Just imagine... Studying

Nantes Saint-Nazaire attracts more foreign students – 10% in total – than any other French city. Why? Well, simply because the city offers a wide choice of excellent institutions of international dimensions:

• with a university,
• engineering schools (Ecole des Mines, Ecole centrale, Ecole du bois, ;, Polytech, Oniris, ICAM) and a management school (Audencia),
• art, architecture schools and L'Ecole de design Nantes Atlantique.

Several thousand students arrive each year, particularly from China, Vietnam and Morocco to further their education and improve their knowledge of the French language.

With 75 laboratories and 1,000 teachers as researchers, the University of Nantes is renowned for its research centers and its courses of excellence in such domains as health, composites and new technologies.

Ecole Centrale’s studies on wave and tidal energy converters, the works of the Institute of Technological Research (IRT Jules Verne)Technological Research (IRT Jules Verne) on composite materials of the future or the research led by the Jean Rouxel Institute of Materials or Ifremer are examples of the successful partnerships conducted between companies, laboratories and engineering schools.

About 700 foreign researchers stay in Nantes for their studies. The Institute of Advanced Studies offers a residency to about thirty of them, giving the priority to students from the “southern countries.” Its ambition is to put an end to unilateralism and to create an ideal environment for a new style of intellectual relationship between the countries of the ‘north’ and ‘south’.

There are also many initiatives of international scope: Nantes hosted the International Congress of planetology, which brought together more than 1,000 international researchers last October. Google selected the computer laboratory of Nantes (LINA) for the quality of its research and a European graduate programme in nanomedicine has also been confirmed for 2012 and so on… 

Nantes Saint-Nazaire has developed a special welcoming plan for students and researchers to facilitate their arrival and stay by setting up students’ sponsorship, conversation club, etc.

The nightlife is also a big deal here as students sure like to party. Historically, Nantes is the town of artists and dreamers: Jules Verne, André Breton or Jacques Demy…. Today along with Saint-Nazaire, the metropolitan area boasts unique cultural events and features very creative venues (La Fabrique, VIP, le lieu unique…). There are also many “café-concerts” that spice up the city’s nightlife and the cultural scene.

So if you come and study in Nantes, you will discover a human-sized city where you will feel like home and will also offer you the kind of cultural life you can find in big European cities!