Milan 1) Why did you choose to study/undertake a placement abroad?

Milan
1) Why did you choose to study/undertake a placement abroad?
I am very interested in fashion and I have my own label and I've done some fashion shows. I
also love to travel and getting closer to new cultures, therefore I thought that an exchange
would be perfect. With my fashion interest and the longing for studying abroad, it all came
very natural to choose Milan for the exchange as it is a fashion capital.
2) Preparations before going abroad
I didn't need so much preparation because the exchange was in Europe. But you need to have
an insurance, contact your university in the exchange country for getting a letter of acceptance
so I could get CSN. You also need to choose courses before going, but in Milan it was
possible to change it afterward until a month or so after the courses had started, but what I
didn't know/thought about was that some of the courses were full so you were not able to
choose them anyway after the first registration date.
3) How were you received at your study place or placement?
We had a welcome meeting were me got all information about the university. And they had a
welcoming committee, or something called ESN who where there to take care of the exchange
students and helping them in finding apartments and arrange parties.
4) How was your experience of the actual studies/placement?
The studies were great. I studied a lot of management courses both in fashion and event
communication, and they have a lot of interesting guest speakers and field trips and are very
practical when it comes to group works. I learned so much from the group works. The
teachers were very good and they managed to get so many important guest speakers to come
there for us.
5) Give an overview of the accommodation
It was quite hard to find an accommodation. Me and the friend I travelled there with had read
a lot of reviews about people staying there before and heard that it was suppose to be easy to
find an apartment. It was quite hard though and we ended up staying at a hotel for three
nights, at a friends place for two nights and with a Swedish family for two nights. Then we
had the lucky opportunity to know a friend of a friend who was Italian and could help us to
look for apartments. So we found one of 70sqm for 1200 Euros a month. Then it was easy to
find some other Swedes who wanted to move in with us to lower the rent. So we lived 5
people in the apartment and had a really cheap rent. The apartment was only three blocks
from Bocconi, the school, so it was really nice. About the accommodations that the school
offers I think they are not the best, they are very expensive (about 600 Euros for a small room
in a corridor) and the most of the exchange students ends up in dorms far away from the
school (20 minutes by tram). So I think it's the best to look for an apartment, I guess it's much
easier if you're just one person who looks as well.
6) How did you spend your spare time?
For the spare time it was a lot of parties. We went out to eat dinner almost every night,
because it's quite cheap to take a drink and for the same price you also get aperitivo, buffe
(around 6-8 euro). ESN, the student organisation, arranged a lot of trips and parties. During
the spring break we rented a car and travelled around in Toscany for a week.

7) Coming back to your country of origin
Coming back was so depressing, because I had such a nice time, maybe the best of my life.
We became like a family the other swedes that I lived with. It's so much nice people that goes
on exchange and they are all open get to know new people. We also hang out with some
italians. I guess that they are more open minded about exchange students than the swedes. I
got back quite late to my home country because it's the semester end almost a month after the
one in sweden. We had like a month for studying for the exams (6 of them).
8) Recommendations for next year's students abroad
Start looking for accomondations as quick as possible, go there one week ahead and search on
internet and talk to everyone, look at the notes in school. Go around in the area where you
wanna live and look for notes of "Affitasi" (to rent) at the doors and call. If you know that you
gonna have a summerjob or a internship that starts eraly in the summer it's possible to choose
courses that have the exams early in the exam period. THe university offers a lot of help with
internships as well and they arrange days for students to meet with companies. THey also
have a career service.
9) Positive/negative experiences of your study time abroad?
The positive about bocconi is that they have really interesting courses and that they are very
practical in the groupworks. They also have very interseting companies for guest speakers and
a lot of them are from the fashion industry. Milan is such a nice city to study in as well as it's
a fsahion capital and lies at a good spot in Italy, so you could easily travel around europe
during breaks. They also have fashion shows ans furniture fairs and other fairs that you can
visit. I don't have anything negative to say about my studies abroad, I would like to go back
there and stay there forever =)
When it comes to the exams they are very easy, I only studied about 3 hours before the
exams, so if you have been to all the lectures it's quite easy to pass the exams. But I would
recomend to take the most of the courses as attending student so you are able to do all the
interesting group assignments.