<p>My daughter is most likely going to be at NYU London for freshman year. Is there anyone on here that has done that? Any tips or advice? </p>
<p>I didn’t go during freshman year, I was there for part of my sophomore year, but if you have any specific questions I’d be happy to try to answer them!</p>
<p>Do you know how registration for elective classes takes place for freshman in London? The course search in Albert shows a class as closed already, and my daughter hasn’t had a chance to register for classes yet.</p>
<p>They typically keep some spaces available that will only open up when the freshmen register. If that class is still closed at that point and she really wants to take it, she can try to email the professor to see if they can let her in. People typically switch classes around frequently over the summer, so I wouldn’t worry too much as she can put herself on the waitlist and probably get off of it</p>
<p>Haha i have a bunch of questions for you! Thank you! 
How did you handle getting a phone while there? Would love for her to be able to use her smart phone but I don’t know how that would work. Did you stay in Byron? How are the apartments? Was it hard to figure out where to get food to cook? What advice would you give someone going over for the year? Favorite websites/blogs/resources when you were there? Was it easy to meet people? </p>
<p>One more! Did you have friends visit while you were there? Was it hard to juggle visits with school? Did they stay in the dorm with you? Thanks again!</p>
<p>I actually brought an old razr phone from home and bought a sim card there to use. However, you can usually get your provider to unlock a smart phone for use overseas, and then again get a sim card over there to use in the phone or something like that. Some providers do have international plans, but they tend to be quite expensive so it really depends on what you want to do. Most people when I went just bought throwaway flip phones and used those for the semester.</p>
<p>I did not live in Byron, but had friends that did. The rooms are very spacious and so even if you’re living in a four person room, there is still plenty of personal space. Byron is really conveniently located and is right near an outdoor shopping mall with a large supermarket called Waitrose that has great food options. There is also a Tesco express around the corner. I would say that most people didn’t really cook all that much (I didn’t beyond making eggs once in a while), because Britain tends to have a culture where convenience foods are very cheap, fairly tasty, and reasonably healthy. Both Tesco and Waitrose have tons of lunch options that you can grab on the go, as well as a lot of dinner foods (you can take a look at what options they have on their websites, waitrose.com and tesco.com). While she could certainly buy fresh ingredients if she wanted to cook, I think most people just grabbed ready-meal type things because they were easy.</p>
<p>The best advice I can give is to take advantage of everything and really explore the city. My biggest regret is that I spent my semester taking difficult classes (pre-med, that included lab sections are recitations in addition to the regular lecture sessions), and not spending as much time enjoying the fact that I was living in another country. Academics are important, but studying abroad is a once in a lifetime experience that is frankly more valuable than freshman year classes IMO. I would also encourage her to get involved and start meeting people early. It gets more challenging as the semester goes on. I do think your daughter will be at an advantage in meeting people because she will be part of a relatively small group of students, and she’ll be with them for the whole year. The site goes to a lot of effort to make sure freshmen are adjusting comfortably and does their best to foster a community there</p>
<p>**One last thing: she shouldn’t be afraid to do things on her own! If she waits for other people to go places with her, etc, she might never get to do things that she wants. The most fun things I did were the ones where I just went by myself even if no one else wanted to come with me</p>