We are a student company. In fact, we are still students ourselves as we are working on our master degrees. We want to be students and that makes us effective!
There are about 80,000 international students in the Netherlands each academic year. This intelligent group of people (often the top of the class in their home country), struggle to adapt and integrate once they arrive here. They encounter a great deal of problems that often have simple solutions, but they have difficulty getting past them due to lack of experience, administrative issues, cultural barriers, and simple misunderstandings.
Studentify wants to help make these problems disappear. We know all of the ins and outs of being an international student in the Netherlands because we are international students in the Netherlands. In order to help other students like us avoid the same mistakes and pitfalls we've made, we have developed some simple and useful guides to walk every incoming international student through the process of moving to, studying, and living in the Netherlands.
You can get a very personal guide that's tailored to your situation by signing into the Studentify page. Your personalised guide, created based on your country of origin, your university in the Netherlands, and the new city you will be living in, will tell you everything you need to know about your city, your school, and your new country overall. The guides have been designed in such a way as to centralise all the information you will need, as well as to add practical tips and tricks from 'local' students to give you insider knowledge of your new surroundings before you even get here. You can find general information about things like accommodation, banking, insurance, registering with your municipality once you arrive, visas and permits you may need before entering, social aspects of the Netherlands, and transport around the country, as well as more specific information about your particular school and city.
On top of these practical guides, Studentify also wants to make life as easy as possible for international students by helping them solve one of the most basic problems they face, finding a job. StudentTutors, one of the projects that are part of the Studentify network, creates jobs for international students by providing tutoring services for students who want some extra help. If you're looking for a tutor, or interested in becoming one, please see studenttutors.nl to find out how.
Studentify has other projects on the go to continue helping international students get the most out of their experience. By working together with, and for, international students, we hope to encourage them to stick around and become a part of the growing 'knowledge economy' that the Netherlands is so proud of. Keep up to date with what we're doing via facebook or twitter and check back often as we're constantly updating and making things better and feel free to give us some feedback via the 'suggest' button as well as we are always looking to improve!