Your first week at SOAS without the admin panic

Official Welcome Week timings, campus teams, MySOAS, quiet rooms and the boring practicals that make the rest of term feel much easier.

The official SOAS guide says you are arriving into a community of nearly 6,000 students from over 135 countries in the middle of London. This page strips that first week down to the bits worth doing early, so you do not spend day three trying to find your ID card, the Student Hub and an edible lunch at the same time.

Open the brochure

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Start with the campus stuff that unlocks everything else

The Welcome Week brochure says the key first-week teams are based in Senate House, Paul Webley Wing. That covers the jobs most likely to slow the rest of your week down: collecting your SOAS ID card, sorting fees, enrolment or visa details, and finding the Student Hub or IT support before you need them in a hurry.

SOAS also says Student Ambassadors in purple bibs are there during Welcome Week, so do not waste half an hour pretending you can infer a campus map from vibes alone.

See the official map

Use day one to give yourself less to remember later

Ground floor first

The brochure lists ID Card Collection, Fees & Scholarships, and Enrolment & Visa on the ground floor of the Paul Webley Wing during Welcome Week.

Lower ground floor next

Admissions, IT Queries and the Student Hub are grouped together downstairs, so you can clear most of the technical and admin backlog in one pass.

Do the Wi-Fi properly

SOAS says your eduroam username must end with @soas.ac.uk. Miss that detail and you are just making your own life harder.

Build your own timetable

MySOAS SharePoint lets you sort Welcome Week events by category and date, so you can make a version of freshers that fits your schedule instead of copying somebody else’s.

Use Welcome Fair as an anchor

The brochure lists Welcome Fair every day from 10:00 to 15:00, and SOAS’s societies blog says Fresher’s Fayre and early taster sessions are where many students first meet committees, try groups out and actually leave with a plan.

Know your quiet fallback

Official quiet rooms are S211, S214 and S216 in the Paul Webley Wing, and the same guide points to Russell Square as the nearby green reset option.

If you are new to London, do the unglamorous bits early

Sort your bank letter before you need the account

SOAS’s international student guide says opening a bank account usually means bringing proof of identity and address, and in many cases a bank letter from SOAS. If that is on your list, do it before the timetable fills up.

Get your phone, GP and routes working fast

The same guide recommends buying a UK SIM after arrival, registering with a local GP, and downloading Citymapper and the TFL app so your first week is not one long experiment in getting lost expensively.

Meet people, but not at the cost of a routine

SOAS students writing about Welcome Week say two things repeatedly: talk to people, and get out of your comfort zone a little. The useful version of that is simple: do one admin job, one orientation thing and one social thing a day so the week still feels like yours.

Welcome Week brochure International student guide Making the most of Welcome Week

One useful day beats trying to do all of freshers at once

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