<p>MSUdad, my US son goes to university in Canada. I know it's not the UK, but some of the issues are the same. The differences are subtle between Canada and the US, but they are real. You can either revel in it or view it as a problem. He loves going to a big school with lots of international students. His best buddies are from Dubai and UK as well as Toronto. He gets a lot of ribbing about President Bush and US politics, most of it good-natured. His major is political science and I gather that he and his friends spend a lot of time hashing over differnet political systems and philosophies (remember those all night conversations?). I completley agree with your perspective that this type of education is really pertinent in todays' globalizing world - my son really has a fresh perspective on the US in the world, and on his own place in the world. He will probably do junior year in UK. I say go for it.</p>
<p>Is it necessary to have top grades and SAT scores in order to get in? My brother has SATs of about 1200 and is hovering around 2.7 for GPA. He would absolutely love to study in the UK- does he stand a chance of being admitted anywhere? I know definitely not Oxbridge...</p>
<p>I agree MSU, living abroad for extended periods is a wonderful learning opportunity.</p>
<p>However, keep in mind that when your daughter is the subject of a good anit-American wind-up--she will be isolated from her normal cultural supports. Every immigrant experiences culture shock to some degree. It is naive to expect that she won't feel that--and what posters are trying to say is that the anti-Americanism is possibly the most difficult aspect of that culture shock. Both of my boys have exprienced it and found it wearing--not soul destroying but really really tiresome. As soon as your duaghter opens her mouth, she will be judged alongside George Bush. It's annoying. I thought about wearing a Voted for Gore button myself--but didn't. Strangers often tell me they love my 'twang' but I don't have a 'twang' thank you very much--I just have a nasally American voice.</p>
<p>It's not just the Americans who complain when they are overseas. The Brits are known as the 'Whinging Poms'. Any immigration will bring up strange feelings of displacement which surface in the form of irritability and a myopic "Us vs Them' thgouht pattern. </p>
<p>I've moved to two different countries--once when I was very young and once when I was in my 40s. In the first instance, I spent the entire time complaining that the new home was't as good as Manhattan. I was obsessed by the fact that 'They' didn't do such and such as well as 'Us'. This is an extremely common thought pattern process for ex-pats--and I fell into it big time. It wasn't unitl I returned to the US that I realized I had the time of my life during those years abroad--and my previous complaints were really a figment of my psychological discomfort at being displaced.</p>
<p>The second time I moved abroad, I was on the lookout for complaints and overuse of the word "They". I taught my boys to be aware of these feelings too. Any time those two feelings came to the surface--I parked them in the box in my brain marked: "Displaced and Uncomfortable". Worked a treat.</p>
<p>cupcake--loved your latitude description. it does bring up the point that if soemone wants to spend a year in the UK, they should at least stay through the summer--to get a taste of those long long summer days.</p>
<p>I'm wondering how I am gong to extract my son from London--he loves it so much. Are you prepared for her to fall in love with a UK bloke, MSU? Visit grandchildren overseas?</p>
<p>^^^A good friend of mine did just--married a guy she met in England during junior year abroad there and just had her first baby. But they do hope to move back to the U.S.</p>
<p>Another friend did her freshman year at St. Andrews in Scotland last year, but chose to return to the U.S. after that. She lived in some sort of drafty castle for a dorm, with poor food in limited portions and limited electricity and heat. She returned after Christmas break with down blankets, jacket and vests and long undies.</p>
<p>What great, in-depth posts; again, thanks all for sharing.</p>
<p>I'm not so worried about employment. I think the path do happiness is doing what you love to do, and that works out far better economically in the long run anyway. My sense is that she might end up working in a type of field that generalists so she should be okay</p>
<p>"She lived in some sort of drafty castle for a dorm, with poor food in limited portions and limited electricity and heat"</p>
<p>sounds exactly like the conditions my son will be living in -- school is an old, drafty castle and it is cold and damp. Food is notoriously bad. This is not a deterrent to him -- it certainly would be for me! I love sunshine, so I couldn't survive.</p>
<p>a down blanket sounds like a good idea -- he has a heavy wool one,now -- but it weighs too much to take over on the plane.</p>
