Tteokbokki that costs three times as much as it does in Korea. Pickleball classes in a second language. The California sun beaming on the sand. These are just some of the features international exchange students must orient themselves to when they arrive at USC.

Around 22% of the University of Southern California’s students are international students, which includes not only full-time international students, but also international exchange students and those who are visiting USC for either a year or one semester away from their full-time home universities abroad.

As exchange students visit USC from around the globe, they are able to explore the United States’ culture while studying in top-ranked schools like the Marshall School of Business. Yet, the journey of coming to USC and living in a new country is not easy, particularly regarding scheduling visa interviews and finding housing near campus. Students are required to adapt, shift and change course to transform into a USC student and find community in Los Angeles.

Students struggle with student visas, housing

Typically, students participating in exchange programs in the U.S. require a J-1 visa prior to their arrival. Bálint Dobai, a junior exchange student from Corvinus University of Budapest majoring in business administration, said he started his semester at USC three weeks late due to visa issues.

Dobai received the required documentation from USC in October, but all of the visa interview appointments through the Budapest visa office were booked until January, after the start of the spring semester.

“In my case, the wait time for an appointment was on average two months,” Dobai said.

Dobai was not the only student who had difficulty scheduling a visa appointment, having to adjust his personal and academic schedule to fit the limited time frame of his local visa office.

Daniil Parfenov, a fifth-year exchange student from Esade Business School in Barcelona studying business administration, said the instructions he received from the international exchange liaison were clear and detailed, but he too had difficulty scheduling a visa appointment.

His home, Amsterdam, had no interview timeslots until after his exchange began, so Parfenov applied for an emergency visa, which he received in December — just weeks before his scheduled arrival at USC.

Despite difficulties in some countries, Gyuyeon Lee, a senior exchange student from Inha University in Korea studying mechanical engineering, said her visa interview process was relatively simple: the visa interviewers asked her basic information about her identity and the reasons for her visit to the U.S.

“I heard [from my friends] it depends on the interviewer because of their personality or their thoughts on Koreans. … They can ask really, really different questions,” Lee said.

While international exchange students have the option to apply for housing through the USC Housing Portal, options are limited, and single-living accommodations are even rarer.

Parfenov found housing in Troy Hall, but other students, like Dobai, opted to live in off-campus housing such as The Lorenzo Apartments. Dobai said housing companies sometimes do not offer flexible plans for international exchange students.

“I was lucky because … we could negotiate the price and lease term,” Dobai said. “I would have had to rent the room until July, which, of course, doesn’t make sense, since [then] I can’t leave until July or June.”

Exchange students have found unique ways to secure housing and visa interviews, whether it’s through emergency appointments or connections, adding a significant barrier to some students’ arrival and requiring modifications in schedules and plans to adapt to university and government regulations and availability.

Subhead: Students find community through clubs, other international students

Lee and Parfenov found many of their friends through other international exchange students, offering a sense of familiarity in the significant adjustment and transformation of being a student in a new country and city.

Parfenov said he met new people through EngageSC, a platform and guide to all USC events. Slowly, his friend group formed through off-campus outings like trips to Sequoia National Park or going to parties together. Lee also said she met many of her friends through parties off campus.

The Greek system of fraternities and sororities does not really exist in Barcelona, Parfenov said, as most students visit bars or clubs as a way of socializing outside of class.

He described that Thursdays are typically the most active going-out night in Barcelona: in fact, Parfenov said clubs in Barcelona often open at midnight and go until 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.; several times, Parfenov said he has taken the morning bus to classes and seen students heading home after a night out.

“We don’t really have anything similar [to Greek life] in Europe, certainly not in Barcelona,” Parfenov said. “What we have in Barcelona is a clubbing and bar-hopping culture, which has to do with the drinking age. It’s 18 in Barcelona. … Here, people tend to go to house parties a lot more often because it’s private property. The police probably can’t be bothered to go in and shut you down unless you’re causing a nuisance. In Barcelona, it’s quite the opposite.”

Since the social nightlife scene is quite different at USC compared to his home university, Parfenov was required to shift his approach to finding friends on campus, adapting to the new systems, like the Greek system, that he was absorbed into. The Thursday nights followed by mornings when he expected to see classmates while on the bus were far from comparable to the silence of Greek Row after a Friday night.

Dobai said he found much of his community through joining clubs. While studying business administration at Marshall, Dobai scouted out clubs that would provide practical experience alongside his studies prior to coming on campus.

When Dobai was applying for clubs, he found that some did not accept exchange students, though he successfully joined TroyLabs, a student-run organization dedicated to entrepreneurship and supporting early-stage startups at USC.

