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UK University
application centre - study in UK
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UniRoute offers you a direct and comprehensive
university application service in conjunction with our UK partner in
Oxford.
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This application service is offered free of
charge
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We offer direct application for undergraduate,
postgraduate or foundation courses at UK universities.
Learn more how UniRoute can help you to
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Why Study Abroad at a UK University?
Can a quarter-million of the world’s brightest
students be wrong? That’s one estimate of the number of foreign
students who forsake the comforts of home and brave the UK’s food
and, for many, forbidding weather to get the postgraduate education
they consider the key to a bright future in their homelands.
The British Council puts the total number of overseas students
currently studying in Britain – at all academic levels – at nearly
one million, with two-fifths of post-graduate students hailing from
other countries. The British government’s increasing recognition of
the value of this phenomenon to the British economy overall is
likely to increase its efforts to attract these students away from
competing institutions in other countries and to address the complex
student-visa laws that most overseas students cite as the greatest –
and often the only – disincentive to seeking graduate degrees in the
UK.
Studying in the UK, rather than at comparable universities and
colleges in other countries, clearly remains the first choice of the
largest segment of the overseas student population.
The principle reason can be summed up in the single word the
23-year-old Uzbekistanian Tulkin Sultanov gave the BBC as his reason
for pursuing advanced studies in the UK: “reputation.” Worldwide, UK
universities are renowned for their high academic standards,
cutting-edge educational facilities (particularly in the sciences,
engineering and the arts), and broad range of offerings combined
with the flexibility to accommodate individual student needs.
Like many other students who eventually go to the UK itself,
Sultanov was educated in a British school in his homeland. As a
result, he said, he knew both that British teaching was
high-quality, that the professors at British universities had
international reputations as leaders in their fields – and,
crucially, that alumni of British universities enjoyed a level of
professional success on return to their homeland that made them the
envy of their generation.
UK universities and colleges are continuously evaluated by
professional bodies to ensure that their teaching and research
standards and their facilities are at the highest standards. The
result has been the more important rating by the rest of the world,
which at this point assumes that any British post-graduate education
is top rank. Because standards are now known to be high at all
levels, an unrivaled prestige attaches to a master’s or doctoral
degree earned at a British university.
Of the half-million Chinese students studying abroad annually, some
50,000 have chose the UK as their academic destination of choice,
together spending an estimated £550m a year on their UK educations.
Twenty-two-year-old Lin Disheng, a Chinese student featured in
another BBC story, followed his BS degree from Nottingham University
(where he earned first-class honors in e-commerce and digital
business) with a master’s degree programme at Oxford. Citing China’s
rapid industrialisation and economic growth, he told the BBC,
“Chinese young people like me want to make a contribution to this
rapid process. That's why I want to study In the UK - to learn
better western technologies and experience the western culture and
do the best I can.”
It goes without saying that the students who are accepted into
British universities are the top students of their home countries’
top universities. Still, for most, what amplifies the education they
received at home can be summed up in the three words independence,
creativity and self-reliance. These are not only qualities they pick
up at the personal level – although the mere process of adapting to,
and then succeeding in, a culture often significantly unlike their
own gives them a level of self-confidence they might well not even
need in their homelands.
More to the point, a UK graduate education teaches foreign students
a kind of independent thinking, creativity with ideas (most
conspicuous in artistic disciplines but as evident in disciplines
such as business and politics – “thinking outside the box” – and
even science. Most foreign student have come from academic
environments that have emphasized rote learning and, with the best
of intentions, the dutiful regurgitation to their professors of the
teachers’ own ideas. Only in an environment that both fosters and
teachers ways of independent thinking do students learn how to
generate their own ideas, propose and test original solutions to
problems, and trust their own creative impulses.
British universities also offer well-recognised value for money.
Undergraduate degree programmes, for example, are typically spread
over three rather than four years, and most master’s degree
programmes are designed to be completed in one year. This makes them
highly cost-effective when compared to the longer time it takes to
complete comparable courses of study in other countries,
particularly in the US. Also, scholarships and other forms of
financial aid make it possible to for many foreign students to enter
institutions they would not be able to attend on their own or their
families’ resources. Personal support in gaining access to such
assistance, overseen by highly trained university administration
staffs, helps many foreign students navigate that thicket of
qualifications that sometimes discourage them from pursuing this
vital source of financial help.
Furthermore, access to government-funded health care contributes
greatly to the financial advantages of studying in the UK. Students
in any full-time course in Scotland and in full-time courses lasting
at least six months in England, Wales or Northern Ireland are
entitled to free medical treatment from the British National Health
Service.
Another advantage of study in the UK is that some students can, if
they must or wish, work while they are pursuing their degrees.
Because they are from outside the EU, students who are registered is
a course of study longer than six months can work as much as 20
hours a week during term time and full-time during holidays.
Students who need to supplement their finances to live as well as
study abroad will be happy to know that part-time work is easy to
find. Others may find working part-time a valuable way of learning
more about the local culture outside the confines of academe.
The UK also offers a unique variety of graduate academic settings.
In addition to the universities and colleges ensconced within
Britain’s bustling, dynamic cities – which include far more places
than London, though the capital is unrivaled for its academic,
cultural, and other offerings – students can choose to study on
purpose-built countryside campuses, often in areas of singular
natural beauty as well. While some foreign students understandably
want the programmes as well as the prestige of Britain’s famous,
time-honored seats of higher education, others prefer the more
modern, state-of-the-art universities that have sprung up throughout
the country, sometimes with specific academic specialisations,
sometimes offering a full range of post-graduate programmes.
Indeed, exposure to the larger culture is, though often overlooked
during considerations of where to study abroad, one of the strongest
reasons for choosing the UK as a place to pursue an advanced degree.
Exploring the country beyond the university campus is sure to
strengthen English skills and, more to the point, it does not
require learning yet another language beyond the international
language of English that has become the worldwide academic norm.
In addition to the native, local, and popular cultures, Britain
offers some of the richest examples of Western culture to be found
anywhere in Europe – and not just in London. Although London plays
second fiddle to no other city in Europe in terms of its cultural
offerings of all kinds, there are also significant cultural centres
and events in other UK cities, such as Birmingham, which has one of
the world’s greatest symphony orchestras, and Edinburgh, a city with
an extraordinarily rich year-around cultural life and a summer
festival of all the arts that is one of the world’s most renowned.
British museums also are considered among the world’s finest.
For the more adventuresome, the rest of Europe is literally at the
doorstep of people living in the UK. There are affordable ways to
travel to the other countries of Europe – particularly for students
– with resulting close, easy access to a broad array of other
Western cultures, people, and traditions.
But even students who find study so demanding that it keeps them
close to home and allows them little time for travel will be
grateful to be “confined” to a country as famously beautiful as the
UK. The British countryside, villages, and beaches are famous
worldwide for their surpassing beauty. Travel within the country is
inexpensive and fast, allowing most visiting students ample
opportunities to explore the UK’s riches beyond its university
walls.
Whatever your motives for choosing to study in the UK – and whatever
you do to enhance your academic experience while there – you can be
sure of one thing. When you return home, everyone will be impressed
that you earned your degree in a country known throughout the world
for the high quality of its educational offerings. And, with a
British degree in your pocket (and brain), you’ll be in a prime
position to compete for your country’s best jobs – and find the most
satisfying way to take part in a globalised world you have yourself
encountered.
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