Doing Undergrad in UK / Europe

College Search & Selection
21

<p>A couple of ideas for final1 and lecorbeau !</p>

<p>First, final1:</p>

<p>I am not very up-to-date on facts pertaining to grad school costs abroad. And again, I'm new here, so I can't remember how familiar you are with the UK and EU systems in general But I will offer this: although I spent a great deal of time in the UK and still have many English friends, I never received any education there. However, this was the educational trajectory for most of them (for whom money was not an issue, that is): those who remained in England throughout pre-college days generally left home for 'public' boarding schools and came home on weekends. (Public and private are the reverse of our definitions.) Then, at the end of 12th (or was it 13th?) grade, they passed their national exams, GCSEs (used to be called A or O levels back when I knew them 20-25 years ago). Only those scoring the very highest on GCSEs tend to apply to Imperial College or others in the Oxford/Cambridge family. Those who perform less than incredibly don't bother to apply to a 'reach' school, unlike the many Americans whose Ivy League-level dreams stay alive despite their clearly slim chances of getting in. One or two of my friends went to Oxford or Cambridge, but most ended up at Kent, Southampton, Warwick, etc. The irony: according to them, college costs paled in comparison to their yearly boarding school expenses as high-schoolers (and younger.)
One other difference worth exploring is that I recall these friends going directly into what would be considered graduate programs--for example, one of my best friends went straight from high school to a law school program, and was a 'solicitor' within four or five years. If you'd like, I could contact old English friends, with whom I am still in frequent touch, and ask them how it works for Americans. I know there were Americans studying at my friend's university in Southampton for sure. In sum, the system is so structurally different that it's very difficult to make a direct comparison.</p>

<p>Sorry--that was long-winded!</p>

<p>One other idea: on Doddsmom's list, notice that many of these are institutions that are American-run, and so will definitely cost more than those run by European governments. Take a look at her link to l'Ecole Superieure Nationale in Paris, and read through its tuition area (900euros per year!!!)--but beware that this applies to French citizens as well as int'l students whose parents have lived AND PAID TAXES in France for at least 2 years. Still, I think there must be some exceptions. It's wort a perusal.</p>

<p>lecorbeau: I couldn't agree with you more re: total costs over 4 years in the U.S. vs. virtually anywhere in Europe--or Canada, for that matter. NO comparison. A good friend of mine is head registrar at McGill, and she often shakes her head and says, contritely, that she wishes they didn't have to charge Americans (10% of their student body)10K per year--about three to four x the Canadian rate--for a great education in one of the world's coolest bilingual cities. That's a STEAL! My son, in fact, is considering McGill or a French university; the other is dead-set on Duke, running at about 35K last I checked! Oh--keep in mind that McGill is completely anglophone in its instruction. For those of you who haven't been to Montreal, I can think of fewer (if any) North American cities I'd rather spend four of my best years.</p>

22

<p>'hope this all helped you....</p>

23

<p>yea really it did...i dont think i can handle the change from here to uk on my own right now...but def. considering europe for grad school (esp. U. Navarro Business School in Spain) but thats prob. really hard to get into T_T</p>

24

<p>I just want to say that indydukie's description may be true for some people but only the incredibly, incredibly rich. Even at Oxford not all that many people studying here went to boarding school! It costs £20,000 per year (around $35,000 I am guessing. Don't know the exchange rate). That's about that national average wage. About 50% of students here went to some kind of fee-paying school (maybe 10% did boarding), but that's actually really unusual as it's about 5% nationally. So the other 95% go to state schools (that's the free ones providied by the government) and do not earn a lot of money. It doesn't cost UK and EU students very much to go to university relative to how much it costs in the US because effectively all schools are government funded (even Oxford. Doesn't have much endowment but doesn't need so much either) so the students pay about £1000 (so about $1800 I think) per year and the government pays the other £15000 or more. But that's why taxes are higher here. </p>

<p>As for dorms, they are called "halls of residence" here and you will be assigned a room in halls for at least 1 year, possibly all 3 if you are lucky, at any UK school if you are an undergraduate. You don't need to come and find a room in advance! This is cheap if you only have to pay for term times, but that means all your possessions have to be moved out in the holidays. I 'live out' in a privately rented house and it costs £330 per month in rent (so close to $600) but that doesn't include any bills such as electricity, gas (for the heating and cooking so essential) and water so it's very VERY expensive. In London it would cost more. Cambridge about the same. Rent could be half that in the north of England and Scotland.</p>

