 Hello my people, my name is Mijim, and today I got a special treat for you guys. A couple of weeks ago I made a video about how to study the Netherlands, and last week it released a video about how studying abroad can transform you. So what if we just kind of put those together? That's exactly what we did here. This is our first interview video. We have Paloma Kodoti who graciously took about 30 minutes of her life away to talk to us a little bit about her experience studying abroad in the Netherlands and how it's affected her. Stay tuned to the end because that's where we get to the deep stuff. And I hope you like it and I hope you find it informative. You're not going to be seeing any more of me until the very end, so I'll see you later. So my name is Paloma Kodoti. I am a first year still in university. I am currently studying international relations and organizations in The Hague, which is in the Netherlands. I'm studying at Leiden University and I am about to start my second year. So the choice was basically to go for a country probably in Europe. I wanted, I was between the States and then the UK, Netherlands, France, but I reduced my choice mainly for also like monetary reasons because here in the Netherlands since I am a European, I have a European passport, I pay way less. And this university was now for me the program that I was looking for and it's a very good university and it's, it was affordable and it seemed very international as well. So that's why I decided to come. The Netherlands specifically as a country wasn't really something that I evaluate 100% but I knew, I knew a lot about how the Netherlands is saw from an outside perspective and it sounded pretty cool. Now that I'm here, of course, my view on it has changed, but I am very lucky that I'm in a very international city. So it's actually really cool because you get to know everybody from everywhere. So this university acquired me for CV, first of all, all my grades, then a letter of motivation and since this university is numerous fixes, which numerous fixes means basically not everyone that applies gets in. So there's a strict selection program sort of. We needed to do an exam in our case beside the presentation of the motivational letter, CV. And this exam consisted in more or less it was statistics, history and politics. And so it was an exam that we have to do was a 30 question multiple choice exam. And then afterwards they let us know sort of like a month or two later. And yeah, so basically that was the procedure. I started very early on because the deadline was the 15th of January for the motivational letter. And the exam was the 4th of February, I think. And then they let us know around April, mid-April. And they will let you know what number you got. And if you were above 620, then you were in. This exam was for all the faculty of political science. It wasn't just for my specific course. So yeah, there were a lot of people applying. Yes, of course, I had to do, there was a requirement for English. There was a requirement for a TOEFL. There was a minimum of 100 on the TOEFL to get in. They didn't require specific minimums for the parts of the TOEFL, but 100 was necessary. If you don't have that, you can take English in university. But to be honest, it's kind of... You have already a lot to handle the first few months and you don't want to handle an English situation. And also they asked for math requirements, which I passed mainly because I did a school that was very math-focused. Otherwise I wouldn't have. I know a lot of friends that had to take math courses in order to get into my program because it's a science faculty. Social sciences faculty and we take statistics and they expect you to have a knowledge of math that is quite semi-high. For non-Europeans, it's 10, I think now, 11,000 euros per year, which is a high amount, but compared clearly to the states and the UK is still very fine. But for Europeans, if you have a European passport, you don't have to live here or stuff like that, you just have a European passport. You will pay 2,143, I think. We incredibly precise, but that's for the whole year. Live costs are a bit higher here in the Netherlands, specifically in The Hague or Amsterdam. Rent and extras, I would say 1,000 euros a month. I would say that would be yet the minimum for me at the moment. So housing in the Netherlands is insane. This is the first thing. It's like London, it's like New York, it's those kind of places, kind of like the general input is that it's search it as soon as you can and take what feels right but never take the first option. Like there's like a certain amount of things that I've learned. So basically I stayed for the first six months. I was able to get an apartment on Facebook, actually, which is incredibly helpful. Facebook, it's basically the main way to go because that's where you find most of the rooms. I was sharing an apartment with a guy that I didn't know but turned out to be pretty cool and it was very nice. Then for the other six months, last year I applied to student housing. Student housing from the university was really expensive because you have to pay a fee and then they will allocate you into an apartment and that apartment is not in the university campus but it's sort of a partnership and I ended up in a building. It was actually quite nice. I had a studio for myself for six months and I could get rent benefit from the government. For living there so it was actually really fine but I decided to move out mainly because you cannot apply for more than a year and also because I wanted to be with somebody because after the whole COVID situation I was decided that I didn't want to stay alone in an apartment. So now I looked for an apartment by myself and with a friend and we looked in several rental agency. We had very bad experiences. We're talking people threatening us to sue us. Like it was a mess and now we found a very nice apartment in the center of town which is incredibly rare but yeah housing is a bit of a mess. I know that in other parts of the Netherlands it's better but if you live in the Hague or Amsterdam it's insane. I know of people getting scammed like sending like 2,000 euros and those 3,000 euros are completely gone. Some people like 4,000 but luckily we do have access to like legal resources that are for free so if anything of those kind of things happen like there are pro bono firms that help students to kind of deal with this situation because it's actually quite common so yeah there are means to deal with everything. It's always good to browse the internet and look for the regulation of housing in the Netherlands I figured because it's there are many expats like websites that will tell you not just that but also how to register in a GP or several things that are very useful so I would say like that as a general advice look for like expat websites wherever you go if you're going studying abroad because it's it facilitates your life basically. There's a lot if you come from Peru and you go to a country that it's like the Netherlands and if you've always lived in Peru you will feel the difference