Advice Needed please ! DD1 obsessed with studying in the USA

[lloydjam]

I'd be very grateful for any advice please - my DD1 is taking GCSEs this year and is predicted to do well. She has chosen her A levels but after that she is obsessed with the idea of studying in a USA university - ideally california to do an Economics/business degree. Do any mums netters have any advice on this whether this is a good/bad idea, realistic or should I really be trying to steer her back to UK Uni.

Any advice gratefully received. thank you !

J1 visas are difficult to get now. You have to be sponsored by the organisation you are going to and they have to jump through a lot of hoops.
As for studying as an undergrad in the USA... My DD got a place. $40,000 a year tuition, $20,000 living costs with some food included . She needed materials , books, entertainment money and flights home . It was a 4 year course. She got a scholarship if $7000 per annum. She didn't go as my DH is near retirement age. The Fulbright Commission have no useful advice for getting money . This is because there is none available. Scholarships are paltry if you earn a reasonable wage . About 7 US universities are needs blind and they are the top drawer ones. It is significantly cheaper to do an exchange for a year . It us slightly easier to get post grad funding . We know lots of Saudi girls and the super rich who study in the U.S., but no-One else. It is mega expensive and no loans. There are loads of previous threads on this subject all saying the same thing . You need to be mega rich, mega poor or mega clever .

My cousins' girlfriend (Indian national, mega talented & clever) went to one of the Unis listed upthread (not needs blind, I guess it's not a big enough brand to MNers either). I wouldn't call her family mega-rich. Mega-rich by Indian standards, maybe.

But yeah, the girl needs to have good reasons to want to go to USA or OP has to be very generous to indulge the whim. I wouldn't say the SAT tests are that specialised at all. They're just multiple choice tests.

OP Some UK universities have student ambassadors who are on Exchange programmes or have recently travelled who field questions and post blogs. Could you point your daughter in their direction to see if their experiences might help her create a Plan B?

Student Room will also have stacks of info if she's not been there already.

Ragged - the SAT is specialised in the sense that there is a technique (not all multiple choice) and the maths in particular is done in a different way /not covered by our GCSE in some respects. Having to do maths at all if the student has gladly given it up after GCSE (similarly for English if a scientist) is difficult enough. US kids are trained how to do it for at least a year - our kids can maybe do a very expensive course or rely on the goodwill of teachers or just do it "blind"

Why not research European universities? UK fees are the HIGHEST in Europe. My dd is studying for an MA in France. She had to pay 200 Euros (about £160) for the forthcoming year. Tuition on her course is effectively free, as it should be (used to be) here. I think the 200 Euros dd paid may have been some sort of insurance cover.

We never hear from the coalition about how much more favourably young people are treated on the continent But in many cases (France is a case in point) - they certainly are. The French are also generous in helping young people under 25 with housing costs (their housing benefit is called CAF).

There are various courses in English at European universities (look up Maastricht and Strasbourg for starters). If your dd got a place at a European university, she could easily come home every few months, and she'd benefit from experiencing life abroad as well.

There is an article on this topic ob the bbc website. Havent read it yet.

I didn't get any special training, just a practice on the PSAT, & I got 98th percentile on my real math SAT. . My skim of iGCSE math exam it seemed just like the math I was doing at 16. Maybe it was different 30 yrs ago.

I agree with most posters who reckon the USA college is too expensive compared to UK option. I have some doubts about quality of most European degrees, but I dont' know enough to say for sure.

I did a 4 year business degree in Manchester with 3rd year at a US college, doing business senior year courses. No tuition fees at the time! Exchange programme. Was a great experience although lonely (city uni where many students lived at home and I was under 21) and living costs and flights were v expensive. My visa allowed jobs on campus only, but there were some good jobs available which was lucky as ran out of what had meant to be my year's cash after one semester and worked 20hrs a week after that!

It was tricky leaving then boyfriend and also returning home when he and lots of friends had graduated, but fun studying with those with language skills who had been to European universities for a year and all the exchange students from the overseas institutions.

USA is a long, expensive way away though and the culture different. In retrospect, despite having been good in many ways and helping me get a good graduate job, I wouldn't have done it! I was young and wrapped up in social and love life, which it hugely disrupted!

I've just remembered the bit in The Social Network - admittedly I don't know if it was actually true - where Mark Zuckerberg insults his girlfriend because she goes to BU and not Harvard. Ime this is actually quite realistic.

Actually, Brenda, the joke is that BU is a very good uni and quite tough to get into. This scene demonstrated Zuckerberg's extreme academic snobbery but only to an American audience.

