 Spain. Known for its gorgeous scenery and people, tapas and nightlife, and building so breathtaking you can build them in video games. Students in Spain frequently pursue degrees in humanities at the arts as well as hospitality management and tourism. Business topics are strong in Spain and more recently the country has emerged as a top performer in green studies such as ecological agriculture and sustainable development. Hello my people, my name is Mijam and today the Score Channel is going to show you everything you need to know to study in Spain. But before we go on, please take a moment to go into that lonely, desolate comment section and tell me what country you want to cover next. It's not that I'm desperate for ideas, there's like 195 countries or whatever the number is, but you know I want to know what you want so tell me please. Spain calls their undergraduate studies grado and it's going to take you four years to rack up the 240 credits you'll need to pass. So universities in Spain start their classes in September or October. They will generally accept their pre-enrollment applications until the end of July, but in general for international students I would recommend that you actually apply as soon as you possibly can. You can send your applications as early as December of the year before you want to go. You're going to hear this term quite a few times in this video the phrase autonomous communities that are kind of like states in that they have some freedom to dictate their own rules and so what they all have decided to do is have their own single application for public universities in their territory. If you want to apply to any number of universities within the same territory, the same autonomous community, all you have to do is fill out one form and send it to all of them, but if you apply to a university from a different autonomous community that's two forms. Oh and also it could mean two tests. Yeah there's there's a lot of tests so let's move to the pre-rex. In Spain when you finish high school you take an exam called the Evaluación de Batillerato para el Exceso a la Universidad or the Evalu. Universities use this test to determine if you're eligible for admission to the university. There's just one problem. There's not one test. This Evalu has so many alternate names you would think it's an illegal narcotic. There's Evalu, Evalu, Abau, Eubau, Pebau. There's probably a couple more that I missed. Well it turns out that each of the autonomous communities has their own version of the test. Some of them have decided to agree and just do the same version together, but for the most part that's why there's all these different names for the same thing. It just gets a different name depending on where you go, but the content is still the same. Fortunately for you as a foreigner you don't have to worry about Ebao or it's 16 different names. All you have to worry about is the PCE, prueba de competencias específicas. Everybody has to take this test if they want to go to a public university in Spain. This PCE applies to all foreigners, even the ones who maybe went to the international baccalaureate or come from a country that has an agreement with Spain. Even in those cases you still have to take this PCE and the reason is that it will test you on a few things that are very specific to the Spanish curriculum. Three of the components of the PCE are mandatory for everyone to take. Those are Spanish language and literature, Spanish history and your choice between English or French as a second language. Even though those are the only three required subjects you do have to take at least four subjects meaning you will have to choose one more to do. Generally the recommendation is to choose one of the two math courses as your fourth subject. After that you can add up to two more subjects to your PCE test, so you may want to look at what the university asks you to do. You can take the PCE twice a year but the first opportunity is in June and I would highly recommend that you register for that test in particular. The last day for registration is May 12th so you have plenty of time to prepare and get ready for the test but it's definitely important for you to take that test especially if you're planning on going into any of the public universities in Spain. When it comes to private universities, nothing I just said matters. They do their own thing and so you just go to their website and see what test they want you to take. Now you might have noticed that there's a lot of information on the screen in Spanish in this video and that's for good reason. We need to talk about the language barrier. I speak English in Spanish so I thought that like the research for this video would be super easy and it would be knocked down in just a few days. I was very wrong then go into the website and click on English and it takes me to like a completely different version of the page and then and then okay you think you got it all figured out? Well guess what? You go to the University of Barcelona, you go to the Barcelona websites, everything's in Catalan which it turns out is not Spanish. If only there was a way for me to convince the website every time that I was in an English speaking country and I could just get the English information right away to put on the screen for you. Well it could be with today's sponsor NordVPN. NordVPN is the perfect way to change your ****. We're not actually sponsored by NordVPN but like you see what I did there? Yeah see I would make a great great sponsor reader guy. All joking aside once you do find the information you need it's actually not that hard to deal with the language barrier in Spain. Most of the programs in Spain are going to be taught in some mix of English and Spanish. There are very few programs that are taught exclusively in English and most of those are private business schools. Because there are two languages in almost every program you're going to have to prove that you can handle Spanish and English. So if you're a native Spanish or English speaker you graduated from a high school from a country that speaks Spanish or English you've got one down. So how do you get the other one? The Spanish language test is called the DELE and that test is the only official Spanish test that will be used for admission to universities. Generally you're going to need to show a B2 or C1 level in Spanish to get into university in Spain. For English on the other hand the requirements are a little bit more relaxed. A lot of universities will let you in with a B2 some will even let you in with a B1 if it's just a few courses here and