IAU-College Aix-en-Provence

• IAU application

• IAU scholarships

• IAU travel logistics

Now that you have been accepted by the Study Abroad Office (IAGE), the next step in the process is to apply to the program directly on their application website.

IAGE will send a copy of your transcripts to IAU-Aix on your behalf.

IAU has a robust offering of merit scholarships, grants, and need-based assistance for its semester and summer students. All information, including the scholarship application and deadlines is on their scholarships page.

Their scholarship application deadlines are:

• • Spring Semester: October 1

  • Summer Term: April 1

  • Fall Semester: May 1

Also don't forget to review Illinois study abroad scholarships as well. Visit the IAGE webpage to get more information.

Program Dates

Spring 2021: Jan. 23 - May 9, 2021

Summer 2021:

• • Session A: tba

  • Session B: tba

  • Session C: tba

Fall 2021: tba

Student Voices on the Location

• • Aix is a beautiful place to study!! I had a lot of fun and made lifelong connections, and I learned so much about the world as well as myself. It was overall an amazing time. I feel much more confident in who I am after having navigated an entire semester in a completely different country. Also, don't be afraid to study somewhere where you don't know the language. I knew minimal French coming into this and really enjoyed learning it. Aix is a great program in a great location, I highly recommend doing it!!

If students arrive between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.on official arrival day at the Marseille Provence airport (MRS) (dates listed on IAU site), IAU staff will be present at airport to assist students in getting to their homestay. Precise information about arrival day and what to do upon arrival will be sent via email to students approximately one week before arrival day.

Orientation takes place shortly after incoming students arrive and is designed to help them become familiar with their new environment. Students are introduced to one another, to IAU and to Aix-en-Provence. For fall/spring semester students, the orientation is 2 days. For summer students, the orientation is one day.

Student Voices on Arrival

• • The airport pick‐up was super helpful! It eased the process a lot more. Also, they had a great wellness center that was very useful for students. Lastly, their libraries were awesome. They were really old and had a lot of interesting stuff to read.

  • The orientation was helpful even if it was a little bit long. There was also a psychologist‐type person who had open hours you could drop by and just talk about whatever you needed to which was very nice.

Students in Aix will live in a French homestay, which is a challenging yet enriching experience. Students must learn to adapt to the family's personal and cultural lifestyles, which are naturally quite different from student's own habits. More information about the host family selection process, can be found on IAU's site.

More info about housing is also given during and after you submit your IAU application.

Homestay assignments will be sent to you via email one week before departure.

Student Voices on Housing

• • I lived with a host mom during my time abroad. She was awesome! She made us breakfast every day and dinner 6 days a week. She was very hospitable and very fun to learn from.

  • I lived in a host families house with two other students, one of whom was my roommate from U of I. I was not expecting to live with her, but I'm very happy that it worked out this way. The house was located about a 30‐minute walk from the school and center of town. I felt very safe, there was a fence around the house and a security system where you would need to input a code to get in if no one was home. We had home‐cooked meals for dinner every night except Saturdays. They provided us with things to eat for breakfast such as cereal, yogurt, and fruit. We usually bought lunch in town. I had an incredible experience with my host family and grew very close to them.

  • I lived with a host family. They were very nice and I enjoyed living with them. The only negative aspect of my housing arrangements was that it was about a 2 mile walk to school each day.

  • I was placed in an amazing host family. Their house was a 30 min walk from the city center, but it was worth it.

  • My host parents were amazing. I got very close with them and their two daughters and learned a lot from them all. They welcomed me graciously and always made me feel very welcome. I was a 10 minute walk from the city center with my own room and bathroom. Their house was beautiful. I am vegetarian, and they cooked vegetarian for me. The meals were all very good and my host mom was very accommodating with meals as well. I always felt very safe too. I had no roommates or housemates, which I was thankful for.

  • I had little to no preferences for my housing so I am not sure how heavily those affect where you are placed. Just to be open minded and make the best out of wherever you are placed and learn as much from the people you are living with. Also be prepared for it to be different and respectful of them and their rules.

  • I went to the Marchutz School of Fine Arts and everything about it was incredible. It was a 40 minute walk from my house, but it was a pleasant walk. The location and school was beautiful.

  • Definitely opt for the homestays. Be prepared to compromise and make the most of living with a local family.

  • I recommend living with a roommate but that is definitely more of a personal preference. I also loved our location, it was a perfect walking distance and a beautiful walk into town, though it might be a little long for some people. I loved living with a host family because I felt so much more invested and immersed in the culture of France.

A minimum of 15 credits per semester is required and constitutes a full-time course load. Of those 15 credits, at least one course must be a French course. IAU has four Schools in Aix to choose from, where you can take classes in English or French:

• • Humanities and Social Sciences

  • The School of Business & International Relations

  • Fine Arts

  • French Honors

You will submit your course preferences through IAU's online portal.

You will be notified via e- mail of any changes to your initial selections and when the schedule in your application portal can be considered official. If you have approval from your home institution, you may also change your course selection in consultation with the Director by the end of the sixth day of classes.

