Details

• Ireland
• BaWiSo-23
• Undergraduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 3 months

1. Preparation

It is good to have a list of reasons why you want to go to a certain country or university at hand for the application process. Once you get accepted to UCD the university there hosts different online webinars where they share the most important information, which can be very handy. They also upload the slides and a recording afterwards if you can't make it to one of them. For me personally, I started looking for an accommodation early on off-campus. The university also offers on-campus accommodation but the allocation is a little short-notice, depending on what semester you plan on visiting. If they can't offer a place, it can sometimes be stressful to find something off-campus since there is a high demand. Just make sure you don't start looking too spontaneously for student accommodation.

2. Accommodation

I found my accommodation off-campus through an online platform that finds suitable student accommodation, which was called AmberStudent. The sales people behind the platform can be very pushy sometimes but I found an accommodation that worked for me. There are lots of off-campus accommodations on the internet but it's useful to use trustworthy platforms because there are a lot of scams. The prices for housing in Dublin are definitely more expensive than in Vienna. I had a room on my own in a house that I shared with four other students so it was off-campus in the 12th district which is in south-west of the city. It took me around forty minutes to get to the university by bus and personally, the area felt safe to me.

3. Academic life at host university

The UCD campus is huge. There are different student accommodations, different faculties, a cafeteria, coffee shops in every building, restaurants, shops, a cinema, sports fields (football, tennis, etc.), a swimming pool at the leisure/sports center, a doctor, a pharmacy and much more. There are a lot more discussions in the classes and a part of your grade is often participation and attendance (no mandatory attendance though), classroom sizes are often between 30-80 people. There are courses that are a lot more focused than at WU Vienna so they aren't too general. For example, you don't have one over-arching HR or marketing course but courses that focus on one particular subject within those topics, like Brand Management or Consumer Psychology.

5. Every day life in the host country

Public transport can be very frustruating. The main transportation method are the buses and they aren't always very reliable and it can take fifteen to thirty minutes before the bus arrives. There isn't any subway. There are two main metro lines - but they don't go to the university - and a train along the Eastern parts of the city - also not useful for getting to the university. There is a Leap Card which you can use for all kinds of public transport in Ireland and the Student Leap Card charges only half the money than the regular Leap Card. The north of the city isn't always safe but it depends a lot on where you stay exactly but it's worth researching if you want to have an accommodation there. Otherwise I haven't really experienced any situations where I didn't feel safe around the city. There are a lot of stadiums around the city (Croke Park is the largest one) where they have sports events like rugby, hurling or Gaelic football. Besides that there are also lots of concerts, fleamarkets and of course pubs you can visit.

6. Testimonial

My exchange semester was great overall. It was interesting to learn more about the Irish culture and meet so many Irish people and listen to their stories. The university also hosted several events where you could meet new people and there were usually many other Erasmus students in the courses which made it very easy to meet new people.