You will not need a car
The centre is compact, and a tram line plus a dense bus network covers everything else. CFI is about ten minutes from the railway station by bus. A monthly student pass costs a fraction of what it does in Paris.
Living in Clermont-Ferrand · Auvergne, France
Clermont-Ferrand sits in the middle of France, under a volcano, with 35,000 students and the world headquarters of Michelin. It is not Paris — and after three months here, most students say that is exactly why it worked.
The Puy de Dôme, twenty minutes from your classroom.
Chaîne des Puys — UNESCO World Heritage
Living in Clermont-Ferrand as a student means a city of about 145,000 people, and roughly 300,000 across Clermont Auvergne Métropole — the twenty-one towns that ring it. Large enough to have a real student life, small enough that you will keep running into the same faces — which is how you end up with friends rather than contacts.
Student recommendation rate: L’Étudiant, national survey of French student cities.
The old town is built from volcanic rock, which is why the cathedral is black. It surprises everyone the first time. Six things you will notice in your first week.
The centre is compact, and a tram line plus a dense bus network covers everything else. CFI is about ten minutes from the railway station by bus. A monthly student pass costs a fraction of what it does in Paris.
The Chaîne des Puys is a UNESCO World Heritage site and it starts at the edge of town. A bus and a mountain railway take you up the Puy de Dôme on a Saturday morning.
Michelin was founded here in 1889 and still runs its world headquarters from the city. Limagrain, one of the largest seed groups on earth, is a few kilometres away. For business students, that is the point.
Auvergne is farming country. The covered market and the open-air ones are where people actually shop, and where your French will improve faster than in any classroom.
ASM Clermont Auvergne fills a 19,000-seat stadium and the whole city turns yellow on match days. Go once, even if you do not follow rugby. Especially if you do not.
Auvergne is known for cheese and charcuterie, but the supermarket two minutes from the school carries lentils, rice and pulses, and the markets overflow with vegetables. Cook what you like and bring it to Chez Colette — the school’s lunch room, with microwaves and a sink. Nobody here will ask you to explain your diet.
You are not coming for four weeks of slides. Everything below is within an hour of the school, and most of it appears in the weekend programme — designed, as it happens, by our own tourism students.
Lac d’Aydat and Lac Chambon have beaches and are half an hour away. Lac Pavin is a near-perfect circle of water filling an old crater — the kind of place you photograph and nobody believes.
The Sancy massif rises to 1,886 m, the highest point of the Massif Central, with ski resorts at Super-Besse and Le Mont-Dore. Under an hour from your room. For a spring cohort, there is often still snow up there.
Marked trails run straight out of the city into the Chaîne des Puys, and the Puy de Dôme is one of the best-known paragliding take-offs in France. Beginners fly tandem.
Every February, Clermont-Ferrand hosts the largest short film festival in the world — bigger than any other, in a city of this size. For a few days the whole town queues outside cinemas.
Place de Jaude is the centre of gravity, and the squares of the old town fill up on Thursday nights in term time. With 35,000 students in a city this compact, you are never far from where people are.
Around 871 courses are taught here across its institutions. That means libraries, bookshops, cheap cinema seats and student rates almost everywhere — a whole economy organised around people your age.
Number of courses: L’Étudiant, Clermont-Ferrand city profile.
Most students from India fly into Paris Charles de Gaulle and take the train. It is the simplest route and the one we will walk you through before you book anything.
Finding a room in France from 7,000 kilometres away, in a language you do not yet speak, with landlords who want a French guarantor — this is the part that defeats most international students. So we made it an option rather than a problem.
A furnished room of your own with a kitchen area — a studio, or a private bedroom in a shared flat — booked before you leave home, at an additional cost set out on the fees page. Water, electricity and internet are included in the rent: no second bill, nothing to set up. No guarantor, no deposit chase, no viewing you cannot attend.
Your visa file needs proof of accommodation. Taking the option produces that document automatically — which is often the real reason students choose it.
Perfectly possible, and cheaper. You will need to find the place, sign the lease and produce the proof on your own. Tell us early if that is your plan and we will say what to watch for.
Clermont-Ferrand is one of the more affordable student cities in France — rent here is a fraction of Paris or Lyon, and that difference is the whole argument for studying in a mid-sized French city.
For a four-week stay, count on around €600 for accommodation, utilities included, in one of the residences we have negotiated terms with, and €200 to €250 for food — a figure that assumes you cook, which most students here do. A full written budget comes with your letter of acceptance.
See the fees →The first week abroad is where most international students lose their footing: no phone line, no bus pass, nobody to ask. Three of those are handled before you land, and the fourth is a person.
You make your own way from Paris — but not blind. Before you fly we send you the exact route, the train to book, the time to take it and what the station looks like. A member of the CFI team meets you when you reach Clermont-Ferrand.
Provided, with help activating it. Until you have a French number, nothing else works — not the bank, not the bus app, not the doctor.
Included if you take the accommodation option; otherwise we go with you to buy it. €28.80 a month at the under-26 rate, for the tram and every bus in the city — one of the cheapest networks in France. Note that a monthly pass runs from the 1st to the last day of the month, not thirty days from purchase.
A CFI student paired with you in the first week of the online phase — two months before you fly. By the time you land, you already know someone here.
Your Saturday, forty minutes away.
Paragliding off the Puy de Dôme — eighty volcanoes, one bus ride from the centre
About the food, the winter, the rent, whether you will be the only one from your country. We answer within three working days, and we have heard the question before.
Talk to our team →