’s almost impossible to remember those small things you picked up on in the beginning by the end of the semester.

Being in an English speaking country does make it much easier since you never have to worry about meeting someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you. The department I worked for did have a lot of international members and though they all spoke English very well you’ll have to be able to adapt to many different accents, some easier than others. However, this was more of a welcomed exercise for me than an issue and I enjoyed being surrounded by such a diverse mixture of people.

Many things in the US are similar to Sweden. For example, if ever in doubt of what to say, just start a conversation about the weather. You’ll also soon find yourself asking people how they are doing without expecting anything more than a “I’m fine thank you, how are you?” in return (though I never managed to adapt and give a bland answer back, being too enthusiastic to do so). Other words you’ll soon use what feels like hundreds of times a day are “thank you”, “sorry”, “you're welcome” and “please”. It got to the point when I wondered why everyone was so rude once I came home to Sweden.

Something to read up upon before coming to the US is the tipping system. Though tipping is simply a nice gesture in Sweden it is how many people make their living in the US, especially at restaurants. You’re expected to always give between 15-20% tip when you eat out, any less than that is considered extremely rude and only acceptable if the service was really bad. The reason is that the pay at a restaurant may be as little as $2-$4 an hour, meaning the workers need a good tip to make a living.

As a Princeton student, you eat, sleep and work at campus. Since everything is so centred there are also a lot of activities going on every day. You’ll see posters around campus, get e-mails every week about events and see a lot of activities on Facebook as well. Princeton also has its own app where you can find everything from a campus map and events to what’s on the menu in the dining halls. There is a free gym at campus and a movie theatre on the main street which views one free movie every Thursday-Saturday. The town Princeton itself isn’t very big and there isn’t much to do but you’ll find more than enough things to do anyway.

The students at Princeton are often very interested once you mention you’re an exchange student and will want to get to know you. Even so, I did most activities with the other exchange students since they also wanted to travel outside of Princeton. But as long as you put yourself out there and start talking with people you’ll make friends in many different circles.

If you want to embrace the second part of “Work hard, palay hard” there are several types of parties at campus. There are both “dorm parties” which are held by a student in their dorm apartment and bigger parties at the so called eating clubs. These are more alike fraternities and some are private, meaning you need to be invited by a student who’s a member, while some are open to all, Terrace being the most popular and often very crowded at weekends. There are also parties or events organized by the university which do not include alcohol but can be great fun with great performances and everything from just mingling to dancing afterwards. As I already said, you’ll be anything but bored during your time at Princeton!

I doubt you’ve come to Princeton without knowing how close it is to New York. Take the train or the bus, though avoid the bus at weekdays, but don’t rent a car. You’ll have to pay a lot both to drive into NYC and for parking. As much as there is to do in Princeton, there’s a hundred times more to do in NYC. You can spend an entire weekend and the Metropolitan and still not have seen everything and I also recommend going to Brooklyn (and taking a late night walk back across the bridge, seeing the entire city light up in front of you!). I spent many weekends in Manhattan, sometimes planning ahead what to do but other times just strolling around for hours, simply taking in the city.

A trip to Philadelphia is also worth it, and maybe a longer trip to Washington DC or Boston. Any of those places are easiest to reach by car if you can get a group of friends together to go there. Also keep your eyes open for trips organized by your Residential College. They can be everything from a Broadway musical to a professional ice-hockey game and are much cheaper than if you’d buy a ticket yourself. Being a student in general will give you discounts to many museums and historical sites outside of Princeton and also allows you to see varsity games for free and get discounts to music concerts at campus, and much much more.

Going abroad to study is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. What you gain from it is well worth the extra effort you have to put in to get there. Choosing Princeton will not only give you the academic advantage of doing research at one of the world’s greatest universities but I promise you’ll also enjoy yourself immensely, and you get to experience studying in an environment where everything revolves around research and university life.

I said in the beginning that coming to Princeton had been a goal of mine since I began my studies at Karolinska. I’ve now fulfilled it but with this experience I’ve gained more goals for my future, both academic and personal, and increased my belief that anything I can dream I can also achieve.