Go talk to your tutor, talk to your plans, and get their approval. Make sure you've checked all the requirements, check your finances, and make sure your courses at UCR are planned properly.

Once you have found a university that either UCR or UU has an exchange program with, you should fill out the exchange form on Osiris. Your tutor must sign this application to indicate they support your initial plans. After that you have to submit your application to the Board of Examiners, which will review your application.

In most cases, the deadline for handing in this form is the Friday before Fall break.
- If you are planning to go on exchange during a Fall, then this would be exactly one year before you'd be on exchange.
- If you are planning to go to a UU program during a Spring, this would be one-and-a-half years before going on exchange (e.g. if you want to on exchange in Spring 2020, then the deadline would be Friday 18 October, 2019).
- If you are planning to go to a UCR program during a Spring, while it is advisable to start as early as possible, it is in some cases possible to get approval until the beginning of the Fall semester before you leave. Contact the Exchange Officer for more information on program-specific deadlines.

If you fulfil all of the requirements, you will get approval from UCR within a few weeks to continue your application.

You can skip this step if you are applying to one of UCR's own programs.

When UCR has approved you, you must get approval from UU. At UU, you may apply to your top 2 or 3 universities, but these may only be the universities you have indicated on your Osiris exchange form and that UCR has given you permission for. It is highly recommended that you pick more than one university, because their might be competition from other UU students for a program.

In most cases, the deadline for this is December 1st.

The UU application procedure will ask you for a "study plan". Don't worry too much about this: you can simply upload the approval of the Board of Examiners that you received during step 2 as your study plan, and UU will accept this.

In the beginning of March you will get an answer from UU and hear whether you have been accepted into one of your choices. If this is the case, you must schedule an appointment with the Registrar before sending your completed application to UU. UU will need this to know that you have UCR's consent to spend a semester abroad.

See UU's study abroad website for more information.

Once you are nominated by UU to one of your desired locations, you will have to complete all the paperwork towards the exchange university. UU will send you all the required materials, documents, and links. If you have questions about this process, you may contact one of the UU regional coordinators.

If you were selected for a UCR program, you will receive the information directly from UCR's Registrar.

Once your host university has formally accepted your application, you can begin to arrange other formalities (such as plane tickets, housing, and your visa). You should notify both your tutor and the Registrar once you have been formally accepted at your host university so this can be registered properly.

You can also start picking the courses you want to do during your semester abroad. Because courses at other universities can vary wildly from the courses taught at UCR, the ones you are going to do have to be approved before you go. For this to happen, you need to hand in a Learning Agreement. See the page on transferring your courses for all information.

After this, you can finally do what you have been doing all this work for: going on exchange! Enjoy!