<p>Take lots of vitamin. I always take a vitamin when the weather is gloomyotherwise I tend to get depressed for no real good reason. That is what the sunshine does to you, it hepls activate vitamin D3 (the kind produced when your skin is exposed to sunlight).</p>
<p>hsmomstef - is your son going to Atlantic College? I grew up about half an hour away, and it's one of my biggest regrets that I didn't take the chance to do the IB there! It's a amazong place. </p>
<p>As for the cold beds - take an electric blanket!! Also, vitamins are definitely a good idea. They're really cheap to buy here too.</p>
<p>Laylah -- yes, he will be attending Atlantic College the next two years. </p>
<p>I am guessing that an electric blanket will have to be purchased there because of the different electrical outlets? or could he just use a converter?</p>
<p>we will definitely have him take vitamins!</p>
<p>I sent you a PM</p>
<p>I wanted to respond to that point about possible bias against Americans on the part of the faculty. My daughter (American but lived most of her life in the UK) is in her first year at Oxford doing English. Of her tutors, two are senior professors: one is English, one is American. Her other three tutors are junior fellows (not sure of exact terminology) and two are English and one is German. The point is, this is a world class university and that is reflected in the composition not just of the student body but of the faculty as well. Please PM with any questions - Yulsie, whose son is at Oxford and very involved in the theatre (as is my daughter), would be an excellent resource on the whole 'yank at oxford' topic as well. Best of luck!</p>
<p>Further on Anti-Americansim--it'sn't just being blamed for George Bush and Iraq (when I was abroad Junior Year it was LBJ and Vietnam), it's also when you study English Lit-there's an assumption that you won't get the finer points of "their" literature or understand the nuances of monarchy in Shakespeare. They tend to be less interested (at the undergraduate level) in what you think about a literary work--they want you to be able to quote a string of the "important" critics--memorized quotations for the exam.</p>
<p>But perhaps that's just how it used to be--maybe they've changed in the meantime?</p>
<p>Nevertheless, literature lectures were very polished, incisive, and worth listiening to.</p>
<p>Pywewacket - thank heavens, things HAVE changed - D's tutor in Anglo Saxon is hardly going to deride Americans for mssing the finer points of old english since he, an American, is a leading authority in the field. And happily I don't recognize at all your experience of how English lit was taught - e.g. the memorization for exams . It's important to note too that the OP's D is interested in a fulltime undergrad experience at an English uni - junior year abroads can be a very different kettle of fish. </p>
<p>There is an article on the front page of the Times here this morning about preferential treatment given to non UK and EU nationals applying to UK unis: <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article1782026.ece%5B/url%5D">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article1782026.ece</a>. Hope I did that right. It's easily searched under the title: "chinese students oust UK pupils from top universities" - quite a misleading title actually.</p>
<p>Glad to hear about the changes, samuck. I was not in a special one year JYA program--just took classes with the other British undergrads in Edinburgh. However, they had a general policy that Americans were not permitted to attend Honours courses!</p>
<p>A good litmus test of your D's reaction to anti-American wind-ups might be her reaction to Borat.</p>
<p>Nearly every American CC poster hated that movie. I'm not sure why they hated it but I thought it exposed the boorish underbelly of American society. I thought it was brilliantly funny. Baron-Cohen was spot on in his take, in my opinion. Considering what happened at VTech a few months after the release of the movie, Baron-Cohen probably underplayed our societal faults. </p>
<p>All of Europe knows our faults and they are quite happy to delineate them for us--on a movie screen--in a pub--wherever. Americans do not know British or European faults as well--and are left skewered with no handy retort.</p>
<p>Another good film to dissect is The Spanish Apartment--which sends up about a dozen nationalities. Watch carefully for the absolute disgust the other students feel for the American--who is almost the most benign character in the plot. One of the English characters is far more boorish--but it is the American they hate blindly. Those dynamics portray the larger political dynamic--and they represent a very deliberate message from the film maker.</p>
<p>This is not the be-all and end-all of living abroad--by no means. My boys lived/live abroad and they love it. But they love English humour and can take the ribbing--and they know their world history and politics.</p>
