<p>Hello. I am currently an undergraduate student at NYU, majoring in Political Science, set to finish in the following year. I plan to pursue a graduate degree and am currently looking at my different options. One thing that is greatly interesting to me is the possibility of getting a degree from outside of the United States. I have already spent two semesters as a degree-pursuing student at the University of Bucharest in Romania. So, I am aware of the difficulties involved in studying in more “exotic” places. I know several of acquaintances who have gone to study in universities in England and Scotland. This is quite common for American students and is not considered out of the ordinary. However, I am having trouble discerning how degrees from other countries would be received in the United States. Presently, I am looking at programs at universities in both South Africa and New Zealand. Are foreign degrees frowned upon? Does the US government have any system of assessing foreign qualifications?</p>
<p>Any help, insight, anecdotes, etc., would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Don’t ever go to France for studying purposes. Between South Africa and New Zealand, I’d pick New Zealand if I were you (if only for the much lower murder rate, plus all the people I’ve known to get degrees in either country (2 in NZ, 1 in SA) would recommend Auckland over any place in South Africa).</p>
<p>One way of assesing the level of the university would be to assess the exchange programs with universities in the states. To have an exchange program would mean it would need to be on par with an institution in the US. Another good source of information would be academics at NYU. </p>
<p>I would say that your government would have a list of institutions that they recognise. I highly doubt that they would reject NZ institutions though (or SA for that matter but i know very little of SA education system).</p>
<p>As far as i know some of the main universities in NZ are: University of Auckland, University of Otago and Victoria University.</p>
<p>French bureaucracy and the extreme condescending attitude of all bureaucrats (and a lot of the populace in general), among other things. If you want to do French immersion, you can go to many other places anyway…</p>
<p>Thanks for the various pointers. I have myself thought that an education in NZ would be more valuable (as more mainstream) than in South Africa. I’ll see if there is some specialist or particular advisor here at NYU who could help me out.</p>