In the weeks leading up to my arrival in France, I could already tell my academic experience at EDHEC would be much different than at CofC. For starters, whenever I would email questions to faculty in Nice, the answers they gave were always very vague and didn’t give me much help. Then, when I registered for classes, they told me I wouldn’t know my schedule or professors until I arrive in France. This was the first thing that shocked me about the French education system considering in the US we normally know our weekly schedule for the upcoming semester months in advance. I knew just based on this, that my experience was going to be extremely different to anything I’ve experienced before.

When I actually arrived in Nice, the school hosted a three day welcome orientation for the international students. In one of the welcome meetings, it was explained to us that our course schedule could be updated as the semester goes on, maybe even weekly. They told us that our schedule will most likely not be the same every week and it is possible that we might have classes scheduled on Saturday. They also informed us that class times can be changed up until the night before and the attendance policy is very strict. If you miss more than one class, you lose 10 points on your final grade. This information was frustrating for many of the students, including myself, because everyone was planning on doing weekend trips throughout the semester and this would make planning pretty difficult. Another drastic change that I experienced, is how people dress for school. Students for the most part wear business casual clothing like slacks and blazers. This was a huge adjustment for me because at CofC, and most colleges in the US, it is acceptable to wear very casual clothing to class.

While some of the changes were a bit frustrating, I grew to like some of them. At EDHEC, classes last 2-3 hours long so normally I only had each class once a week instead of multiple times. Some weeks I would only have classes scheduled for one to two days out of the week. One of my courses didn’t meet for four weeks in a row because the teacher wanted to take his vacation during those weeks. This aspect was nice because it gave me more time to explore the city with new friends and I didn’t have to go to campus as often. The downside was that it made it a bit difficult for me to actually get into the swing of school and studying. I also enjoyed the fact that most work was done in class and there was very little homework besides projects and presentations. My classes were all with other international students so this made it much easier to make friends and learn about other cultures from all over the world. Overall, I had a great educational experience at EDHEC and found it really interesting to see how students in France experience college life compared to in the US.