AIFS AbroadReviews of aifsabroad.com

I just finished my intern experience in Florence, Italy with AIFS and I had the time of my life! Living and working in Florence for 3 months was a dream come true and it was an amazing group of 10 girls in the program! While the work experience was great one of the best parts of interning in Florence was the friends I made while there. All 10 of us got along so well and were ready to travel and adventure together the whole time. We were able to take amazing day and weekend trips throughout Italy and the surrounding countries. I have so many cherished memories and laughs from my time in Florence and I would immediately do it all over again if given the chance!

Berlin is a really wonderful and historic city to live in. My German is basically nonexistent and I still felt like I was able to get around fine. The AIFs staff are very supportive, and the organized actives were well structured and thought out. If you weren’t interested in some or all of the activities, you didn’t have to participate and there was plenty of time to do your own thing around Berlin or travel throughout Europe. I didn’t particularly enjoy my academic experience at Humboldt, there were a few good classes but also a few really awful ones. So, if I could do it again I would probably do the AIFS program with Freie Universität academic program.

My experience with AIFS Abroad was overall great. Beyond a few superficial issues, namely with the housing, I have no complaints. I felt supported through the entire process, from application to exit. The onsite coordinator, Greta, was amazing. Any issues that I ran into were quickly and efficiently resolved with her help. One complaint that I have involves the classes that I was enrolled in with the program. The instructor for GE 301 was not as involved as I would have hoped for, and the frequency with which he released assignments proved to be detrimental to the overall accomplishment of said assignments. I would have hoped that there would be a schedule for when assignments would be opened that spread them out over the entire semester. Instead, the first was not available until mid October, the next almost a month later, and the rest opened all at the same time a few weeks after that. Nonetheless, my experience was amazing and I would highly recommend AIFS to others.

My experience with this trip was pretty positive! The professors, namely Professor Hilman, were very engaging and I felt like I actually learned quite a few things about Italy. As far as apartments go, we had a great location but our landlord was terrible at communication and would never get back to us about broken utilities in the apartment. For that reason it became a frustrating trip, but overall the good outweighed the bad.

The people I met were the reason for my rating. Aifs could’ve done a better job with apartments all around. We could’ve all been closer together at the least instead of being scattered, it’d be nicer if everyone was closer to the study center too. My apartment alone was significantly in worse condition than the others. I saw many apartments and all of them I would’ve rather lived in. Coordinators need to see the apartments for themselves in person before students arrive.

I'm so happy I decided to come to Milan for the fashion internship. There were many highs and lows living here. For example, our advisors were sooo amazing and genuinely cared a lot for each and every one of us, however the lack of air conditioning in 95 degree weather made everyone in our apartment a little irritable. I learned a lot about myself as a person during my internship and experience living on my own. I would definitely do this again.

pros: - Amanda and Antonella are so supportive - Amanda helped me find my luggage after it was missing for a month, which I’m so grateful for - I really liked my graphic arts internship overall, applied photoshop skills, even a little bit of web dev Cons: - someone who arrived to Milan early took my room without informing me ahead of time, which frustrated me - felt like I didn’t belong sometimes because I’m introverted and didn’t vibe with a lot of my classmates who are extremely extroverted - work can feel isolating because the employees don’t always want to talk to me

This program provided me a wonderful opportunity to live in Milan while pursuing an internship. Thanks to Amanda and Antonella, I felt safe and comfortable during my time here. My favorite parts were the planned group events that allowed us to sightsee in Italy and experience the food and culture!