very easily I think. I was in a little like in different situation because I also lived in Italy so I already lived in a European country but it's still like different from Italy there's still so many difference. The Netherlands is a weird country meaning that it's one of the most free countries in the world but at the same time there are many many many rules you have to follow. It's basically nothing is legal but nothing is legal either sort of situation and it's very cool I love the country itself I have to say I'm not too much into Dutch culture mainly because I truly don't have Dutch friends because my course it's so international that most of the people that you get to know are actually international people so I love it here because it's a very international environment you get to meet people from everywhere you get to meet people from I don't know Iceland is that even like a population that it's like yes there is and there's like Luxembourg people which is also like huh and then you get to meet like people from Botswana and people like it's just it's crazy look you can't keep up with the nationalities which is great and our study like a student life it's very what you would imagine as European students meaning going to pubs museums sometimes like if you're a political student science then like of course rallies and those kind of like things there's a lot of little house parties a lot of walking around the city going to like secondhand shops and cafes sitting down having coffee studying so there's a lot of very like would basically what would you imagine as a student in Europe you know I personally love it and coming from Peru it's way different because you can even like in Peru you don't have all this freedom of just walking around and like especially a night or stuff like that and it's here it's a bit better you still have to be careful of course because this is a big city but it's just yeah there's more European things to do basically what you would call it that way imagine something like Peru just forget about it because it's you're not going to find the same environment that you find in universities in Peru everyone is kind of left to its own means meaning that if you don't register for an exam it's your own issue nobody like they're going to send you wine reminder at some point and that is all there's a lot of like if you go badly nobody will help you like it there's not it's a lot of you you you you like you do you you study as much as you can and as much as you want and you study however you want the minimum they do is just like work groups that we have and where you can have a conversation with the teacher and you can of course always ask for your study advisor which is the person that basically advise you for like university stuff but it's not like we have four sessions of exams per year and we don't have mid-terms really we only have finals then we you can retake the final but if you fail the retake you're gone it's really hard to get credits because the only way to get credits is through exams so you don't have like homework or anything like that like you have just assignments that you have to put in and there's gonna come like nothing compared to what the exams actually count so it's it's harder it's definitely harder because I feel like from people well from what I hear from people in Peruvian universities they're kind of like took from a very similar school environment like it doesn't change that much from school it changes but it's not this huge change instead for me it's completely different it's you don't have personal relationship with your professor you basically don't talk to them you're sit in a room with 300 people they're never gonna know your name unless you're somebody that like actually is interested in getting to know the professor for some reason and especially the first year no yeah you are you're fully in charge of you if you go badly that's on you like that's fully on you the university gave you everything that they could and that if you decide to go badly it's your problem I would say the biggest advice would be hang on the first few months everybody hits it like it's it's there's like a 90% chance or like let's slow it down to like 75 but like there's a 75% chance you're gonna hate it it's just it's just it's specifically because the first courses that you take in university they're most likely very general and they don't touch the interesting parts of the topic that you're studying they're just giving you the base from the future for the future so I remember being very frustrated the first few months and now I can say that I really like it so just hang on do the first year and once you do the first year you start you stop studying and start talking about what you study and that's when you're like wow this is actually really simple I think I am a completely different person to who I was a year ago it has made me way more open and way more aware through the problems and the differences in the world and how beautiful it is and how like different it is in several parts of the world it's just it gets you it toughens you up a lot not gonna lie and I'm not gonna like pretend that it doesn't it does you're far away from your family so you don't have the facility of like oh I'm sad oh I'm gonna just like have my mom cooking a meal for me no like that's not the situation so it toughens you up you need to live you know how to you need to learn a lot of things really quickly and there's a lot to handle on the all of a sudden you're completely independent so you're just you're trying to figure out everything and so that toughens you up a lot but it also makes you realize how important it is to people that you're surrounded with because you're in this environment that you don't know and you're able to find people that are also in the same situation because people are in the same situation as you and that's the most comforting thing I think of studying abroad but you're not alone even if you think you are and it just creates you this very deep at the end relationship with people that you met that you meet here your friends the people that you meet and it also teaches you to understand different cultures and understand differences between them so being in a country like the Netherlands after being in a country Peru is just it's completely different so you just adapt to this new environment and you learn from it and you learn what's good and what's bad and then you make your own decision in how to live your life it's a long term I guess thanks again to Paloma for taking the time to just talk with us if you would like to tell us about your experience studying abroad or you know somebody else who would please let us know hit us up leave a comment below we would love to get more people's experiences from all over the world to share with us just what it's like to study abroad and how it affects you and your development if you like the interview please like the video and subscribe to the channel so that you can see the next stuff coming up next week we're going to be talking about how to study in Canada I'll see you next time