<p>If you haven't already discovered it, there is a British equivalent of cc. It's called the student room and most UK students post info/questions on all of the UK universities and subjects. It's a good source of info, no only on Oxbridge but also other UK universities. I'm from Canada and applied to Oxford. I did receive an offer, but missed the chem grade required in my conditional offer so I ended up in Edinburgh - having an amazing time. The main thing that I love is being able to specialize right from day 1. If you know what you'd like to study it's a great place to go to university. If you're unsure and prefer the broader approach, then an American university is probably for you.</p>
<p>As for Oxford, in the last two years only there have been about 50 US students admitted each year, and a number of them do not accept the offer (too far, they get into a top US school, they get a great merit aid offer, whatever the reason). Many more would probably apply if they could visit and see what an amazing place it is, but on the other hand, it is very far away and many are just not ready to select a course (major) right out of high school. In the end, maybe 30-40 matriculate - they are hard to find in a university with 10,000 undergrads - there are many more US graduate students than US undergrads.</p>
<p>As for anti-American sentiment - if you are a degree American student at Oxford, you will occasionally take some initial flak about being from the US on the basis of your assumed political views - my son typically responds "I don't support Bush. " The response is usually some variant of "I/we don't hate Americans, we just hate your government's policies." They don't like Blair either. Other than that, it is a non-issue. Probably if a US student was a conservative Republican, it wouldn't be as easy. The tutors have all been encouraging, and he's had no complaints about any of them.</p>
<p>I think I might like to study abroad in the UK and then go there for grad</p>
<p>We don't think you all voted for Bush! :p
And if you do get flak for it, just say you're Canadian - going by people's reactions to my Canadian friend, the accents seem to be considered identical!</p>
<p>If the specialising from day one worries your kid (I've forgotten in the course of reading the thread whether a D or an S so apologies :o) it sounds like one of the ancient Scottish unis would be better as you can do a few different subjects before specialising. Edinburgh and St Andrews both get a <em>lot</em> of Americans, but neither have an actual drama course at undergrad (The only bachelors drama degree programs in Scotland are at Glasgow (which has the multiple subject thing) and Queen Margaret (which doesn't)). Edinburgh does have an excellent theatre scene though (as does Glasgow). There are also a good deal of joint honours english/drama degrees available at the English and Welsh unis.</p>
<p>Extracurriculars are still a big part of life here. I go to a uni that's pretty bad for ECs by comparison and still manage to do sports and music and student paper and such. There definitely isn't the "college sports" following from outside the university though, and they count for very little in admissions.</p>
<p>Oh, and anyone saying they "love soccer" is liable to get picked on - it's football! :D</p>
<p>^^haha, it was funny when I went to England, because I'd say I loved football to someone I met, but then they'd hear my accent and think I was talking about American football, and then they'd be like "like soccer....or your football?"
confusion to the max :p</p>
<p>You should be worried about employment. One of my neighbors got a degree from the U of East Anglia in creative writing or some such field--and it's VERY highly rated in that field. After a few years of getting nowhere job-wise in the US, she moved to the UK. </p>
<p>Three problems: (1) I don't think US students can work while they are in the school in the UK and the vacations are so different that it's hard to line up "summer" jobs in the US. In many cases, this means your student will graduate with no work experience and be competing with lilberal arts grads in the US who HAVE work experience and internships. (2) There is no on-campus job recruitment and no career services office, at least for US jobs. Many young US college grads get their first jobs through these.
(3) I may be wrong about this, but admissions to US law/med/graduate programs usually require recommendations from profs. The same system just doesn't exist in the UK from what I can figure out, so it MIGHT be difficult to get those recs, especially 2-3 years later, should your student then decide to go on to law/med/grad school. </p>
<p>I am NOT claiming that these are insurmountable problems, but I do think they are something to think about. I think they are much smaller issues for kids with Oxbridge degrees because US employers have certainly heard of Cambridge and Oxford, but below that level, it may be harder to get a job in the US with a degree from a UK university than an American one.</p>