Visa
- Start collecting all of the paper work for your visa 4-6 months before you plan to send in your application as some of the necessary documents may take up to 13 weeks to arrive (FBI background check).
- Once you get your visa you may notice that it is only valid for 90 days. As soon as you arrive in Madrid the Student Office will make an appointment for you to get a student permit to cover your extended stay.
How to tell your work that you are leavingGood advice from a previous MBA grad
Phone
- Magic Jack is currently the cheapest option I have found for making unlimited calls to your home country. It is a device that plugs into the USB drive of your computer and with it you are able to set any country in the world as your home country, then the application associated with the device uses your internet connection to make calls within your selected country as if you were calling locally.
- As far as other phone services go, do NOT do a contract with Vodafone (they over charged me 7 times in my 2 year contract and each time I called to argue the double charge, they would respond by disconnecting my phone instead of reimbursing me). The best option I have found (after living in Europe for 3 years) is to do a pay as you go bundle with your phone service of choice.
Bank
- There are many banking options but the one I have chosen to go with is Sabadell because the account can be opened up 30 days prior to your arrival. To get help with opening the account through IE e-mail them here. You will need to wait until you have your visa because your NIE number will be assigned to you and printed on your visa.
- In the 3 years I have lived here in Europe I have always noticed that there is a dip in the exchange rate of euros to USD to the advantage of the USD at the end of every September. So if you are like me and moving your money from a US bank to a Spanish bank I would say that this is the best time to do it. Because when you are transferring the cost of your tuition and 14 months worth of housing payments, there is a large difference between 1.39:1 and 1.29:1.
Campus Online
- As soon as you are able to link up to the campus online, do it! Make it a priority to find the facebook group for your class intake, any and all valuable information you need may be found there. Plus, your classmates typically start planning cool winter break trips prior to school beginning.
- If you are looking to take the Pre-Program Spanish intensive, the quiz you will need to submit to the Student Office in order to be accepted, is found on this site (they're constantly updating it so I cannot tell you where to find it exactly).
- As far as housing goes, I actually found my apartment on the Student Forum > Accomodations forum.
- If you have any basic questions, ask them in your class's group Facebook message, or on the group page. Not in one of the forums.
Computers
- Mac vs. PC: the platform we are going to use (called Citrix ) is able to function on Macs just as well as PCs.
- I am personally bringing my really old MacBook Air, and a new MacBook Pro I bought for this program
- Backup hard drives? I have had an average of one external hard drive per year crash on me. I calculated it out and that is the same price as purchasing Google Drive, therefore I've ditched the palm sized boxes of metal for the 1TB Google Drive subscription option.
Books
- What I have been told as of now is that "Every professor has different books, editions change, books may change as well, and it depends completely on the year. Books aren't needed in most subjects, they are good to follow the readings, but they aren't essential. The library has a large amount of the books needed.
Housing
- As soon as you are accepted to the school start looking for housing. There are apartments available within a 5 minute walk of campus, but they fill up fast! Some landlords are not comfortable with renting you the flat without ever meeting you. So what you may do is request to sign a preliminary contract and wire a reservation fee (the equivalent of one month's security deposit) then when you arrive in Madrid meet in person to sign the contract, collect the keys and pay the first month's rent in cash, having the contract as a receipt. This is what I did in order to secure my deposit.
- Of the recommended sites these are the ones that I found most useful and user friendly when searching by location & price for housing options around the school:
**Note that of this list, IE has some discount codes for students on the student office > Accommodations forum
http://www.idealista.com/
http://www.fotocasa.es/
http://www.spain-select.com/en_US
http://www.dflathousing.com/ (dflat has a liason who works specifically with the students and responds very quickly whenever you request information on an apartment)
http://www.dflatmadrid.com/
http://www.theresidenceinmadrid.com/en (this one fills up fast, so if you are interested make sure to contact them several months in advance).
http://accommodation.ie.edu/home/index (this database has some of the nicest apartments you will find for rent around the school, but of the 5 apartments I requested more information on, none of them responded so if you are looking to have your apartment locked in before you arrive, this is not the best resource)
http://www.tlsgroup.eu/en/madrid
http://www.peretarres.org/wps/wcm/connect/peretarres_es/peretarres/webs/residencia/home (all female dorm with some pretty strange / intense rules. I would not recommend this place for young adults who are used to living on their own).
http://www.spotahome.com/ (in concept this one seems to be a great option, although when I logged on for my apartment hunt there were not a lot of great options in the location I was aiming for)
https://flat-club.com/