Transcripts will be sent to Illinois automatically after the end of the program. However, the time for receipt and processing can take a few months. Be patient, and you can track to see when your transcript is received by the Office of the Registrar by when the digital copy is uploaded into your My Study Abroad documents.

Student Voices on Academics

• • All of the courses I felt had average workloads, although some were heavy on the reading. Exams were as I expected them and none were terribly difficult. Foreign language proficiency was not needed in any of the classes except my French class as the rest were in English. Overall, the courses were structured quite well for the time we were in them and for the most part, I felt as though grading was very fair.

  • It was difficult to know how you were doing in your classes as there was no online platform. I still do not know how I did in my classes and I do not know when I will find out.

  • I thought it was all fair and that good grades were given if the effort and time was put in. You cannot blow off classes or think they will be easy just because they are abroad courses.

Student Voices on the Summer Program

• • I had class every day from 2:30‐6

Student Voices on the Fall/Spring Semester Program

• • There are 3 buildings. The rooms are very small, nice for small classes. Some of my classes had as little as 7 people and some as many as 18.

  • I had class every day of the week except Fridays, which was very nice. Every day I started at 10:30 AM. My French language class met for two hours three days a week, most of my other ones were for an hour and a half two days a week. My wine studies class was one hour once a week.

  • I had class Mon.‐Thurs. on average 2 classes a day which were 90 minutes long. French language classes were 2 hours long. My schedule was very similar to my typical UIUC schedules.

  • I had classes Monday‐Thursday. Classes were an hour and a half, except for my photography class that only met once a week, it was 3 hours.

  • I had class Monday through Friday. I took Drawing II - Intermediate, which I had on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 5:30 (3 hours), I took Painting II - Intermediate, which I had on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-12 (3 hours), I took Art Criticism Seminar, which I had on Fridays from 9 to about 1 or 2pm (4-5 hours), and I took Practical Elementary French I, which I had on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:30 (1.5 hours)

  • I had class 4 days a week. I had no class on Mondays and only one in the morning on Friday. But the rest of my week - Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - was pretty busy.

Student Voices on Course recommendations: (Which course(s) that you completed abroad did you find most interesting/meaningful?)

• • cross cultural perspectives in art history

  • I loved both my French and my Psychology class! It was fun to learn more French and to learn about psychology from a French psychologist's perspective.

  • I took a course called Muslim Presence in Europe that I thought was so interesting and incredibly relevant, especially considering the time period we are currently in. I also really loved my religion class and thought it was very interesting. These two classes were taught by the same teacher. Her teaching style was incredible and was just one more reason why both of these classes were so memorable.

  • Art history and a history class

  • Photography was an exceptional class that allowed me to explore myself in ways that I wouldn't have been able to in other classes.

  • I enjoyed my french class the most and how we could bring our questions from our time abroad into class to have them answered/explained. I did not enjoy that the university we attended was only for American students. It did not allow for us to meet a lot of french people our age.

  • All of them were extremely rewarding, beneficial, and interesting:

  • Drawing II - Intermediate, Painting II - Intermediate, Art Criticism Seminar, Practical Elementary French I.

  • We went on two week long excursions, one to Paris to do museum studies in 4 different museums and one to Giverny to see where Monet painted his water lily paintings and do landscape paintings, and three different one-day weekend excursions, one to study Van Gogh, one to study architecture, and one to study Cezanne through the painting program. They were all highly beneficial, informative, and vigorous. I got so much out of each.

  • OF the classes I took (YES, HIS 328, ARH 324 ), HIS 328 was the most interesting. I learnt a lot about France and the city I was living in.

IAU's Office of Student Affairs sponsors an extensive calendar of activities and events designed to introduce students to sites of historic and cultural interest throughout the region. Students in Aix will typically have two or three excursions, including visits to places like the Luberon, Fontaine de Vaucluse, and Nice/ Cannes. In addition, students will have ample opportunity to explore Provence and other regions of France during weekends and breaks.

Internships

• • IAU provides access to unpaid, for-credit internships available at local enterprises for Fall and Spring semester students. Interested students should have at least four semesters of college French and must provide their resume before the start of the semester. Learn more about internship opportunities at IAU.

Volunteering

• • More info about this on IAU's site: https://iau.edu/studyabroad/programs/aix/volunteering

Student Voices on Engagement

• • I loved the people I met and the experiences I had both inside and outside of the classroom. I learned so much about the world and about myself. I know I'm never going to forget this semester.

  • In my opinion, the host institution could have done more to make available more cultural experiences and provide more opportunities for the students to get involved in the local community. IAU seemed like a very closed group of Americans that made it hard to truly experience living amongst the French.

  • IAU is an institute specifically for study abroad students from America. While I truly loved the school, I did think that we didn't get the same immersion with local students that other study abroad programs may have gotten. For me personally, I still got a lot of immersion because my French teacher set up conversation partners and I made local friends but I feel like some of the other students might not have experienced this as much. Overall though, the teachers were great and the classes were interesting.

  • Don't be afraid to put yourself out there! The more you put into an experience, the more you get out.