When I
was younger, I always thought about living abroad and how that would be. When I
had to choose an university, I chose one where there were many possibilites to go abroad. My home university (in Leiden, the
Netherlands) has a special exchange program for students from the second year
of the bachelor to go to Karolinska. Every year a group of 10 students goes to Sweden for 1 semester and there are also students of Karolinska coming to the
Netherlands. This was the first option to study abroad and I really wanted to
do that. My main reasons to go on exchange were the possibility to live in
another city for 6 months, meet new international people and learn about
another country and culture. Another reason was the opportunity to explore a new university and see how it all works there.
Because 10
students of my year were going to KI and this exchange already exists for a
few years, a lot of things were also organised for us which made it all a bit easier. We also didn't have to choose courses, because we were just going to follow the courses of the second year of Biomedicine.
I made a list of things I had to organise myself, like housing and insurance, but also signing up for the introduction week and finding out if you need specific vaccinations. I would really recommend to other exchange students to make such a list, because a lot of small things have to be organised. I also got a list of KI of things I had to do before I arrived, that was really handy!