The Smith Paris program is now the oldest continuously operating American university program in Paris, and we will be celebrating our 100th anniversary in 2025 this year.
Designed from the outset as a yearlong program, we remain committed to the notion that a full year in Paris provides students with the opportunity to become part of French student life in ways that are not achievable in a single semester. This is a program for students who wish to engage fully with a different culture—one that will feel both familiar and curiously different at the same time.
This program is for any student who is curious about the world beyond American borders. We are keenly aware of the benefits that a diverse set of students bring to the program, and firmly committed to making the Paris program one that welcomes students of all backgrounds, beliefs and orientations. Paris is, and has long been, a haven for people seeking to reinvent themselves and eager to be taken on their own terms. This is also a setting that will challenge your preconceived notions and beliefs, and that encourages to reexamine your assumptions both about the world and about yourself. If you are up for this cultural challenge, you will thrive in this program. You are welcome here.
Students in our program have a variety of housing options available. Most of our students choose to stay with one of our wonderful host families, who together represent a lovely cross section of living arrangements. Some students choose instead to be housed in a single room (with bathroom) at the Cité Universitaire, a set of student residences housing nearly 5000 students from around the world or to live independently in one of the small studio spaces available to the program
As a student of the program, you will have a chance to immerse yourself in the life of this vibrant city, with its 750,000 university students (nearly 20% of them exchange students from all over the world). Paris provides you with the opportunity to travel widely, both in France and across Europe, and the program has a variety of funds available intended to help you achieve your goals and expand your horizons. This city is, and always has been, both a crossroads and an incubator for new ideas in art, literature, sociology, anthropology, math, physics, biology…and you can be part of that.