Last week I briefly introduced the biggest concerns international students struggle with when first moving abroad, more specifically to Denmark.
These were the 6 main issues:
This week we dive deeper into the first two: when and where to look for housing.
Let’s look at the ‘when’ first.
If this is a student’s first time coming to Denmark, chances are they’ll receive the acceptance letter in the middle of July. They are also expected to be in Denmark at the end of August, which leaves one with only a little over a month to find suitable accommodation (and hopefully not get scammed on the way).
This is where the ‘where’ comes in.
A student will definitely spend a lot of time researching where to find housing and even exploring some of the websites, but it’s not always possible to search through them fully as they often require a subscription or a specific login.
Furthermore, there are many articles and guides that provide links to different websites for accommodation, they also offer so many that a person does not know where to search. Oftentimes, these websites are very poorly made, so even though they might be legit, they will feel like a scam.
A lot of universities offer guaranteed accommodation to their students – which is an amazing thing! – but they also make their application websites extremely user-unfriendly, confusing, and (most importantly) only in Danish. It's not only university websites that are not available in multiple languages, but also official government websites and other official providers of accommodation.
Denmark is such a progressive and welcoming country with many international students, whether they are part-time, full-time, or exchange students. It is, therefore, certainly a ‘must’ to have websites available in at least English besides Danish – if we cannot control how demanding the housing market is, we can at least try to make it easier to apply for it.
