Firstly, a person from the Warsaw School of Economics (WSE) will email you tell you about your exchange. Polish people have cool names. The person that emailed me Marta Sent-Pawlowska. She will send you the academic calender as well as an ECTS booklet. ECTS is the system that they use to count modules in Europe, so it's basically a list of modules. For SMU, I only need to clear a module that is worth 3 ECTS and above to map my modules back. Subsequently, she will email you telling you about getting your accommodation. I had some issues at this part. School starts on 19th February and the hostel only allows me to check in on 18th February. So if you want to go to Europe earlier you have to find some other form of accommodation. I plan to go to Warsaw early, like on the 12th, dump my luggage in Warsaw and then go to Paris to find my friends. So not being able to check in early is a problem. But I asked around and apparently there are storage rooms all over Warsaw. One place is this: http://www.cityselfstorage.pl/o-nas/city-self-storage-polska.html Another place is at the subway that is near my university. Apparently they have storage rooms that cost like 7-10 pln a day. That is just a few SGD. Well, worse come to worst, I hope that I can put them with my buddy.
Yes! Unlike most other universities, I get a buddy! And they send the funniest emails. I got this from them today.
They do sound quite friendly and nice. Which is good.
I also did some course selection exercise. In WSE, you select what courses you are interested in, then like 1-2 months later they release the schedule and you check if there are any clashes or maybe some classes close due to lack of students or professors or something. WSE will send you a login email and then you will follow their instructions and choose the many courses that they offer. This is what I chose. I tried to max out the cap of 70 ECTS as I see no harm hitting that amount in case all my modules get closed or something, which I definitely do not want happening. If you are an SMU student reading this, most of my modules are either map was Finance electives, IEA, GRS, T&E or Business Options. I have cleared my GE and my second major is corporate communications and I can't really map that over.
Last of all, I have bought my air tickets! Uh-huh~ They cost me $1,150. Bought them from Finnair cause they have some Youth thing that gives you 46kg of check-in luggage. I'm leaving on the 12th Feb and coming back on 30th May. Changes to air tickets cost like 50 euros if I really need. These are two stop flights so I will fly from Singapore to Helsinki and then wait for 2 hours before taking a flight from there to Warsaw. Luckily WSE is only a 15 minutes car ride from the airport. Hope my buddy picks me up on that day!
Also, if you plan to travel around Europe, check out this website called airbnb.com. It is a website that you can find cheap accommodation, usually much cheaper than all those hotels. But some of them can be quite dodgy so make sure you read the reviews and choose one that many people have been to. This is my first time using the website so I am still learning but it seems to be a popular choice.