<p>Law and medicine are undergraduate courses here and very different to the US. Neither would qualify you to practice in the US. Some extra tests would have to be taken but I don't know what they are (probably varies depending on state).</p>

<p>I've studied at 3 UK 'unis' and visited friends at others and they all seemingly have millions of American students (is there anyone at St Andrews who is not American?)! If you can pay (there is basically no financial aid for foreign students. Or indeed for any students at undergraduate level) you can get in somewhere because foreign students effectively subsidise the home and EU students so more and more are needed in these cash strapped times.</p>

25

<p>no offense but dont really think stats are good enough for oxbridge</p>

26

<p>Maybe it's because I'm in a big hurry, but I see some conflicts in cupcake's message. First, the claim is made that only 5-10 percent of English kids go to boarding schools. I've known a lot of Englishmen/women, still do, and they cross all socioeconomic lines. Perhaps my experiences were flukes, but the vast majority went to 'public' (private) boarding schools. I am also confused by cupcake's claim that the biggies are 35K US--right in line with our top institutions--then says that English universities are so affordable because of government subsidies. Then sargon says something about 'stats' not being up to 'Oxbridge's qualifications.'</p>

<p>NO mention of GCSEs.</p>

<p>I think I could demystify this best by talking to a good friend--she's British-- who lives right here and got a chemistry degree at Oxford about 15 years ago. She goes home often, is from Oxford, and would be able to answer all of these questions in a minute or two. She followed her husband over here and has since got her PhD in Chemistry from Purdue.</p>

27

<p>Think I get it after a re-read, though it's written a bit unclearly: cupcake is saying that public boarding schools cost that stratospheric price. Are we talking St. Andrews, Eton, or a more 'average' school? In any case, my point was that the system is reversed in England vis a vis here. That is to say, expensive educations if they are boarding (or just public) at the pre-college level, then inexpensive colleges and universities because of subsidies. Back to GCSEs: wouldn't it be interesting to see a comparison between scores of those applicants to top schools who attended private vs. public schools, boarding or not?</p>

28

<p>@sargon </p>

<p>none taken...of course i know where my limitations are...i wanted to study abroad at a GOOD school...not the BEST...</p>

<p>plus oxford/cambridge deadlines are like oct 1st?</p>

<p>i like the idea of rolling admissions for the other colleges though</p>

<p>any good undergrad engineering programs in UK/Europe anyone?</p>

29

<p>
[QUOTE]
Maybe it's because I'm in a big hurry, but I see some conflicts in cupcake's message. First, the claim is made that only 5-10 percent of English kids go to boarding schools. I've known a lot of Englishmen/women, still do, and they cross all socioeconomic lines. Perhaps my experiences were flukes, but the vast majority went to 'public' (private) boarding schools.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>I've lived here more than 15 years and met about 3 people ever who went to boarding school. I'm from an ordinary family with an average income. To be able to even contemplate boarding school is extremely rare. Here is a link to Eton where Princes William and Harry went. it's a public boarding school.
<a href="http://www.etoncollege.com/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.etoncollege.com/default.asp&lt;/a>
The basic fees are £7,896 per term. there are 3 terms per year so that is £23688 per year with no extras. Assuming an exchange rate of £1=$1.7 that $40269.60 per year for Eton. About $10,000 per year than my mother earns. This article says average fees across all schools are £18,282.
<a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/27082005/325/private-school-fees-outstrip-inflation.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://uk.news.yahoo.com/27082005/325/private-school-fees-outstrip-inflation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This article also says that the number of children attending private schools in the UK is 613,700 in 2005. The number attending state schools is 8,951,500. In other words 6.86% attend a private schhol (private and public schools are the same thing. Usually collectively called independant or fee paying schoos. I think 'public' originally meant anyone could attend as long as they could pay ie no entrance exam. I think if I wasn't at Oxford I could probably have lived here my whole life and never met any who attended an independant school. It's really really rare.

[QUOTE]

I am also confused by cupcake's claim that the biggies are 35K US--right in line with our top institutions--then says that English universities are so affordable because of government subsidies. Then sargon says something about 'stats' not being up to 'Oxbridge's qualifications.'

