Undergraduate studies abroad for UK student

[tattoolondon]

Hi - my son is incredibly keen to go to uni in Asia (most likely Singapore). He claims to have done a lot of research and that it's not as costly as I'm assuming. I need to do my own research but does anyone have experience they can share? I know he can't get a standard student loan if studying abroad, for instance.

I cant speak to Asia.
DD looked at US and Canada. Either way it is significantly more costly than UK. She has a mixture of academic and athletic scholarships to help with the costs. This would have covered everything in US. But she chose Canada (thank goodness) and only tuition covered. We have to fund everything else. Altho rent etc is cheaper than UK she has to pay for medical insurance and flights home (not cheap).

Hi, OP -

I was my School’s International (non EU) Exchange Academic Advisor for a while. We are a very competitive STEM School in an ‘upper Russell Group’ university. Most of our non EU placements are in Australasia and the Americas and typically our students on these placements were earning the equivalent of First Class marks.

But Singapore, specifically NUS, was a disaster. The local students have an incredible work ethic and the workload was brutal. Our student and others from our university had a bad time, to say the least. Our university withdrew from exchange with NUS.

It is an excellent university, but I would only recommend it to someone already familiar with the standards, the workload and the relative lack of pastoral care.

Some of the extremely competitive US universities and elite liberal arts colleges have fantastic needs based financial aid. For example, all UG students including international students accepted by Harvard with a family income less than $200,000 never make a payment or apply for a loan. (Then there is a sliding scale) And Harvard is not the only one. But you must be accepted first, and that makes the Oxbridge competition look mild.

Dd is planning to go to Singapore for next year. Ntu rather than NUS.
Those who went there in previous years from her uni were, as I understand from dd, having a good time.
Dd said the international students don't need to take as many modules.

They don't pay proper fees for the year at Singapore but pay reduced fees for her UK uni, I think around 1400.

The uni offers Turing for some students.( Dd won't qualify).

Interesting, @Wronginformation

Our students also pay normal UK tuition fees to do a term or a year at a non-EU destination. Thank you for mentioning this important point

Maybe because it's an extra year?? So for the bachelor it's 3 years +1 year??
They only need to pass the year, doesn't count towards their finally grade.
This was actually one of the reasons she wasn't keen on Durham.

What would have been the costs to staying in the exchange, and instead adding a caveat emptor / restriction to students with a strong first? Or negotiating the option to take fewer modules?

I know Edinburgh's study abroad does not add to the length of the degree, and they also offer 2nd year entry

Our students only take an equivalent workload, in terms of number of course units/hrs allocated per course unit, to what they would be doing in the UK. The translation is imperfect, of course.

So far the programme is open to anyone on a 2.1 as they apply (who maintains it). Study Abroad is intended to be inclusive in every sense of the word (though academic performance is taken into account during the matching process).

However the programme is very popular. Conceivably we will need to switch to requiring First Class performance of applicants simply as a reasonably objective selection mechanism. But I don’t think this will address the difference between work ethics in British and certain Asian cultures.

My guess is that @Wronginformation hit on the key point in her message of 18.26 yesterday. The year abroad scheme at NTU she refers to only requires that British students pass, and does not count towards the degree classification.

Our non-EU year abroad does.

Correction Our students also get a reduction on tuition fees to do non -EU study abroad. I focused on academics and had forgotten about that.*.

Do you mean a semester/year abroad or the whole degree?

OP needs to respond to you, @LIZS , but my impression is that she means for the whole degree. I can only speak to the very high demands at NUS but I think this is potentially very challenging.

That was how I interpreted it but other responders have assumed shorter term as part of UK uni based degree.

Thanks all so far. To clarify - he wants to do his whole undergrad abroad, not just a year abroad, and it’s NTU uni (STEM subject)

Oh, yes, sorry, my dc is just planning one year about at NTU Singapore, as part of her UK degree.

My experience of engineering exchange students coming from Singapore universities is that they work at a completely different level from U.K. students. I had one NUS student who averaged in the high 90’s in our third year (of four), I’ve known 1 UK student that averaged just over 90% over the 30 years I taught. All the students that came from Singapore were exceptional, especially in mathematics. I don’t remember if we sent exchange students to Singapore, if we did I don’t remember any problems, unlike some US universities.

Well odds are your top performers may very well be a part of those certain Asian cultures themselves or be comparably hard workers, so hopefully restricting the NUS program to those with firsts and/or putting a warning about the rigor and workload will allow those who would benefit from the intensity to have the opportunity to benefit from it.

What problems did you have with some US universities?

Some US universities have a very competitive atmosphere where unless a student is in an established group they find it difficult to get help from peers. In one case the fraternities had accumulated resources from previous years that gave the students in them a big advantage. Also some of them agree to allow students to take courses but when the student gets there they can’t get a place. We also had a student go to a university well known for its party atmosphere who then just disappeared. I’m assuming not from their family but we never heard from him again! American universities are quite different from here in terms of assessment, lots of homework and tests rather than big exams at the end.

Interesting post. If you are an Overseas student, you cannot, at our uni, do Study Abroad in your home country (or, I suppose, a very similar culture - I don’t think a student from Pakistan would get very far applying to study in India, for example, but that is just a guess). The point of SA is to broaden your horizons.

But if you’ve grown up in the UK you can certainly apply to study in an ancestral culture. And it’s possible you’ve imbibed a strong work ethic and practices, if that is part of the culture.

Yes, I was referring to home students. But of course an international student from China could study abroad in Singapore or vice-versa. Speaking of which, have you noticed similar issues with Chinese universities like Peking?

We don’t have any partners in the PRC.

Chinese colleagues have told me enough about the system of UG study there that I would expect our students to have the same types of difficulties as at NUS.

I can't offer advice personally, but I will say that when my family was looking for uni options overseas for my DD and DS, we had to hire a specialist who have us good advice and guidance... there is a lot of information online certainly, but I would recommend looking into these services at least for initial consultation...

My daughter was interested in Japan, but decided against it in the end. My son is currently studying in the US. I know that systems back home and Asia are very different.

How did the consultant help you?

She told us about the nuances and differences between the systems in the countries we were looking at, helped us build the activities profile, helped with university research and suggested universities to apply to where we had a good chance, and explained the idea of fit (I didn't even know that in the US they build the cohort)... also helped a lot with the essays - I think that took most of the time my kids spent on.
Oh and she helped guide how recommendations should look liek (she shared some examples). Basically all components that we thought were self-explanatory are actually heavily nuanced...