Details

• Chile
• BaWiSo-23
• Undergraduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 4 months

1. Preparation

For the application process, make sure to read the requirements for the university carefully (if you need language certificates, etc.). For example, if you want to take local courses in Spanish, they say that you require a certificate. For the interview process, do not stress yourself too much. The interviews were conducted in English, so do not worry about your Spanish (at that point).

2. Accommodation

Since I went to Viña del Mar, I cannot speak for the campus and accommodation in Santiago. But for Viña, I would highly recommend to rent an apartment in the "Torres", as they call it. Those are 4 towers directly at the beach where basically 80% of exchange students lived. Those are normal, private apartments (so it is not a student hotel) but the landlords there primarily rent to exchange students during the semesters. It was a great time there, since we all lived so close to each other. It is a very safe area and insanely beautiful. We were 3 people in a flat (3 bedrooms, living room, 2 bathrooms) with a sea view balcony and we paid 850.000 chilean pesos in total for the rent and around 250.000clp more for running costs per month. There is a private uni bus leaving to university very close by, but you can always go around by uber, which is very cheap. There are also many local busses ("micros") going around the city for around 50 cents per ride. If you want to live in the torres, you should contact a former exchange student and ask him for landlord contacts. Be sure to message and talk with them clearly on what you want, else you may end up with surprises afterwards (we forgot to ask about washing machine in our apartment and had to use the common space).

3. Academic life at host university

The campus is beautiful, even better than WU in my opinion. There are many types of courses offered, either local courses in Spanish, local courses in English or International Courses (only for exchange students) in English. I can only speak for the International Courses, but they were honestly very chill. You had lots of time to travel around South America and some of the teachers said we should send them our plane tickets if we miss classes and they will excuse us, since they also wanted us to learn about the culture and travel around. I also recommend you to take a Spanish course!

5. Every day life in the host country

Life is great in Viña. You have a lot of things to do, many different kinds of sports. We went surfing a lot, horseback riding (which was a highlight during the semester!), tennis, padel, beachvolleyball, etc. Public transport is very different to Vienna, because there are only small busses driving around the city that you basically hop on wherever you want and hop off again. In Viña it is also very safe, but petty crime is still common, like pickpocketing. Valparaìso is beautiful and safe during the day but very dangerous during the night as the locals say, but nothing happened to us. If you go there during the night (for party) just always take an Uber home. In total, social life was amazing during this exchange. Every day way a new adventure and there was never the question on "Should we do something today?" when waking up, there was always something going on.

6. Testimonial

The whole experience was really amazing. I met a lot of great people that I now consider as a family. Every day was a new adventure, with many countries travelled to, many different cultures experienced and many great friends made. Waking up every day there was never the question "Should we do something today?" but always "What's on today". I was really really sad when the semester ended and we had to say goodbye to all of our friends. For me, the semester could have been way longer.