Details

• Ireland
• BaWiSo-19
• Undergraduate
• WS 2025
• Time spent at the partner university: 4 months

1. Preparation

Make sure you start looking into where and when you want to go early. Use the excel sheet provided by WU to look at what Unis there are avaliable and what courses you can take there. There is always the option to fill your free electives with ECTS that may otherwise not be applicable to exsisting WU course. Start looking into accomedations early as well, i stayed on campus, but as far as i am aware the spots there are limited. There are always other options to stay in the city, but these are limited and may already all be taken when you start looking to late. From vienna flights to Dublin are very easy and cheap to come by (Ryanair). Ans are in my opinion the only viable option.

2. Accommodation

I was stressed about the accomodation process, because i started looking to late and the accomodations on campus are handed out very close to the actual start of the exchange. If you want to be on the safe side start looking into accomodations a few month ahead of your exchange. A few people i know had accomodation secured and were able to cancel these qithout any cost, once they got on campus accomodation. I stayed on campus is the Belgrove Student Accomodations. It was very close to all my classes and you were quite close to the Buses taking you to the city as well. The campus is very safe, with security everywhere. The Belgrove accomodations are quite run down, but are the cheapest option you have. Still expensive, but so is all of Dublin. I had mold in my matress, but that issue got sorted out quite quickly.

3. Academic life at host university

The campus facilites are fine, there is a Supermarket on campus and a few not too far away. Loads of restarants, some better than others (I reccomend the Chinese place in the Confucius Institute). There are good studying spots in the library and the health science building. The accademic culture was quite underwhelming in my opinion. Maybe i just had bad luck with some of my course selections, but in generall UCD seemed way worse organized and staffed than WU. The teaching style is very course dependent, some were just lectures, some where more groupwork focussed. The grading is quite fair and if you achieve good grades in WU you will have no trouble at UCD either. My course reccomendations are High tech entrepeneurship and Spanish. In generall look into the deliverables beforehand and choose according to what you usually like best (papers, grouppresentations, etc)

5. Every day life in the host country

Public trasport is solid with Busses and Cabs being your only option. The Busses are often quite full, but you get into the city and the areas where you may want to spend your time of campus quite well(~40 minutes). I always felt very safe, both on campus and in the City. There are loads of activities you can do on or off campus, including hikes, pubs, live sporting events etc. Pubs, of course, are at the center of evening activity with loads of live music and people having a grand time. The nightlife of dublin in general is very good. You have the option of joining a sports society on UCD, although i found this quite underwhelming (Tennis) because these tend to be quite overflowing with other Students. There are a few free gyms on campus, these are good, althou quite full as well.

6. Testimonial

I really enjoyed my time in Dublin. Sure it was quite expensive and the weather situation may not be for everyone, but its a beautifull place with amazing people and you can always have a good time. If you expect an amazing accedemic experience UCD will not be for you. The people i met made the exchange very special to me and i made very good friends while at UCD. Ireland in general is a beautifull country, if you can do a roadtrip, so worth it. If i had to go back and time and decide on my place of exchange i would choose Dublin again in a heartbeat.