I rented an apartment through contacts, but it’s pretty expensive to stay in the city center. My apartment costed 6500SEK /month for about 45 sqm with kitchen, bathroom and sleeping located at Kungsholmen. I don’t know much about the student accommodation and how much help you can get but it’s definitely okay to stay a bit outside city center. The public communication is okay but also expensive but you’ll need a travel pass (monthly with student price) when travelling around to different hospitals. Since you don’t know in advance to which hospital you’re going to is the best advice to try to stay close to a subway station.

I chose to go on my exchange to KI in Stockholm because I’m from Sweden and wanted to try the education in my hometown where I also have family and friends in the city studying medicine and heard it was a well-planned semester with high ambitions from the University. I also didn’t have many other options for exchange from my home university when I wanted to apply for a semester abroad.

The information I got from KI was sufficient and covered everything for me. It was a bit of a struggle to get accepted with different formalities mailing around and I had to take an MRSA-test in Stockholm before starting the clinical practice.

This was definitely the best semester through my whole education so far. I learned so much by doing this in Swedish, by getting all the support and feeling welcomed wherever I came. It was such a good integration between the different courses and focus from hospital and primary care. I cannot tell much about how it would have been to come as an exchange student who doesn’t know Swedish. Much of the communication was held in Swedish and lectures and other teaching as well. Some Norwegian and Danish students managed well though and everybody knows English so it wouldn’t be a problem to get the most essential medical out of it. From the social point of view, English speaking would be more of a plus than something negative to find contacts.

My impression of the Swedish or at least the study environment in Stockholm is that you’re very welcome and taken care of. At all new courses you get coffe, introduction, papers printed and welcomed as a person and not as a low-class student. I appreciate that very much and also given the opportunity to talk to a mentor about the feelings around special situations, thoughts about future and such. The students have a mentor following them through the whole study period and we also got the advantage to try it. Some special (compulsory) days where focusing on other subjects touching humanity, psychology and topics that I would like to hear more about during the education at my home university.