Duckdeamon very interesting feedback may need to PM you in two years' time

Unless you have the money to pay it all I would recommend the year abroad.

California is a truly massive state and it can be very boring to be stuck somewhere without a car. I grew up in a beach town and couldn't wait to leave - living somewhere is so different than being there on holiday.

I would also be concerned about how the degree will transfer to the job market in the UK. I am pretty sure that it is my MA degree from the UK that got me interviews, not my BA with honors from my private US uni.

Visa is requirements also change frequently so I wouldn't count on a work visa to stay either.

Keep researching and encourage her to keep her options open.

Why not research European universities? UK fees are the HIGHEST in Europe.

True, but European education is often not comparable to UK education either. Caveat emptor.

BTW the French may be generous with young people but correspondingly tax rates and public sector salaries are not comparable with those in the UK.

Similarly for the Netherlands: on a salary of 60k or so, net salaries are at least 10% lower than here, lower still if you can't claim mortgage tax relief etc.

isn't that the point I was making, horsemadmom? in spite of BU being a good place there a fair few who sneer at anything below the very top tier.

My dd is at a an English uni and will be doing a year in USA. She's going in Sept and I'm a bit alarmed to read some of these posts- about it being dangerous. Her uni have given them lots if talks about life there but haven't mentioned anything about rapes etc. .

She's very much looking forward to it, the people she's spoken to who have already done it say its an amazing experience.

My main question would be why?

It sounds like she likes the idea of it. Its cool watching tv programmes featuring US colleges. They seem to have great fun. Its different to the route her friends will be following. She would be the British girl. She could have an American boyfriend. If these (or similar) are her reasons then you're simply throwing away your money.

If there is a particular area of study that she wants to pursue that is only available in the US then that is when you look at it more seriously. Business/economics is not that sort of area. If she's still dead set on it after her undergraduate degree she could look at a US MBA (still pretty pointless in the UK unless its from Harvard).

Don't worry about safety in the US. There are crime statistics for each university! However, teaching your child how to stay safe is very important. Very!!! They need to develop safe practices such as not walking alone at night, taking taxis in a group, avoiding dodgy areas etc. Much as you would do here.

Thank you Milly that's reassuring. I will be googling her Uni crime statistics!

True, but European education is often not comparable to UK education either. Caveat emptor

Absolutely. You will rarely get the 1 on 1 tutorial or the small (no larger than 15) group seminar. You will rarely get to know professors, you'll deal most;y with their harassed PhD students. France, Italy & Germany are extremely hierarchical. Scandinavian universities get closer to the UK quality of experience, but the cost of living in those countries might just balance out the lower fees.

You get what you pay for.

The University of Geneva is fantastic and much more like our universities. Very high standards: 66% needed in exams/assessments to avoid retakes. Good university accommodation but you need to speak French. Not sure of fee structure. DD was there on her Erasmus year. Spoke very highly of it and it is very much like our best universities here. It is in the world top 50.

It is in the world top 50.

World rankings aren't based on education though. I have been at a top 50 in the world university where education was a low priority; I wouldn't encourage people to go there for undergraduate study at all over top 20 UK universities (many of which aren't top 50 according to world rankings).

I wouldn't especially recommend Geneva in my field over top 20 UK universities either but it may well vary between subjects.

If she applies as a foreign student for the full course then tuition fees are likely to be around $40k per year. Then there will be living costs and flights.

I agree about the concerns over date rape and coercion on some campuses. I'm doing an MA at an American college right now and part of my course was about sexual abuse. You would be very far away and even a phone call to give out some advice would be hard.

I did my BA in the UK but spent half a year in the US on an exchange. It was actually harder than I expected to be so far from home and I was a very independent person who happily lived hundreds of miles from parents when in the UK.

It isn't just parents. It's having no friends to call up for a chat or to come visit. It's having nowhere to go when campus empties for Thanksgiving and you have cold pizza by yourself. Being the only person who gets certain jokes or likes certain music is hard.

Doing a degree in the US won't help with a visa to live there either. It may provide some good contacts if she wants to work there, but I she returns to the UK afterwards then she will be saying goodbye to all her American friends.

Also, an American degree may not translate well to British qualifications and she could end up with needing further study to get a job.

Would you consider a trip out and spend a day touring a campus? Also, what exactly would she gain from a U.S. Degree that she can't get in the UK? Would she consider working every summer there instead of doing a degree there?

There's loads more to say and I'm happy to answer questions. We live in theUS and are going through this with a niece who wants to come over so I have looked into some of it.

Thank you Kickass -I may well be in touch with you thank you.