Student life

Coming to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 2012, after graduating from high school in Toronto, Canada, was my first time coming to Europe. I never thought that I would find a place as culturally diverse as Toronto, but I was proven wrong when I came to RCSI.

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I found out that I was pregnant during Freshers' Week. My mind often flits to that moment, the two pink lines and my shock and exhilaration. Like many undergraduates, I came to the University of Oxford with a dread of inadequacy. Now, my body was doing something wonderful, driving me towards a point that fear could not prevent.

“I will continue to include student voices in engagement and panel discussions, to promote awareness and implementation of our strategic goals around student experience and outcomes.”

This was just one of the pledges collected from a university leader at the Times Higher Education Young Universities Summit, held from 5-7 April at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane.   

When I told my friends that I was going to study industrial engineering in Karlsruhe, many asked me why. The city, with a population of 300,000, is unremarkable in comparison with its neighbours Freiburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt, but is the location of one of Europe’s largest research institutions.

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has achieved an excellent reputation in science and engineering because of some of the major inventions it has pioneered. 

Loughborough University is the best value university for students in the UK, according to a new analysis.

The table, released by business consultancy Expert Market, cross-referenced the expenses associated with attending university – including tuition fees, accommodation and even the price of a pint – with the average income and opportunities available to students after graduating from each institution in the UK.

UK students believe their university experience will lack cultural diversity if the numbers of international students were to decline, research from the National Union of Students has found.

The NUS undertook the survey in December 2016 in response to the announcement of a consultation on the entry requirements for international students at the Conservative Party conference earlier that year.

The aim was to find out how UK students thought their university experience would be affected if there were reduced numbers of international students.  

Six months have gone by and I am still surviving in a foreign country, trying to make family, fellow citizens and my sponsor back at home proud. The idea of studying overseas is extremely appealing to many, and the Netherlands is a student-friendly country with an environment that enables you to adapt quickly and remain on your feet, despite the many challenges you may come across. 

One in four complaints to landlords from students about poor housing conditions are ignored, according to a student accommodation survey.

In a survey of just over 2,000 students, financial website Save the Student found that a quarter said concerns raised around their housing conditions were not dealt with by landlords. 

The National Student Accommodation Survey 2017 questioned students between 13 and 26 March 2017 about the type of accommodation they live in, the maintenance conditions they face and their housing costs.

I had the idea to study in Japan during my second year of high school. Having been drawn to Japanese student life through movies and dramas, I especially liked the idea of school festivals and club activities – most Chinese schools don’t have similar events. So after the final examination in the second year of high school, I started to learn Japanese by myself and shared my idea of studying abroad with my parents.