Destination Education
00:31:39 · Ruth Benny, Barbara Lestak
[00:31:39] S0: Yeah, but at its core, I've heard it said so many times. This is what I said to my children. I said, you must choose what you love, where it intersects with what you're good at in a very basic form. Gonna have to ask you Barbara for a nice visual, because I'm realizing that we sort of jumped in with a little bit of jargon and the lots of dates and that you must have a nice visual or sort of an overview of the system that we can link to put it in the show notes. If you don't, we'll have to create one. [00:32:12] S1: Yeah, I have Perfect. One [00:32:15] S0: Thank you. I knew you would. I want to ask you about international students. Does what we've discussed so far, is there anything that differs for international students or is it pretty much as we've discussed?
00:32:28 · Barbara Lestak
[00:32:28] S1: Yeah, good question. So with international students, there's a few other little elements. So your UCAS application as an international student is the same. They will ask if you're an international student and there are British government rules and regulations that will help you and guide you if maybe you have dual citizenship or a family member lives here in The UK etcetera. It it will guide you as to whether or not they would deem you as a home or international student. If you know for certain that that's what you are, then fantastic. You just tick that you're international student. They will ask you don't try and get away with it please because they will ask you for documents and proof and evidence etc. And then the university will label you as whichever they deem is fitting for your status and the information that you've given them. International students, you have a bigger competition, you have greater competition because for some courses, medicine being a very key example, you actually have fewer spaces available to you. And so, you know, that if you imagine the ratio is a lot greater and so that competition is a lot lot higher. The other element that I always advise international students to check is if you aren't in an international school or you're not taking APs, so the American or IBs or A levels, to check your country and the qualification whether or not that university accepts your qualification that you are taking in your school and to what level that needs to be. Not all universities will accept all qualifications around the world. So that's really, really important. You don't want to set yourself up to then fail because you haven't checked that.
00:34:22 · Ruth Benny
[00:34:22] S0: Yeah, good point. I think there's on UCAS, you can scroll through, there's a lot of different qualifications that they do accept, but really, really important to check. I mean, I was coming at this question with the assumption that if you're not British and you're studying overseas, then you definitely are going to be classified as an international student. I mean, we could do a whole other topic on home fees versus international fees. Let's assume for a moment that those students will be international. I mean, my instinct, mean, the university is increasingly reliant on the fees for international students these days. And what I've seen again, in my small sample is that those international students get early offers for lower grades. In a sense, it's easier for international students.
00:35:10 · Barbara Lestak
[00:35:10] S1: I think there are some universities that will definitely do that because as you said, and have rightly identified international students have a vast amount more to pay than a national student than a home student. Now, I think that stands for a large number of UK universities. I would always caution those who are wanting to apply to the top five. So G5, Russell, Oxford, Cambridge, as that is not the case. So you will have the same entry requirements as a home student. But if you are applying perhaps to not the G5, not the Russell and not Oxbridge, then you may find that you will have a little bit more flex and a little bit more freedom, especially I think if you aren't taking sort of the A Levels or the A Level equivalents, because then it's a slightly different system for you, education system for you. So they might be a little bit more relaxed in that case. The other element that you can consider is are the foundation courses. So for students who maybe aren't quite there or something happened in their academic life and schooling, etcetera, or they just missed out on the minimum requirement. And there are some universities now that are doing what they call foundation courses or foundation degrees. They are very competitive and you need to check because they don't do a foundation degree for every but it does give you an in and you go and you know you start with some very basic modules but also to increase that English language and to sort of get you used to that university schooling system, university system, the education system there. So if you are a student who sort of fits into that category, by all means, you know, take a look at the foundation courses because they are very useful. But I do warn you, they can be very competitive.
00:37:05 · Ruth Benny, Barbara Lestak
[00:37:05] S0: And the universities don't penalize, mean, there's no disadvantage in doing a foundation course? [00:37:11] S1: Nope, no, absolutely not. Because if you imagine the university wants the best of the best, right? So if they know that, okay, you had a hiccup here or you're almost there, but you just need a little bit of extra support. We want to have you in our system as a student. So let's give you that additional support that you need to get you going and then we can put you into the main degree. So yeah, absolutely. Doesn't, there's no Makes penalisation for [00:37:36] S0: sense. Do contextual admissions, does that apply to international students or does that only apply to home students? [00:37:44] S1: No, so you can have contextual offers. It does become a little harder and I'm not massively sort of clued up on which universities consider contextual offers as per international students. But I do know for example that there are some cases where they might ask for, if it is a contextual student, they might ask for some kind of government scholarship or support from their home country or proof of that so that the student can come over. That said, we have a foundation and we work with national international students there and from you know everything from asylum seekers to those who have some level of government funding because it is hard for a contextual student to come over and have to pay those large sums of money and without some kind of grant or support. But yes, they absolutely considered.
00:37:44 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
[00:37:44] S1: No, so you can have contextual offers. It does become a little harder and I'm not massively sort of clued up on which universities consider contextual offers as per international students. But I do know for example that there are some cases where they might ask for, if it is a contextual student, they might ask for some kind of government scholarship or support from their home country or proof of that so that the student can come over. That said, we have a foundation and we work with national international students there and from you know everything from asylum seekers to those who have some level of government funding because it is hard for a contextual student to come over and have to pay those large sums of money and without some kind of grant or support. But yes, they absolutely considered. [00:38:41] S0: Okay. We've skipped around a lot, so we're definitely going to need this timeline. So let's assume that I think it's, we're speaking at the end of April. So I think by the middle of May, all of the offers will have been made. Is that correct? Yep. Is it May 15 or something? Yep. Yes. And then August 15. Yeah. And then the IB results are sometime end of July, and then the A level results are August 15. And it's not until a child, a student actually gets their grades, that they will know whether they can go to the university that they've selected. It seems there's got to be a better way, surely.