mdx989

If it happens at all tbh.

I have enough money to buy a cheap house in the US, but that is pretty much meaningless if I'm not allowed to go there.

Jerseygirl

If that means you could use the money to fund your education you may have a greater chance at securing a place at a private uni. They need a certain amount of full fee paying students to boost their funds.

jumping doris

Why would you want to buy a house. Most colleges have residence halls.

You shouldn't give up at the first hurdle. OK, you may never get here but one of the traits of many expats is tenaciousness. Getting into the US is very difficult and many of us experienced major setbacks before we finally got that golden ticket.


Have you considered any colleges? What do you want to do, where would be the best place to go for that degree? Forget cost for the moment because a private school may look expensive but they may have some kind of funding for international students.. unlikely but explore the possibility.

Here is a link to a site most high school students use as a starting point

http://www.collegeboard.com/

dunroving

May I remind you that in your OP you said "I'm not naive and wouldn't expect the process to be simple or easy" ... did you forget already?

Don't give up so easily. Caleyjag's suggestion is a damn good one. Do the first bit (study in UK, do a 1-year exchange in the US) to find out if you even lilke living in the US first. If you don't, you saved yourself a lot of hassle. If you love it, the 10 year plan might look a lot more reasonable at that point.

mdx989

No I haven't forgotten. I'm not lookng for a shortcut, but I'm not going to make huge commitements to a miserable 10 years of academia for something that may not work out anyway.

I'm willing to do anything as long as I'm sure that I won't be wasting my time.

Don't you realise how difficult it is to gain entry to a 'Good' UK university? (Oxbridge and LSE are probably the only 3)

And how many even offer exchanges?

There is no question of that. None. Whatsoever.

kel.n.issy

I am at CSU even on a H4 its expensive - I do some part time courses and online - I have a friend here paying international student rates they are 47k per year USD ..........................

Jerseygirl

Then there's flights home...fluctuating exchange rates.

The Horticulturalist

From Wikipedia on student exchange programs:

"The London Metropolitan University has several student exchange programmes with academic institutions abroad. The list of U.S. partner institutions includes Alverno College, Canisius College, City College of New York, Roosevelt University, San Francisco State University, Utah State University, Western Carolina University, and SUNY Cortland."

Have you been on this site:

http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/

And this one for international scholarships:

http://www.internationalscholarships.com/

caleyjag

Hold your horses!

You need to pause for a minute. You are obviously going to need to do some research on UK universities first. There's more to life than Oxbridge.

ALL of the top 20 universities in the UK have exchange programs to the US.
ALL of the top 20 universities in the UK have at least a few world-class faculty who will be able to make things happen for you, should you take an interest in their field of research.

Judging what is a top 20 university isn't hard. The Times and the Guardian both produce annual lists judged from a teaching perspective. The government's RAE report measures the research output (the three lists generally correlate quite closely).

For some fields, Oxbridge isn't even where it's at. For optics, as an example, Imperial and St Andrews are arguably the two best institutions in the UK.

If you don't have the A-levels you need right now, you can always do a foundation course and work your way in through the side door. As said above, tenacity is the key.

And yeah, I do realize how difficult it is to get a decent university. But if you can't rise to that first challenge, how do you expect to convince an American employer down the line that you are a better candidate for a job than someone who went to Harvard??

Bob

www.ethos.ac.uk could help there, they digitise doctoral thesis and make them easily available rather than sitting in some basement uni library never to see the day....well you get the idea, and it's free

Bob

That's rubbish...student loans aren't readily available, and they are for LPR's or USC's for the most part. And no, you can't just work while in school, it's limited to part time and on campus work only.

And you still need to show you have the funds or the means of paying tuition and living expenses to get the visa in the first place.

Best bet really is an exchange year, Brunel do a good exchange with San Fran as part of the sandwich year and you can apply for ERASMUS funding to cover the exchange expense, well part of it. Spots are pretty competitive though and you've got to be a bit nifty to get on one of the design courses in the first place.

Bob

You'd be surprised...loads of them, even the shit ones will have an exchange program with some country or other and if they don't have one in a location that you want, you can always try to arrange your own, contact a uni who do exchanges and see if they have someone that wants to go to your country, it's a bit more work, but it can be done.

I had a mate that wanted to do an exchange with a place in Sydney, he organised it himself.

AdobePinon

And a lot of the time they only want to pay you in course credits, not money.

AdobePinon

That's pretty much what I did. It is a worthy plan. I probably should have studied harder though.

mdx989

I see what you're saying.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm currently at a UK university; though not a particularly good one in my opinion (usually ranks anywhere between 20 - 40 in most UK rankings) and I'm not aware of any US exchange programs here.

Hence, starting again at another UK university doesn't really appeal.