Talk to me about… undergrad in France

[HonorHiding]

DD is in Y12 and thinking about university. She is a British citizen with no right to any EU passport. She’s a good student with a strong sense of what she wants to do in the future.

She is aiming for a niche area of study (within the remit of AMES). Excellent courses on the precise subject area are available at around half a dozen universities in the UK, and her UCAS strategy is well-advanced. But she wants also to look at another course roughly (but not exactly) matching her interests, which is on offer at a Grande Ecole in (the South of) France. I suspect this is because she has a very close friend with French nationality applying to the same place.

I am happy for her to look widely and am not discouraging her research at all - on the contrary. But I privately believe that the financial side of picking an undergrad course in France will be a non-starter. I don’t believe (as she does) that she’d be entitled to a French government student loan, and she has no French guarantor for any loan. I have been clear with her that she needs to be entirely realistic on the money side and also the visa aspect, including whether she would be able to work on a student visa in France.

The UCAS website, unfortunately, seems not to have been updated since Brexit and is still saying (among other things) that no visa is required for a UK citizen to study in France. I have sent DD off to find more up to date information as a half-term task.

Can the wise heads of MN help me? If you or your DC have looked into this, I’d be really grateful for anything you learned. If it supports my hypothesis that she should go to one of the excellent options in the UK, so much the better!

In case relevant - she’d be on a minimum loan in the UK, we would top her up but also expect her to work part-time. We want to support her ambitions but will not shell out mindlessly for her to hang out in the South of France with her buddies when she could get all the education she needs here. If she wants to do postgrad overseas then she can secure the funding herself!

Makes sense, and only she can reconcile offsetting the minor studies offer of Arabic from Science Po if she really wants to study there 3 years. Mine was all set to go to American School Beirut before the conflict for YA, would have been perfect YA for yours given her desire to focus more Levantine.

Edinburgh is a great shout too, DD's interactions with students from there and St Andrews this year have been very positive. Some of the Middle Eastern summer schools are also rated strongly and could be the way forward for your DD do advance her skills intensively and quickly.

Exciting though!

And if she went to Exeter she would get (a) a year (2nd year) AND a semester (of the 4th year) abroad; b) an automatic scholarship of £1500 cash per year each year of the 4 year course courtesy of the very generous Sheik of Sharjah; and (c) a masters degree (MArabic) at the end of it….

@Delphigirl Are the (automatic) Sharjah Scholarships still a thing? When we visited Exeter they were saying something about possibly redirecting the funds into travel scholarships, but perhaps I misunderstood.

Exeter is very firmly on the list though, quite rightly! Honestly, I think the France idea probably won’t come to anything. Interesting looking back at this thread that when I started it I was most worried about the financial side. Now it’s much more that I really think the course and the teaching style are the wrong fit.

Well I haven’t heard that they are not, but I will let you know, my DD starts in 4 weeks!
I do think course and teaching style is the most important thing, which I have really learnt from 2 of my 3 older kids who had very specific learning issues. Finding courses which had as little assessment by traditional timed exams as possible was key for them and both did/are doing exceptionally well which has knock-on effects on their confidence and made them both super -employable.

My DD applied and will be going to study in France this autumn.
We visited a grandes écoles and I enquired about fees and was told that they didn’t have a séparate tarif for international students (like the UK). Everyone paid the same - it was just under 2000 euros per year.
I would highly recommend going to an open day (portes ouvertes) and talking to the students.
The concours (competition for limited places) was a few exercises and an interview (if they like how you’ve answered) - used to be more challenging when you had to go in and sit an exam. (bit like applying for Oxbridge in my day).
Most students will do a prépa - a one or two year course to prepare them for the concours to a grandes écoles as it’s very competitive.
What your DD will have going for her is that she speaks English and I imagine that they would want native speakers on the course to help with the dynamics in the class as it is attractive for the French students who all want to improve their English!

If I'm going to be honest, I haven't given this too much thought (yet) but I imagine it would be the same as we would do it in the UK, we as parents would contribute an amount and she would cover the rest. My cousin is French and is willing to help us out as much as she can too. As for my DD's French, it's pretty good as we go to France quite often and she studies it at school but I'm not too sure if it's good enough to keep up at uni. I assumed you could take a loan for international studies though so I guess France might actually put us in a worse financial situation. Thinking about it now, I do think unis in the UK are better options for her at the moment but it really is up to her not me.

Thank you for bringing that aspect to my attention though, of course money is the one thing my DD forgot to tell me about haha.

@littlemissbiscuit No. You don’t get a loan. You are, at the moment, a fee paying student and having to pay maintenance costs up front .

My DD did French A level and French at degree level. She went to Switzerland for her semester abroad in y3. (Second semester was elsewhere in her second MFL). So this is after 2 more years of fairly intensive language study post A level. Whether she’s good enough to access the curriculum post A level is very debatable. My DD would not have wanted to. Native speakers could I suspect.

Therefore I would do a MFL degree here and study abroad in y3. Dc are older and more mature. The good universities here have links with universities in France and possibly Switzerland. DD was at Bristol and they had a very good selection. So you apply for the 4 year MFL degree and third year is abroad. It could also be working teaching English with the British Council placements. Dd had an amazing time.

Thank you so much, this is super helpful. To be fair this sounds like a good compromise for her.