[/QUOTE]

For UK and EU students the current tuition fee for all UK unis (they're all the same.) is £1000 per year. (as of Sept 2006 it's going up to £3000 per year but the students won't have to start paying this till they graduate. then they have to pay back in installments. This is a BIG issue in the UK at the moment. see this BBC article. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/education/funding/tuition_fees.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/education/funding/tuition_fees.shtml&lt;/a&gt;) About 1/3 or students pay nothing because this is dependant on assessment of parents' income. Then the students get around £4000 per year in 'student loan' which is at some low interest rate which they don't have to pay back until they earn over £15,000 per year. In other words, a year at Oxford costs less than a term at Eton. But this isn't applicable if the original poster isn't a UK or EU student. Oxford overseas tuition fees are massive. See <a href="http://www.admissions.ox.ac.uk/finance/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.admissions.ox.ac.uk/finance/&lt;/a>
Up to £20,820 per year for clinical medicine (so about $35.394). Plus they require overseas students to have 'financial guarentee' to cover living expenses of £10,000 per year.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
NO mention of GCSEs.

[/QUOTE]

Well you need A-levels to get into a university. GCSEs (which were once called O-levels) are exams taken in 10+ subjects at the age of 16. They're not that important apart from if a student gets fewer than 5 grade Cs including Maths and English then they cannot stay onm at school to do A-levels and have to take the vocational education route (or enter the work force, probably in McDonalds). A-levels are exams taken at age 18 in 3-5 subjects usually. I've heard this is the narrowest post-16 curriculum in the world! They usually take 2 years of study and there is 'course work' (work done in class) which has to be submitted with the final exams to calculate the overall grade. There is a lot of political debate about changing the system here but nothing ever happens. In Asia (Singapore and Hong Kong I know. Maybe in other countries too) there are also exams known as A-levels and O-levels but these are much much harder! Only a tiny fraction of students get an A. Look in the international forum for the students who are taking these.</p>

<p>For the record I did 11 GCSEs and I got 8A*, 2As and 1B. Each individual exam is not hard but the sheer volume (I'd guess about 3 exams and 5 pieces of coursework for each subject) makes then more challenging.

[QUOTE]

I think I could demystify this best by talking to a good friend--she's British-- who lives right here and got a chemistry degree at Oxford about 15 years ago. She goes home often, is from Oxford, and would be able to answer all of these questions in a minute or two. She followed her husband over here and has since got her PhD in Chemistry from Purdue.

[/QUOTE]

You don't have to believe me.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
Back to GCSEs: wouldn't it be interesting to see a comparison between scores of those applicants to top schools who attended private vs. public schools, boarding or not?

[/QUOTE]

It's easy to compare schools since every high school in the UK is put in some kind of league table according to their GCSE and A-level results. Of course the independant schools generally do better because they select the cleverest pupils! there are also some kinds of state schools which select - grammar schools - and they generally do very well too. The top schools are shown on the BBC web-site here. The full table is available form the dept of education <a href="http://www.dfes.gov.uk/performancetables/schools_04.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dfes.gov.uk/performancetables/schools_04.shtml&lt;/a> but unfortunately have to be search by name of school or area. </p>

<p>This is the (state, non-fee paying) school I attended. (my school finished at GCSE and I had to attend a '6th form college' to do A-levels.)
<a href="http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/dfe1x1_04.pl?Code=&No=TS233DG&Type=&Reg=&Mode=Z&School=8084630&back=%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/dfe1x1_04.pl?Code=&No=TS233DG&Type=&Reg=&Mode=Z&School=8084630&back=&lt;/a>
and this is Eton as an example
<a href="http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/dfe1x1_04.pl?School=8686016&Mode=Z&Type=%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/dfe1x1_04.pl?School=8686016&Mode=Z&Type=&lt;/a>
You can see Eton is a LOT better!
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4170183.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4170183.stm&lt;/a>
I can't find any table which show university destinations of top students but of course the schools do brag about this on their own websites. The Eton one says "Seventy-nine boys have been offered places at Oxford and Cambridge universities this year in a wide range of subjects, the most popular of which were Modern Languages, Economics, and English.
In the ‘early application’ round at the leading American universities, ten boys have been offered places at Harvard, Yale and Princeton."<a href="http://www.etoncollege.com/default.asp"&gt;http://www.etoncollege.com/default.asp&lt;/a> I can tell you how many people from my own high school went to Oxford - one!</p>

