Hi! Ever since I was little I have always wanted to move to England when I got older. When I started looking into colleges, I began looking into schools in the London area as well. I love how the schooling system there takes less time so that I could be graduating with a postgrad degree while my classmates back home would just be getting out of undergrad. I also have heard that if you graduate from a UK school it is easier to find a job as an immigrant. I had always planned on moving after I finished with a Bachelors’s degree in the US, but as the time frame for applying comes closer the more I’m feeling drawn to the UK now. My main concern would be starting my adult life in a completely new country with my whole family an ocean away, but that is really the only thing holding me back. I guess I just want advice. I’ve asked my parents and they are for the most part supportive. Being their only daughter though I sometimes think they’re advice on telling me to stay for an undergrad is a bit biased. I’m interested in studying Computer Science, and right now I am looking into the University of Surrey and Kingston University. I am also interested in UCL; I just don’t know how competitive it is. If anyone has any experience or just knowledge of UK schools, in general, that would be greatly appreciated!
I don’t know if this would help much but here are a few of my stats…
Weighted GPA: 4.2 (hoping to raise it to a 4.25 by application time)
ACT Score: Currently scoring around a 26 on practice test hoping to raise it for the real test
Extracurriculars: Beta club, National Honors Society, Environmental club (Reinstated at school and President), Girl Scout (over 10 years and currently working on gold award), Theatre (all 4 years of high school and a part of the advanced class that competes in state competitions), and a Camp Counselor.
If I did stay in the US my top pick schools would be NC State and UNC (both in-state)
Time for a little more info: UK schools admit mostly or entirely on stats. So your GPA and ECS that aren’t related to your subject are not relevant.
To get into Surrey for CompSci you need either a 1290 SAT / 28 ACT and 650 in three SAT Subject Tests (each) OR 650 in two Subject Tests and 54 in two AP subjects OR 544 in three AP subjects. In all cases one of the subjects has to be math, and in practice they should all be STEM subjects.
Once you get there, you will have a very structured program. One of the reasons that English undergrad courses are often 3 years is that you only study the one subject. Every class you take in Y1 & Y2 at Surrey is a required course (you get one choice in Y2 at Kingston) (you can see them year by year on this page: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/undergraduate/computer-science#structure, under “Course Structure”. Every uni will have a similar page). You will also be expected to be in charge of yourself- adult from day 1. The system is much more hands-off than the US.
Neither is exactly in London- they are in Surrey. Kingston on Thames is more of a suburban town.
You are right that UCL is more competitive- they want
55555 in five AP subjects OR
a mix of 5’s and 700+ Subject Tests OR
555 in three AP subjects, a GPA of 3.4+, and either an SAT of 1380or an ACT of 29 w/ writing of 10.
It is very unlikely that you would get an offer without one of the Calc APs.
Going to university in the UK is not quite the same as ‘moving to London’- even if you went to a London uni. Although they will expect you to navigate the process on your own, you will have a place to live, a world to move into, etc.
However, I would not bet on it being easier to immigrate to the UK post-graduation, especially as Brexit is still unfolding.
Do some more homework & come back w/ questions. In the meantime, what’s up with Surrey?!
Hi there, I check these forums every once in a while to chime in on the question of going to school at UCL. My daughter attended UCL for one year before transferring to the US (she is graduating this year). London is amazing and UCL’s faculty was great but…the administration was extremely bureaucratic and, perhaps most importantly for your purposes, the college spirit and social scene was bleak (from her perspective). UCL is not a like an American college plopped into the middle of London. So, don’t go to UCL expecting a traditional US college experience. You won’t get it. If academics are your thing and if you are gifted socially or indifferent to the social scene, UCL might be an amazing choice.
UCL is a top school. Really, top APs, you will need 5 in BC calc, . Are you a top student at your school? Advanced math etc? The reason the degrees are shorter is because yr 13 is in high school, in the US it is freshman college.
But lets ask about money, you can be full pay? Your parents are probably humoring you at this point.Ask them if they will pay $45 K a year plus (flights, health insurance incidentals, whatever the heck happens when Brexit gets done to destroy the economy) I assume you are a sophomore?
