Orientation Day 2021!

On Friday 5 February 2021, the VUB International Relations office organised an afternoon information session online to welcome the 100 new international students and interns who arrived at the VUB to start the 2nd semester through their exchange programmes.

Due to the current corona virus situation the event was held online. The VUB International Relations office information session included presentations from different student bodies such as, the overall student associations body (BSG), the International Student Platform (ISP) and ESN VUB EhB Brussels. Our language centre, ACTO, also provided some useful slides on language-learning opportunities.

The traditional campus tour was given online by way of a short video, and hopefully a real live tour will be possible as soon as the corona situation allows.

This year’s exchange students and interns arriving at VUB for the 2nd semester come from 22 different countries, inside and outside Europe: Morocco, Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Turkey. In addition, there are those coming for internships from Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, Romania and Turkey.  

More than 50% of them are studying at the Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School. The next biggest draw is the Faculty of Engineering, followed closely by the Faculty of Languages and Humanities and the Faculty of Sciences and Bio-engineering Sciences.

More than half of the interns are predominantly from the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Medicine & Pharmacy at the UZ Brussel.

We want to welcome them all to Brussels and the VUB, whether they are here in person or online, we wish them all the best especially in these tricky times, and we hope that they will enjoy their studies/internships in Belgium.