<p>Finally, if you look on the BBC website they have country profiles <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/country_profiles/default.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/country_profiles/default.stm&lt;/a>. The US GNI per capita =$37,870. The UK GNI per capita= $28,320 so you can see that the fraction of the population who fall into those who could even think about independant school must ber very small.</p>

30

<p>A postscript on UK independent schools. They are not all boarding schools. Some of them are and some of them are not (the ones that are not are known as 'day schools'). Cupcake's 6.86% will be the number of schoolchildren who attend any type of independent school. I would guess that rather less than half of them go to boarding schools. </p>

<p>An independent day school will obviously be cheaper than a boarding school. They are quite common in some parts of the country, especially in greater London. For example, there are six independent day schools in the London borough where I live so it is not uncommon to know someone who is at one of them. Three of them are run by the very wealthy Whitgift Foundation which offers lots of scholarships, so they are also likely to be more socially diverse than boarding schools.</p>

31

<p>All I'm really trying to say is that very very few people in England/Britain/Europe live this Harry Potter-esque life style involving boarding, balls, princes and homes like Mansfield park. If that is the life you wish to lead then you would be sorely disappointed at Oxford University and any other UK school for that matter.</p>

32

<p>to my understanding grandes ecoles in france are just for post-gradguate, right?</p>

<p>what are some good schools for undergrad buisness in france?</p>

<p>thanks!</p>

33

<p>Is there sense of going to Barcelona for undergrad (universidad de barcelona / universidad pompeu fabra) and coming to U.S for grad school? I would like to study Political Science and I'm from Norway. Hope someone can help out :)</p>

34

<p>Imperial College London is IMHO the best undergraduate school for Electrical Engineering in the UK. Cambridge is also pretty good except that Cambridge students must take two years of so-called "general engineering" (mechanical, structural, etc... + electrical and information engineering) before they can specialize in EE or IE properly in their junior and senior years. At Imperial on the other hand, one starts studying EE right from freshman year, which gives the student greater depth in his/her chosen field at the expense however of breadth of knowledge. The atmosphere in the two schools is also very different: Cambridge, a very traditional historical institution dating back to the 13th century, is a collegiate university where much of the learning takes place outside the university lectures through the tutorial system in the residential colleges, whereas Imperial, a "modern" school established in the early 20th century, is perhaps more similar to the tech schools in America (like MIT), except that there is not the same emphasis on continuous assessment of performance (via homework, mid-terms, quizzes, etc.) as in the US.</p>

35

<p>Does anyone know if a student who has dual citizenship with USA and Ireland, (and is therefore a member of the European Union), if that makes a difference in the tuition costs anywhere? My daughter was born in the US and is graduating from school here, but also holds an Irish passport. She would love to study in Europe and I just thought I would check to see if there are any considerations financially.</p>

36

<p>sunshadow from personal experience this is the EU policy: </p>

<p>Under the terms of the Free Fees Initiative the Department of Education & Science meets the tuition fees of students who are:</p>

<pre><code> 1. First-time undergraduates; and
2. Hold E.U. nationality or official refugee status and have been ordinarily resident in an E.U. Member State for at least three of the five years preceding their entry to an approved third level course.
</code></pre>

<p>The residency requirement applies to all E.U. nationals, including Irish nationals, in accordance with the judgement of the European Court of Justice that access to vocational training must apply equally to all E.U. nationals. It is understood that similar residency requirements operate in other E.U. Member States.</p>

<p>There is a distinction between the criteria that determines eligibility under the Free Fees Initiative, and the criteria by which individual third level institutions establish what rates of tuition fees should be charged, in cases where a student does not qualify for free fees. The universities are autonomous bodies and, as such, may determine the level of fees to be charged in any case where the Free Fees Initiative does not apply.</p>

37

<p>TheMK99:
Thanks so much, that answers my question very clearly!</p>

38

<p>The tuition rules vary by country. In the UK, tuition is determined by where you have been ordinarily resident for the past three years. However in the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and other European countries tuition is determined only by the passport you hold. </p>

<p>I am a dual citizen of Canada and an Eastern European country that joined the EU in 2004. I have never lived in that European country and only visited for the first time when I was 20 years old. Still, I am entitled to the EU tuition level at my current university in the Netherlands, simply because I hold an EU passport.</p>

39

<p>OP: u can consider INSA Lyon, France::: it has a special engg program, SCAN that's taught in English for the first two years</p>