Studying abroad as an Engineer

<p>Hi: My son is a Mechanical Engineering major, interested in studying abroad as a junior in spring 2010. He needs the courses to be taught in English and would love to find a college that offers something in aerospace. We are thinking Australia/New Zealand might be too expensive. He's investigating colleges all over the UK and Ireland. Any suggestions? Thanks.</p>

<p>Well, I'm an electrical engineering student from Case Western who will be studying abroad at Queen's University Belfast (Belfast, Northern Ireland/UK), and I will be getting direct engineering credit at my home university for 4 of the 5 courses I'm taking (the 5th course is a humanities).</p>

<p>I've heard Edinburgh (The</a> University of Edinburgh) is pretty good for science and engineering courses as well, from a professor I know working at Elon University. She sees a good number of students study there successfully for those majors.</p>

<p>I found IFSA-Butler's website to be pretty helpful as well, they list what specialties the schools they work with have. For example, QUB, the school I'm going to, lists "engineering" as one of it's specialties. (Queen's</a> University Belfast). </p>

<p>You could try looking through their schools for ones that list "engineering" as a specialty and then go to the individual school websites to see if they offer courses in mechanical engineering. The next step, then, is for your son to communicate with his academic advisor to be sure that the courses hes interested in will actually count for credit at his home university. </p>

<p>Also, the Global Engineering Exchange (E3) is a widely recognized program for engineering students looking to study abroad (The</a> Global Engineering Education Exchange (Global E³)). I ended up not going through them, but they are definitely worth investigating.</p>

<p>As an aside, I ended up using IFSA-Butler as my study abroad agency rather than just going directly, because they offered a number of useful services (pre-departure guidance/information, translating UK credit/transcripts to US ones, abroad support office, city orientation, home visit with local family, etc) that I wouldn't have gotten going alone. So, I'm a little biased in that direction :).</p>

<p>Good</a> University Guide: Aeronautical League Table</p>

<p>I agree with jjmilburn; Butler-IFSA is incredibly helpful. [url=<a href="http://www.arcadia.edu/abroad/%5DArcadia-CEA%5B/url"&gt;http://www.arcadia.edu/abroad/]Arcadia-CEA[/url&lt;/a&gt;] is also recommended.</p>

<p>

One thing that's different about Australia and New Zealand is their academic year; it begins in January and ends in December. Your son's spring/second semester would be their fall/first semester.</p>

<p>I'm an engineer too and I'm studying abroad this upcoming semester at the Hong Kong University of Science (HKUST) and Technology. At least for my school, they offer an exchange program which offers a lot of independence with classes (basically anything I want). While I am still paying my home school's tuition, it is extremely cheap to live there (for example, my dorm is $800 for the whole semester!) And all my classes are in english too. </p>

<p>Other programs I looked at were offered by Boston University.</p>

<p>Hi vivace, I am thinking about HKUST as well. Have you selected which courses you will take, and how many engineering ones you will take?</p>

<p>I spoke to my Study abroad coordinator and she told me that my only options were to go to HK,Turkey Melbourne even though I was very interested in doing it in Europe. If I were to try and go through another school's program, how would it work since the courses might transfer to BU but not to my school (NEU). Could anyone please shed light on how that would work?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>Australia would be a great choice - not only because the course-work will likely be more in-depth than at a US college (Australian students have to declare a major prior to entering University, and spend the whole 4 years going further in depth into a particular field, thus the reason why most Aussie students don't need to go to Grad school), but also because it will be more affordable right now; the exchange rate is so horrible for the Aussie dollar as a result of the GFC that it's something like $AU1 for 60c US, meaning you'll get nearly double value.</p>