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Curious About International Institutions
kcj2196
49 replies5 threads Junior Member
Hey guys!
Just wondering...
I've applied to a couple institutions abroad (either they were cheap or free to apply to) and now that I'm getting acceptances back, I'm not entirely sure how feasible they really are as options. So I'm looking for some help.
I've gotten University of Glasgow, Jacobs University Bremen, and University of Sydney. Now I'm involved with Rotary and so I can find contacts throughout the world in one to two degrees of separation so I'm wondering about like residency requirements and the establishment of them because I could potentially bring down tuition from like $32,000 a year to $7,000 a year or something like that.
If anybody has any advice on that or scholarships or just experience with schools in those countries (Scotland, Germany, Australia), it would be very much appreciated! Thanks!!
21 repliesJust wondering...
I've applied to a couple institutions abroad (either they were cheap or free to apply to) and now that I'm getting acceptances back, I'm not entirely sure how feasible they really are as options. So I'm looking for some help.
I've gotten University of Glasgow, Jacobs University Bremen, and University of Sydney. Now I'm involved with Rotary and so I can find contacts throughout the world in one to two degrees of separation so I'm wondering about like residency requirements and the establishment of them because I could potentially bring down tuition from like $32,000 a year to $7,000 a year or something like that.
If anybody has any advice on that or scholarships or just experience with schools in those countries (Scotland, Germany, Australia), it would be very much appreciated! Thanks!!
Post edited by kcj2196 on
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Replies to: Curious About International Institutions
You can easily find the formal requirements for resident fees on the website of each university. For example, the University of Glasgow has a page titled Fee Status that refers you to this government website here.
You can read through the formal requirements but the gist of it is this: if you want to pay home or EU fees, you'd need to be an "ordinary resident" (not on a temporary visa) of the UK or an EU national, and you must have lived in Europe for at least 3 years before you start college. There are a few exceptions, e.g. for refugees, but you probably don't qualify for any of those.
Jacobs University is a private university with no discounted fees for resident students.
The University of Sydney's rules are much simpler: you are a domestic student for fee purposes if you are a citizen of Australia or New Zealand, or a legal permanent resident of Australia, and an international student otherwise. That's explained in the International Undergraduate Guide.
You can find the eligibility criteria for Australian citizenship here: http://www.citizenship.gov.au/
The UK explicitly says that you'd need to live there for three years before starting college, or you would need to make a convincing case that you'd be also living in the UK if you were not attending a university there. You also cannot be on a student visa if you want to pay home fees. I can think of two scenarios to satisfy both demands: you could marry a UK citizen, or maybe your parents would qualify for a permanent resident visa and your whole family could relocate to the UK.
And the only way I've ever heard of 'tagging onto' a family in Europe is to marry into one.
You'd arguably receive a better education at a good-but-not-great American university than at a good-but-not-great foreign university. For example, one of the main obstacle that European students face when they want to apply to graduate school in the US are letters of recommendations; European professors don't interact with undergraduate students (it's considered a 'waste of their time'). If you appreciate flexibility in choosing your courses, foreign universities aren't for you either.
Unless you actually intend to emigrate to another country, you are way better off going to college in the US.
The #1 preferred country to my surprise, was Germany, and the next in the Top Five were Switzerland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands. The general feature especially for Germany is that you will pay more if you're a non-citizen, but it's still very much manageable, and if you agree to work in the country after you graduate, most of these countries have structured repayment systems that will help you to work it off reasonably quickly so long as you're a productive and law-abiding citizen.
I think this may be a much better alternative than trying to get residency status, which in practice is incredibly difficult to pull off, or would otherwise require years as people are pointing out. You'll of course have to learn German which is becoming a kind of common academic language in many of the best countries, but it's well worth it if you want to attend internationally.
German universities are notoriously underfunded though. If you can afford to study elsewhere, I'd go elsewhere. Take it from a German.
Seriously though, I don't think that German universities do much educating. They mostly hold students accountable for educating themselves. It's okay if you only care about the degree, but the actual college experience is vastly inferior to what you'd get in the US.
You are allowed to work up to 20 hours during term time in the UK if you're a student and full time during the holidays/vacations. But the economy here is dreadful. It can be hard to even get a cashier job as a graduate.
My advice would be to attend a community college in the US, transfer to a major state school and do a semester abroad. You pay the same tuition as if you were staying in the USA.
If you *have* to go abroad, short of joining the French Foreign Legion- have you considered China? Some colleges do 4 year degrees in Chinese as a Foreign Language. Mostly language and writing with a bit of culture. Your classmates will mostly be Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese or Thai depending on where you are. You can live in a Chinese dorm for about $200 a YEAR. But you'll be sharing with 6 others in bunk beds with Chinese loos which you can smell before you see them... Go for the nicer accomodation... Have a look at Study in China | China's University and College Admission System - CUCAS I did tefl in Shandong province so I'm biased. Nice climate.