ICADE

Foreign people in Spain are not so welcome than we can imagine before going, we are used to thinking about Spain in a holiday ambiance, but people is very different.

The university was as good as expected, they have very strong links with private firms. It guides students to be ready and aware of what is going to be expected from them in their professional careers.

Eating out gets expensive, try and cook more often than not. Don't blow all your money when you first get here because your so excited to arrive. There is a hopping nightlife every night in Madrid and it is very tempting to go out every night when you first get here. My advice would be to remember that nights at the bars come and go with not much intrinsic value. I'd rather have some of the money I blew at the bars these days for traveling.

According to my experience, there still remained so many things to do but there was no time left at the end. and: visit Valencia, you will like it!

When I first arrived in Madrid I had an everyday knowledge of the language and although I encountered some problems the majority of time it was fine. But for the first few months of university I was lost, along with my colleagues. Because we are considered normal students of the university, we are in classes with spanish students (some of which had spent the first two years of the programme in Dublin, while others had spent the first two years in the UK, France or Germany, along with students from these countries). Then after the first semester we had to do an internship and I found that quite difficult too regarding the language aspect. But this year, the final year of the programme, I've had little or no problems at all with language at the university. We even had to write our thesis here in spanish and I remember back to first year thinking "oh my god that'll be impossible" and well in the end it has been a challenge but surpassable. I handed mine in to the office today, completed and bound. Yes!

Travel tips: Barcelona, Sevilla, Cordoba, Almeria and much more.