there. As usual with Europe we recommend taking the IELTS if you're going to try to study in a European country the IELTS is generally the best safest method to use and it's one of the easier tests to take. If you need help raising your IELTS score you know where to go prepwithscore.com check us out we'll help you out right now we're working with people as we speak. We have to address the Catalonian elephant in the room and also Galicia and like the other places I'm sorry I'm not going to mention every single one. The local regional language and Spanish have co-official status which means they are essentially treated as equals. Now that doesn't mean you have to know both or that you have to get certified in both. On the contrary it means that if you're certified in one of the two official languages you're good. But if you study in the University of Barcelona for example the teacher has the freedom to choose whether they will teach you in Catalan or in Spanish and you as the student have the freedom to say I will turn in my assignments in either Catalan or Spanish even if that's different from what the teacher says. So essentially each person has the right to use whichever of the two languages they prefer. On the bright side Spanish is not very difficult to learn for native English speakers and it's very similar to other Romance languages similarly even the dialect type languages like Catalan are not vastly different from Spanish so they're not too hard for native Spanish speakers to pick up either. I would rate the difficulty of studying in Spain when it comes to the language as two Iberian ham legs out of five. I always wanted one of those but like just to walk around with it I wouldn't actually like slice it neat like you're supposed to I want to like walk around with a big ham leg and just like like a caveman I think that'd be funny. Let's talk more about money. Finances is probably one of the best parts of studying in Spain. It is one of the cheapest countries in Europe for you to study in and pretty much everybody gets money. I mean the government just gives out scholarships like they're Oprah. Scholarship. I'm not joking literally everybody qualifies for scholarships even foreigners and not just like European Union foreigners we always say that right we always say if you're a European citizen you'll get you know discounts and stuff. No it's for everybody. Foreigners who are not European citizens can get access to the same financial aid that Spain gives to all of its citizens and all of the Europeans but if you are over 18 you do have to wait a year before you can be eligible for those scholarships so your first year of study you're not going to get those but after that you can apply and get whatever you want. What can you get for this? Well works out like this. There's a 300 euro base amount that is given basically to everybody but you could get that number up to 1700 euros if you could show that your family maybe doesn't have as much economic ability to pay for your education. After that there's even extra bonuses for academic merit if you do a really good job in your courses you'll be eligible for an extra amount every year. It's not much but it's something. Now these numbers aren't huge but when you take a look at what tuition actually costs in Spain it goes a long way. Okay so here's how it works in public universities. Public universities have four different pay scales. Foreign students almost always have to pay that fourth rate that fourth tier which is the most expensive public universities have to charge these rates which are set by their autonomous community but private universities are under no such obligations. So private universities love to try to put their prices between the first and fourth tier like a little more than the first tier you know we're better than the public system but we want to be a little cheaper for other people like you know international students maybe. You can study for three to four thousand euros a year but me each of them it's Europe it must be really expensive to live there uh no. Spain is one of the cheaper countries in Europe to live in and generally you'll find that Spain is actually very affordable and it's possible for you to spend as little as five six hundred euro a month. Students that are living in nicer cities and maybe on better campus facilities will probably be paying closer to nine hundred to a thousand a month for their expenses but the point is this if you choose the right university and you choose the right location you could easily study in Spain for less than ten thousand euros a year even though getting a visa in Spain is not difficult there are a few extra steps that you're going to have to go through compared to some of the countries we've talked about like the Netherlands or Italy. To start it off you're going to need a form and an acceptance letter from a recognized university in Spain. From there you're going to need to prove that you have enough money to cover the tuition and some living expenses for the duration of your stay again you can use bank statements or proof of income to show that. We got to make sure you don't die over there so you need medical insurance and speaking of medical you're also going to need a medical exam just like we talked about in the Canada video. Next you will need a background check that proves that you're not a criminal serial killer or whatever. That is one thing the purpose court cannot help you with like if you go to purpose court we cannot make your criminal records go away. We can definitely. Now once you have all those papers together the next step is to determine when you will go and where you will stay. You can't get your visa until you have your ticket purchased and you know where you're going to live with some proof of an agreement. You can go to the embassy bring all those papers present them in the order here pay a fee of about $80 and you should be good to go and that my people is everything you need to know to study in Spain. Now if you want to know what it's like to actually be in Spain as a student you're going to want to subscribe to the channel because next week I've got another interview for you with another former student of mine who is currently studying in Spain right now so you don't want to miss go to purpose score.com if you want to see how we can help you study abroad you can see that we have upgraded the digs we got a new place here. I'm still working out some of the jank with audio and video and stuff here I'm doing my best it's coming together it's getting better thank you you guys for watching I'll see you next week