Get Ready for Southampton

A free online course about life and study at the University of Southampton

Get Ready for Southampton is our highly successful course preparing international students for living and studying at the University of Southampton in the UK. This self-paced, self-access online course is offered FREE to all international students preparing to come and study at the University of Southampton. It was launched in May 2011 and is available for students to do from their home country from May each year up until their arrival.

On the course students are able to:

• learn about Southampton, the city where they will be living
• find out about everyday life at the University
• find out about the academic culture of a British university and what to expect when they begin their studies

Students find the answers to many questions about life and study in Southampton. The resources they use are multi-media, interactive and activity-based. They include podcasts, videos and useful links as well as activities to help students learn more.

Student comments about Get Ready for Southampton:

• It is a very useful course. I learned a lot from it.
• I found it very useful and reassuring and [it] gives me self confidence and sense of ease.
• In my opinion, Get Ready for Southampton is very useful and the University should continue to provide this service to its future students. It was interesting, informative and easy to use. Thank you!
• It has been really a good experience taking such an online course before coming to study in UK. I feel myself more prepared for living and studying in UK thanks to this course.
• It is a really helpful effort made by the University of Southampton to make newcomers feel welcome and guide them in the tough beginning where everything is supposed to be done in short time.

Part of the Get Ready for Southampton course

Background

Between 2005 and 2010 eLanguages at the University of Southampton ran Arrive UK, a free tutored, pre-arrival online course, which was offered to all international students joining our Pre-sessional Course in EAP. Building on the wide success of this course, Get Ready for Southampton was designed and developed as a course that could be offered to a much larger number of students and include any international student or visitor coming to the University of Southampton. It was launched in May 2011 and in the summer of that year over 1600 students took the online course.