Is France worth it? An international student's honest verdict after 2 years

Two years in, here's my real answer — not the brochure version, not the horror story. The honest truth about what you gain and what it costs you.

Two years ago I almost didn't come

I was accepted to my programme in Lyon in March, and spent the next four months finding reasons not to go. The visa process was intimidating. My French was mediocre. I didn't know anyone. The housing market looked brutal. I had a perfectly reasonable offer from a university in the Netherlands where everything would be in English and the bureaucracy would be cleaner.

I came to France anyway. Two years later, here is my honest verdict — not the version I'd put in a promotional brochure, not the cautionary tale I'd use to scare people off. The real one.

What France gets right that almost nowhere else does

Tuition fees that don't define your entire adult life. I paid €2,895/year as a non-EU student. My peers at comparable UK programmes paid £20,000+/year. The difference in financial pressure is not subtle — it's structural. In France, I was able to actually think about my studies, my city, my friendships. I was not constantly doing the maths on return-on-investment.

A standard of living that rewards you for being here. With CAF housing benefit, my effective rent was €635/month in Lyon. I ate well. I travelled on weekends. I didn't feel poor. A similar academic experience in London would have required either wealthy parents or crippling loans.

The country itself. This sounds obvious, but spending two years in France means you are in France. You take the train to Paris for a weekend. You visit Provence. You go skiing in February. You eat properly, constantly, because it is culturally impossible to do otherwise. This is not a small thing. Quality of life is a real output of studying abroad.

Work rights that are actually meaningful. As a student visa holder, I could work up to 964 hours per year — roughly half-time. I worked about 15 hours/week in my second year. It covered my living costs, gave me local work experience, and improved my French faster than any class.

What France gets wrong

The bureaucracy is genuinely bad. I want to be honest about this because it's often downplayed. In my first four months, I dealt with: the ANEF visa validation portal (broke, slow, required multiple attempts), CPAM for health insurance (took three months to process my file), CAF for housing benefit (correct once, then wrong for two consecutive months before being fixed), and a prefecture appointment that was scheduled, cancelled, rescheduled, and ultimately unnecessary because the process had moved online.

None of this was fatal. All of it was solved. But it cost real time and real stress. If you are the kind of person who finds administrative friction disproportionately demoralising, France will test you.

The language is non-negotiable in daily life. Even in a city like Lyon with excellent English-taught programmes at EM Lyon and INSA, daily life — landlords, doctors, insurance, the post office — requires French. I came with B1 and reached C1 by the end of two years. That progression was one of the most valuable outcomes of my time here. But if you're expecting an English-language bubble, you won't find one outside specific programme campuses.

Social integration takes patience. French social culture is not immediately open. Friendships form more slowly and tend to be more durable once they form. I didn't feel I had a real social network until about six months in. The students I met through my university association became some of my closest friends. But the first semester required genuine effort and some resilience.

The career question

This is the most pragmatic consideration and the hardest to generalise. France's elite *grandes écoles* system means that if you graduate from HEC, Sciences Po Paris, or Polytechnique, your career ceiling is legitimately high. Public university degrees are respected in France but carry less international brand recognition.

For international students, the most valuable outcome is often not the degree itself but the combination of French language fluency, European professional network, and specific technical skills. The companies hiring from Lyon's engineering schools, from Toulouse's aerospace cluster, from Grenoble's tech ecosystem — they are serious organisations offering serious careers.

If your goal is to work in France or French-speaking markets, two years here is an exceptional investment. If your goal is to return home with a credential that signals quality to employers who have never heard of French universities, the calculation is more complex.

My actual verdict

France is worth it for the right reasons. It is worth it if you want a high quality of life without being financially crippled. It is worth it if you want language skills that genuinely expand your career geography. It is worth it if you value cultural depth over bureaucratic convenience.

It is not the right choice if you want the cleanest administrative experience, the most internationally recognised brand on your CV, or a place where daily life requires no adaptation.

I would do it again. I would just have applied for CAF on the day I signed my lease, started looking for accommodation earlier, and trusted that the bureaucratic friction would eventually resolve itself.

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