There will be schools in the UK where being an overseas student at full pay will be a real advantage. Not top schools though. Don’t think immigrants have it any easier. Brexit was won on the premise of limiting immigration.
@Sybylla The last time I had access to my transcript I was in the top 15% of my class (I think it was around 11 or 12% to be more exact). I come from a really big competitive high school too. I have always been a year ahead in math so as a junior I am currently taking what my county considers as a senior math class. I am planning on taking Calc AB next year. I haven’t thought much about taking BC but if it would raise my chances I would definitely consider it!
My top pick would be the university of surrey which currently estimates their yearly cost for a CompSci oversea student at 21,700 and a dorm room at $72 a week (so a little over a thousand a year or semester either way.) My parents and I have discussed the costs of flights and have come to the conclusion I probably would not come home a whole lot (once maybe twice a year tops). As for visas together everything would cost a little over a thousand also. Together this adds up to be slightly more expensive than my local state schools that I would have to pay 4 years of tuition of instead of three.
I have thought a lot about brexit though so I would probably wait to see how exactly it would affect students on a tier 4 visa before officially accepting an offer.
@collegemom3717 thank you for the information! Please don’t think I haven’t put much research in all of this though! I have been looking into these schools and things I need to do vida wise for the past three years! Also I know that most of the schools with the exception of UCL are outside of London and I actually saw this as a plus! It means that if I wanted to move into an off campus flat it wouldn’t be quite as expensive as it would be in London ( I still understand that it would be pricey though).
I also understand that brexit could change this however, currently if you graduate from a british institution you have a time frame after graduation that you can get a job easier than you can if you graduated from America. Last I heard this time frame was about 2-4 months. I heard that there was talk to raise it to 2 years but with Boris Johnson in office I don’t have much hope for that anymore.
@CollegeDad2020 thank you so much this was really helpful! I consider myself strong in academics but I definitely am not a very outgoing person so I don’t believe that UCL would be a great fit for me. A social scene is definitely not very important to me in a school, but being in a new country it would be nice to be able to semi-easily make new friends.
I have also looked into FSU’s First Year Abroad program which allows out of state students to study abroad for their first year then come home and receive in state tuition. This program seems to be the best of both worlds but as you would expect the first year is super expensive (42,000 not counting flights, visas, all that stuff). However it would allow for a trial run before actually going all in and moving to a new country.
Probably more like £2880 (still not a big number obvs).
Remember that it is ‘self-catering’, you cook for yourself, using the shared kitchen in your hall (dorm), with your own pots/pans/dishes/glasses/cutlery and food. There is no dining hall (or meal plan) but there is a fast food takeaway (pizza/burgers/chips), and various coffee shops, bars, and cafes around campus. There is a small convenience store, but for groceries, It’s about a 20/25 minute walk to Tescos or Sainsburys.
Just as an fyi, when you apply you list all of the standardized testing that you have already taken and what you are planning to take in your Senior year. For the tests that you haven’t taken yet your GC or whoever writes your LoR “predicts” your scores. Once you have applied you will get either an “unconditional” or a “conditional” offer (or a rejection). An unconditional offer is just that: you are in (though you are likely to be asked to provide original score reports from College Board to confirm your self-reported scores). A conditional offer will specify one to three of the exams you are scheduled to take and a score that you have to meet for each (the offer score will never be higher than your predicted score). When you have your scores you send them in and then you get your place confirmed. This is very normal - it is what happens for most UK students, but it is hard to study for an AP in May of Senior year when everybody else has their college place set! Most US students with conditional UK offers either ‘insure’ a different UK uni where they already have an unconditional offer, or put a deposit on a US uni, just in case the scores don’t come out as hoped.
Remember that in the UK you get to apply to 5 places for the price of 1: 1 Personal Statement, 1 LoR, 1 fee, so think about where else you might like to apply, and read their course descriptions carefully - they can be more different than you might think.
