Chatsworth

Hi,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a kid going into sophomore year at high school so am starting to think seriously about university. Does anyone have any experience of sending born and bred American kids to British universities? I grew up in the UK, went to Nottm uni, married a Yank, have lived here for 18 years, have dual nationality. I like the idea of my kids going to "school" back home.

Any advice? Stories?

Thanks.

lisa67

Welcome to BE.
I think there have been several threads on this in the past so you might wnat to do a search. I believe there is a residency issue even if your son has British Citizenship.

AdobePinon

Does the kid want to go to a UK university?

Chatsworth

Thanks for the replies.

I did try a search and didn't get anything useful, but I'll try again.

Yes, my daughter is interested in going to a British university.

lisa67

my search brought up this...might be useful

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...r+non+resident

Mummy in the foothills

We talked about sending Ds#1 to Uni in UK, after we weighed the cost, it was pretty much even, that was with paying international fees in UK, here he has grants and scholarships which has now ended up costing us a bit less than UK.
Had he really wanted to go we would have paid the international fees and had him live with his Gran.
Ds#2 is now saying he'd like to go to. He's a Sophomore this year too.

Dan725

Yep, you got it - it's not so much a residency issue per-se in this case (child will have British by Descent status)....more of an increased costs for overseas students issue.

Giantaxe

Non-resident tuition is currently £12k to £15k for undergraduate degrees. As the OP's child is a sophomore, they already are probably too late to pass the three year residence test so they'd be stuck paying this for all of the degree course. Still, even non-resident tuition is cheaper than many private colleges here, although with the latter you may well get scholarships etc.

Another option is to attend a US school that does a study abroad program with universities in the UK. This is what one of my children did for a year.

Bob

International fee's for them then...getting in shouldnt' be a problem....fee's aren't to bad, £10-15K a year for traditional courses, little more for lab based courses.

Not as much going for scholarships and grants though.

lisa67

residency was probably a bad choice of words..I meant the fact they the child was living here in the US and wasn't in the UK for any length of time before going to Uni...see ..much clearer now!!

avanutria

Just to confirm what's already been said...I currently work in a UK university and do some admissions activities, and the current rules say that a prospective student should be resident in the EU for a period of three years prior to enrolling in a programme in order to be eligible for Home/EU fees. There are some minor points of flexibility (asylum seekers etc) which I don't deal with but that's the general guideline.

dunroving

If you send your children to a UK university, choose wisely. UK higher education is living on its laurels at the moment and there have been plenty of objective articles recently about grade inflation, increased class sizes, decreased workload, etc, etc. Morale is low among academics and the quality assurance process is increasingly being exposed as a sham.

Dan725

Ah yes, I was meaning to ask you about that Dunroving...saw this article on BBC news at the weekend...would you say this report that has been issued is accurate regarding UK Uni standards?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/8178740.stm

dunroving

From the coal face I'd say yes, it's pretty much on target, as is this article from the Times:


http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/...cle6301149.ece

A contributory factor to me trying to return to the States is that I am disgusted with the current state of UK higher education. If I stayed in my current position until retirement, it would kill me.

Dan725

That's an interesting article....especially so just now as I am currently writing up a dissertation for the (UK university) distance learning Masters Degree I have been studying for the last two years....