Please tell me if your child is taking a post Brexit degree that has a year abroad

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Please tell me if your child is taking a post Brexit degree that has a year abroad!

We are at the stage of thinking about options for DS2 who is about to take his GCSEs and will then do A-levels in maths geography chemistry and biology. Geography is his first love brackets as is history – long story about why he isn’t doing history A).

He’s very good at picking up languages too.

At this point I’d love to just hear lots of examples. Thanks very much!

Turing is for everyone, not income dependent. It's a grant, calculated according to your placement - ie different if you're earning compared to studying at a uni.
This year it ran a bit late, which was a pain bc it's supposed to help with additional year abroad costs on top of the maintenance loan, such as plane tickets, accommodation while you find a flat etc, which is no good if it doesn't turn up until three months into the placement.

Forgot to add another important note: disabled students do not get DSA on the year abroad. This is supposed to be replaced by additional Turing funding to fund things like mentor etc, but it's distributed by the individual university so you have to be persistent to actually get it.

Thanks @colouringfoxes . But do you know if it is also for students at Scottish Unis who don't pay any tuition fees (as the Scottish Government pays them)?

DD 17 is only yr 12 but wants to do English and Arabic with a year in Jordon....... not EU !!

We are Scottish DD at Glasgow got the Turing Award.

No but... when we did Uni Offer-holder-day events, it became apparent that almost every degree you can think of potentially has a "year abroad' option. The most popular alternative was "year in industry' (or neither). Politics, engineering, physics, computing (anything)... they all had one term and/or full year-abroad options.

The unis seem to all have "exchange" partners all over the world.

post-Brexit, "I'm not going to sugar coat this" said one presenter, it can be hard for students to get visas to do their year abroad. Uni cannot arrange those visas, the Uni can only confirm validity of the reason visa is applied for, and the student themselves has to do a lot of paperwork -- some EU countries, Spain was singled out for being both popular and heavy bureaucracy to get visa to go to.

There is a fee, not huge, but maybe something like £1-2k to study abroad for term/year.

If a student goes on a student exchange for a year to a university abroad, the student usually pays the fees at the home university

They pay reduced fees.

OP
Are you an EU family? You have an awful lot of time until your child is at that stage. They very often change their minds 😊

Ds is currently in Fez as part of an Arabic and international relations degree at Leeds. He originally hoped for Jordan but changed to Morocco for Covid reasons, he has class mates in Jordan and says it is much more expensive. The cost of living in Morocco is very low.

There is a difference between courses where a year abroad is traditionally seen as essential (eg MFL) as opposed to courses where is nice to do it. So, in my view, MFL students should get the money as a priority. The universities make the other placements abroad competitive because they have limited places and money. I know some people disagree, but a MFL degree without the year abroad is a very second class offering. An engineering degree without a year abroad is still a great degree.

“post-Brexit, "I'm not going to sugar coat this" said one presenter, it can be hard for students to get visas to do their year abroad. Uni cannot arrange those visas, the Uni can only confirm validity of the reason visa is applied for, and the student themselves has to do a lot of paperwork -- some EU countries, Spain was singled out for being both popular and heavy bureaucracy to get visa to go to.“

Aha! Now we’re getting to it. So don’t believe the brochures, dig deeper eh?

The visas are possible to get, but not as easy as it was, for EU countries. Each EU country has its own visa system.

Aha! So serious research needed in late lower 6th/beginning of upper 6th?
And take the open day spiels with pinch of salt?

I am not sure you can glean a lot from research. University info will be very general.

DC go abroad, typically, in y3. Lots of water will be going under the bridge before the university knows what it can offer and what the competition will be for places. So choosing based on current info might be a lottery. University partners come and go.

Picking up a language is very necessary if he wants a university teaching in its own MFL.Eg in Spanish, French, Italian etc. My DDs boyfriend at university had Gcse French but had to take extra classes on top of his engineering degree and be assessed as competent in the language to get approved to go to a Grande Ecole in France. There are hoops to go through for non A level language students not doing MFL as part of the degree. The “easier” or less time consuming route is to choose Canada, USA, Australia etc. The competition will be fierce though.

understood.

at least we've still got 18 months. The post-Brexit landscape should surely (!) be a bit clearer then.

I won't encourage him to start any research till next year I think.

@TizerorFizz whilst you make a good point about language ability, DD's Japanese university's courses are all in English. She started learning Japanese with Duolingo then when she wanted to apply to Japan, did a course for 4 hours every Saturday in her 2nd year. Her Japanese is not perfect (approximately GCSE standard) but she can read it and ask for things and generally make herself understood (according to a friend who lived out there for 7 years).

Some UK universities will also allow you to study a language even though your degree is in something completely different. DD1 did a year of German as part of her NatSci course at Cambridge. It was worth something like 4% of her 3rd year mark IIRC.

@Malbecfan
I do appreciate some are. However plenty of universities teach in their home language. If this is the case, eg with the Grande Ecoles, you will need better than gcse to participate.

Years ago I did a masters degree in a Grande Ecole. I had to be pretty much bi-lingual to do the courses and exams on the same basis as a native French student. It was a great experience but tough too. There was a different tier of students who attended only a part of the course (a couple of terms IIRC) and were mainly there for the overseas experience/Grande Ecole name on CV. They sat in on lectures but didn't have to do any tutorials or exams. Their French did not need to be anywhere near the same standard.

DD's French university places year / semester abroad students in either the French or English mode of instruction streams. DD is on the English side, but I think can access 'French' ones and, having now been able to get onto the 'French as a Foreign Language' course (denied her in the autumn due to her delayed arrival), has been moved up to the top set and seems to be coping.

DS2 has now signed up for the second year module on his course which allows some time to be spent abroad, but I'm not sure exactly where or when.