“I wanted to see if there was a reason why that I wasn’t realizing. It can’t be distance, because a student from the East Coast studying in Britain isn’t much farther away from home than he would be if he studied in California, the student visa process isn’t particularly arduous and the top universities in Britain have more name recognition than many American universities and colleges. What is it?”
I think that part of the issue is that people in the US don’t seem to think of it much. The US has a huge number of very good universities and many highly ranked ones, and so I think that high school students rarely think of attending schools outside the US, in spite of the rather daunting sticker price for US schools.
“If you are looking for a cheaper university experience that does not have the football/Greek life emphasis you may want to look at Canadian universities.”
This did apply to us. Another advantage of Canadian or UK universities is that admission is relatively predictable and based on grades and to some extent SAT and references. These are all things that my kids and particularly my youngest had in spades (as compared to ECs and “hooks”). For us admission to schools outside of the US was a non-event – essentially pick a school, go there. My daughters do have friends who are in university in California which for us is a lot further away than eastern Canada, and quite similar in distance compared to the UK. Flights to the UK are probably a bit more expensive possibly due to their being less competition.
However, when my daughter was telling kids at school where she was applying, she got a lot of “where” and “why” sort of comments. I told her that as soon as we crossed the border comments would change to “great school”. We flew up to Canada, went up to the immigration official in the airport who asked “why are you here”. She pointed to her t-shirt and said essentially “starting university”, and his immediate response was exactly “great school”.
Many years ago I had a friend who had done a year abroad in the UK. She loved it. It was clearly her favourite year in university.
As such I think that doing university in the UK is a very reasonable thing to consider. Canada has the advantage that it is closer in distance and also the university system is more similar to the US. However, both countries (and Australia also) have great universities and speak a language which at least closely resembles English. In the UK you will save a year and get to focus more on courses closer to what you want to major in.