Do spend some time on the UCAS site (over the summer! no rush now) reading about Personal Statements. They are very different than US essays.
None of the above is meant to be discouraging! There are a lot of great things about going to the UK for university. I’m just passing on info from our own experiences.
@collegemom3717 of course I really do appreciate the help so thank you! Do you know if the admissions for most British schools are rolling or do they have set dates that they release like a lot of US schools? Also since I would be able to apply to 5 schools are there any in particular you would recommend? I looked into Aberystwyth University in Wales for a while, but I really think I would like to stay in the London area for the job market aspect (potential internships or to just become familiar with the area for post grad). That being said I’m also not completely opposed to schools a little out of the way either. One of my main draws to surrey is that it is a little out of the way but is still about 30-40 minutes away from the city.
Admissions to UK unis is by department, so each subject at each uni operates on it’s own timetable. Many are rolling, especially for international students, but often ‘rolling’ means batches, not each one as it comes in the door.
For compsci you are very unlikely to have internships during term, but you may well be able to get a summer internship, esp after 2nd year.
As to whether living in Surrey will get you much more familiar with London- that will depend a lot on you making the effort (& spending the money). The bus is $6 - $14 each way (35min-1 hour+, depending on the time of day). and the train (with a student railcard) is $12-15 (~1 hour) each way into London. A lot of students (in the US & the UK) think that they will go on more outings to the nearby city than they usually end up doing. The cost of a weekend in London- or even a day trip- in time & money means you won’t do it that often. I would focus on the overall local community more, and be sure that you are ok living there. STRONGLY recommend a visit before accepting. It might seem like a lot of work and a lot of money, but compared to the cost of ending up in the wrong place and having to start over (they don’t really do transfers in the UK) it’s cheap at the price…
You haven’t given any useful stats yet (except a possible ACT score), so it is hard to id good programs for you. As soon as you have a subject test / actual ACT / actual AP it will be easier to offer some suggestions. The advantage of being international is that for the unis you are considering, if you meet their standard offer you are very likely to get an offer.
Stuff happens, OP. Kids get the flu, break an arm in a fall, get mono.
Spend some time thinking about having to navigate that on your own without your parents or family able to show up and take you home for a week.
My kids dealt with the loss of four grandparents during the time they were in college… think about not coming home to say goodbye to a terminally ill relative or come back for various funerals and memorial services.
Going back and forth is expensive, time away from your studies is expensive, having to supply your own entertainment in an expensive part of the world is expensive.
Just give that a serious think. And there’s no going back on your major- in the US you could decide after a semester of CS that you really want to do Data Analytics and for the most part- that’s fine.
Why are you not slated for Calc BC even if you stayed in the US? You should take as much math as your HS offers…
@recougar, you might take a look at the new rules for immigration the UK government has put forward. There are howls of protest about it, so there are likely be tweaks, but you can see the direction it’s going. The Guardian has a nice graphic summarizing the new plan:
I have posted bits of this elsewhere, but to give you an idea of the job picture for American students:
My daughter is an American in her third year on a sandwich year program. That means she attends classes at her university for 3 years, then does a one year work placement with some online course work, then returns to university for her fifth year.
Her 5 year student visa allows part-time work during the school year and full time in summer and on university approved placement year.
About half the placements advertised were closed to her right off the bat. They only wanted students with the right to work permanently in the UK. They use the placement year as a recruitment platform and they want to offer post graduation jobs to the students they liked. She had a much harder time getting in the door for an interview than UK students with same marks/qualifications.
She did find a placement after many c.v.s and apps were filled out. She will be about an hour from London by bus/train. She is realistic about how often she will get in to London because she knows working full time and completing online coursework on the weekends will be a lot. She also knows exactly how often she actually gets in to Edinburgh from St. Andrews. (once a semester at best)
She is working for a large multi-national company that has US based locations so there is some chance of post graduation work, but the UK based lab was very clear with her that she will NOT be getting an offer to remain in the UK. They would have to prove that they could not find a similarly qualified UK resident, and that 1) isn’t true 2) is a whole lot of work for them.
