My daughter’s closet friend has recently expressed a strong interest in attending college somewhere in Europe. She has approached me for advice a few times. Her parents are very sweet people, but both are heavily involved in international business so if it happens that they’re both away, she’s at our house. She’s a junior, like my daughter, and has also discussed this with her parents, who have agreed to take her to Europe over the summer for vacation and to visit some of the schools over there. I have no experience in the university system of other countries, and was wondering if any parents on here had some advice or experience with their children attending college not in the States. She seems quite serious about this and if her parents are willing to make the time in their schedule to extend their vacation in order to do this, they obviously see that this is important to her as well.
I have asked her about simply pursuing study abroad while attending school here, but she has visited Europe before and has always maintained that she would love to live there, and this seems like the best opportunity for her to make that a possibility.
Which country does she have in mind? The system is different in different countries. One thing that most European systems have in common is that you apply for one or two specific subjects, and study only those throughout the degree - no gen eds at all. You might like to post in either Study Abroad or International forums (or UK sub-forum if that’s a place of interest) for further advice.
What languages does she speak fluently? That may limit her choices.
What are her stats? AP scores? Chosen subject of study?
I would love to know more about this as well, my youngest is an adventurer. While I would be concerned about going so far for obvious reasons, I am trying to be somewhat open and look forward to learning more about it here.
@Conformist1688, she is thinking the UK or Ireland. She does speak fluent French so universities there would be an option as well.
She has always had her heart set on pursuing education and I know that’s what she’ll study. She has decent stats so far, 33 on the ACT, passed all of her AP Tests (4s and 5s and in her more English/History orientated ones).
So she wants to be a teacher? There’s a bit of a minefield there, because studying education in country A would not necessarily allow her to be licensed as a teacher in the US, if she wants to go back home to teach, as the educational system is so different. If she’s thinking she’d like to end up teaching in the UK or Ireland instead, she would need to have a visa, and these can be hard to come by for teachers, except in shortage areas, e.g. maths. Not impossible, but it’s something to be cautious about.
Simplified overview: In the UK the main division is between primary teaching, which covers all subjects, ages 5-11, and secondary (11-18) in which she would teach her specialist subject (English? History? French?). I’m a bit vague about the training for Early Years (under 5). Secondary teachers usually do a first degree in their special subject and then a postgrad diploma in education (the PGCE); primary teachers can do the same, or can opt for a BEd as an undergrad degree.
Public French universities are extremely inexpensive and have open admissions to anyone with a Bac equivalent, usually a US diploma is accepted. Some programs do limit the number of graduates so the open admissions can be misleading. There is little to no campus life so that is a big difference from US colleges.
William and Mary and St Andrews in Scottland have a joint degree program. I think you spend 2 yrs at each school. It is competitive to get into. A family member was accepted but in the end decided they did not want to move back and forth. He is at St Andrews and plans on staying the full 4 yrs there.
She wants to be a teacher but she has no intention of living in the US. She wants to live elsewhere and she has known that for some time, so there isn’t a concern about not being able to teach in the States. She knows she doesn’t want to and if she absolutely cannot make a living for herself elsewhere she is always free to work for her parents.
One of S1’s friends graduated from University of Edinburgh, now at Oxford. His family is from Scotland so not such a huge leap for him.
One of D’s friends dropped out after 11th grade and started college in the Netherlands (Utrecht, maybe?). She didn’t find quite what she was looking for and transferred to Stanford this year.
I would say it has worked out well for both.
The wife’s brother lives in a college town in Germany. He recommended not trying to go into German colleges unless your German language skills are near-native. His D failed her first year of HS German despite going to a bilingual French/German program in France and having multilingual parents. Zurich might be better for someone with passable but not perfect German writing skills.
Another option is to study a particular subject (science, math) internationally. Go back home and get a Masters in Secondary Education. Teach for a couple of years and get your teaching certification. Then apply to International Schools. Then you are good for your home state (or whereever you get the Masters) and Internationally too.
For example, here is a job description for an international school in Germany.
Wouldn’t recommend Ireland unless she is seriously interested in learning Irish- a passable level of Irish is required for admission to most (I think all) BEd programs.
@TomSrOfBoston, guessing you have some political piece to your post, b/c otherwise that’s just silly. From one of the resident Irish (born and raised) people currently in our house: “In English you call it Irish, in Irish you call it Gaeilge”
More relevant to the OP is the fact that every Irish child takes a class called “Irish” every day from Junior Infants (pre-K) to 6th year (grade 12); every applicant to university in Ireland is required to sit a written, aural and oral exam in “Irish” as part of their Leaving Cert, and absolutely every primary school teacher - regardless of their nationality- has to have a given level of “Irish”.
Yet very few Irish people speak Gaelic on a daily basis. (A linguistics professor in Dublin went as far as calling it a “dead” language, kept up artificially by the government mostly for symbolic reasons.)
And you certainly don’t need it to live, work or study there.
OP, your daughter’s friend might want to look into just how hard it would be for her to work legally in Europe. Unless she marries a citizen of an EU country, her options may be limited to the small handful of English-speaking International schools that can hire Americans.
I know a young woman who got bachelor’s degree in European Studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She’s now applying to law schools, with the idea of going into international law and/or diplomacy.
@katliamom is mostly right: for most things you don’t need to speak Irish to live / work / study in Ireland.
HOWEVER, you DO need it if you want to do teacher training in Ireland, or to teach primary school in Ireland- which is what this thread is about.
I actually do know something about this. I have lived, taught, raised children, had teacher friends, and had international friends qualify as teachers in Ireland.
(and for the record, when speaking English, Irish people do not refer to their language as Gaelic)
@Badgers21 The UK is probably a great place for US student to go but if this child has already visited schools in the US, she will be in for a big letdown especially schools on the continent.
Thank you all for the advice so far. She is still considering her options but she is strongly leaning towards not studying here in any capacity.
She has toured one or two schools here with my D and she liked them, but she is much more the type to sit and study in her room or spend time researching than go out and party.
Well, as a ‘why go to university in the UK/Europe, not the US’ explanation that takes some beating. As a description of somebody who is interested in going in to education that is also a bit… unusual.
University students in the UK/Europe are at least as likely to ‘party’ as US students (and as they can drink legally, their partying can be at least as unrestrained)- even at the most academic universities. Moreover, at the US universities known as ‘party schools’ there are some students who don’t ‘go out and party’- and at the schools not known as ‘party schools’ (say, Swarthmore or Vassar), there are students who do ‘go out and party’. Tbh, that sounds like a rationalization for a decision that is already made.
Even so, @TurnerT’s point should not be minimized: there are great things about studying in the UK/Europe, but she should be clear about the differences, starting with the fact that outside the US university courses tend to be highly focused: you apply to study one thing (eg, BEd in Primary Education for ages 5-11), and that is all you study, with few if any options in the first year, and selections from a specific list of modules for the remaining two years. (The major exception is Scotland, where the courses are typically four years, not three, and there is more flexibility, esp in year one). Also, living ‘on campus’ in college-provided housing certainly exists, but it is not the majority experience and largely students ‘live out’ (major exceptions include the ‘collegiate’ universities such as Durham, Oxford and Cambridge). International students and first year students typically do get first crack at whatever college housing there is, but the point is your friend should get a better idea of the reality on the ground.