“I applied to four clubs,” Dobai said. “Three of them actually rejected me because I was an exchange student, and their policy is that they just don’t take people who can only stay for the half semester.”

Despite the research Dobai conducted prior to his arrival on campus, he had to narrow his scope as doors to some clubs closed. His view of what he expected USC’s club culture to look like changed to accommodate the reality that student organizations sometimes strongly prioritize the longevity and retention of a new member class.

Eunmin Park, a junior international exchange student from Korea University studying business administration, said she found many other exchange students and friends through Marshall’s orientation programs.

When she was not taking midterms for her business classes, Park said she went on adventures with these newfound friends. Amidst a new city with new friends, Park can now notice a semblance of home in her visits to Koreatown with a sprinkle of exploration and conquering something new.

“I like going to cafes in Koreatown with my friends, and since I came to the U.S., I want to explore lots of places in America. Last weekend, I went to Hawaii,” Park said. “I think it was the best place I’ve ever been in the U.S.”

The international exchange student social experience, particularly meeting new classmates, largely differs from major to major.

Lee said that her engineering classes are mostly made up of coding assignments, so peers rarely speak to one another.

On the flip side, her more discussion-based writing classes pose a different challenge. As a non-native English speaker, Lee said she struggles to write academic essays, which are graded on the same playing field as a native student.

“It is really hard for me, because we don’t really use English in Korea,” Lee said. “We only use English at school, like in engineering books, not ‘real’ English.”

Park, meanwhile, said she felt weighed down by the daily task of speaking in her non-native tongue. Being at USC, she has had to shift her communication not just to make friends, but also to pass her classes — her understanding of English is no longer simply what she studied in school, but also the colloquial, topic-specific phrases that weave through American English.

“At first, it was kind of stressful to speak in English, and everything is new here, and I have to use English to get some information,” Park said. “Even when I go to the supermarket, and I ask the worker for some products, I have to use English.”

Parfenov had the opposite experience to Park and Lee, as his first language is English. He grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, then moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, and eventually Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where he attended an international high school; he then moved to Barcelona for university. Coming to the U.S., he said, felt relieving, particularly coming from Barcelona, where Spanish was not his first language.

“I can finally speak with people,” Parfenov said. “In Spanish, I can’t really make jokes. I’m not that good at jokes, whereas here I’ll make a quip to a classmate on the side, and he’ll giggle quietly. … The Spanish have humor, but there’s a lot of political and cultural context that I simply don’t get from not having lived there and not having engaged with local politics.”

Aside from social interactions in classes, some international students said the class structures at USC typically differ greatly from those at their home universities, requiring students to shift their learning styles or encouraging students to look beyond the confines of their major studies.

For example, Parfenov’s home university, Esade, specializes in law and business, whereas USC offers a multitude of vastly different majors.

At Korea University, Park said she attended primarily lecture-based classes, whereas her classes in Marshall are predominantly interactive. Likewise, Park said that Marshall’s classes have more assignments and group projects compared to Korea University.

USC students explore opportunities abroad

Several departments at USC also offer student travel, undergraduate and graduate programs for students to explore and immerse themselves in communities abroad.

Liana Jin, a junior majoring in communication, is currently an exchange student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Compared to the broader classes on communication at USC that are largely applicable to the Los Angeles and U.S. communications landscape, she said her classes at CUHK focus on the Hong Kong landscape and marketing and promotion in the music industry. Lin is currently working on a marketing project for Clockenflap, the largest international outdoor music and arts festival in Hong Kong.

Praew Kedpradit, a junior majoring in public relations and advertising studying abroad in London, said her classes are far more communication-based in London, whereas her classes at USC typically took on a public relations angle.

Both students have transformed their understanding of communication and public relations, respectively, as they explore the particularities of their host countries and what their fields of study mean in an international context.

In a similar vein to Lin’s classes, Kedpradit said many courses center on her host city of London and focus on topics ranging from the popular culture of London to the rhetoric of London. She said her favorite is a popular culture class on the cross-cultural intersection of music and fashion.

“It shifted my perspective a lot,” Kedpradit said. “In PR, it’s all about what we’re going to do in work, but I guess we don’t get to discuss or think about the broader media ecosystem. I think for these classes, we really get to think more about what we put out, why we put it out, and analyze it.”

Though studying abroad offers newfound challenges — from navigating new cities and languages to finding friends — Kedpradit said the experience ultimately offers students the chance to emulate a global mindset and transform how they learn and perceive the world around them.

“I felt like [L.A.] could be a bubble,” Kedpradit said. “There’s not a lot of things you can do outside of class. But by being abroad, you just get to travel so much, and with traveling, you get to see how people live their lives in many different countries, different areas, and you can take from that.”