I am gonna apply through UCAS to uni in UK this year. Could someone give me a few tips? I am international student so I will need most help from peeps who have gone through it outside of the UK. However help from people inside the UK would be nice too.
Questions like, when do I have to apply for student loans and etc...
You don't get any student loans if you are an international student (even if you are an EU student). The only loan you get is a tuition loan/grant depending on whether you go England or Scotland. So before you apply, be aware that you wont get any spending money at all, so you better have your finances sorted for the 4-5 years you'll be there.
Remember that UK includes Northern Ireland as well. That's important because, to the best of my knowledge, fees for international students are much lower over here (about £4,000, compared to £9000ish for England/Scotland/Wales). That legislation may have changed since I last checked up on it, though.
Tuition fees are not that big of a cincern right now since I have the same rights for it as a UK student because of being from EU. Main problem is maintance cost. Blodo was absolutely right about no student loans for EU/international students. Basically if I don't want to indebt myself even more I am priced out of most of UK unis. That means I am basically limited to Wales and Nortgern Ireland.
Anyone has idea if you can live up with around 500 pounds per month in the UK? Not London but Edinburgh or others for example? I would like to get part-time job, but I can't rely on it.
If you got a particularly cheap flat (best to share to spread most of the costs anyway), which may be slightly harder near Edinburgh uni itself, then you could squeeze bills and food into a £500 budget. This doesn't leave a lot of room for much of anything else, but with a part time job with a couple of shifts a week you'd be reasonably ok.
The university accommodation might be a good thing to look at, they are made to be affordable and easy and should tell you roughly how much you would be looking at spending. My first year in Heriot Watt halls (likely cheaper, again) cost me about £450-500 in actual living costs per month but drinks, social life etc. put that quite a bit above it though!
ucas application experience (outdated): make sure your section in why you want to study this course is positive and appears to be written to apply to all of the courses you have selected. Don't just focus on your favourite.
living expenses: don't live on uni property. its expensive, noisy and usually falling apart. the kitchens are never clean, someone else is always drinking YOUR milk straight from the bottle, and the mattress... well, 'spooge-pad' is a better term.
its ok for the first semester, but you will want to move in with friends/coursemates asap into your own flat. Private landlords fall into two categories, people who qualified for buy-to-let mortgages and have been hit by negative equity (they really really need you to pay your rent on time or they might lose their own house as well as the one you are renting), and complete money grubbing bastards who have over 50 houses and scape you for every penny they can. I actually had a fight in the street with a landlord, cos he was trying to evict me 1/2 hr before i had an exam.
when you move into the property, they will give you a default list (things that are broken). using your camera phone, photograph everything on the list, as well as the list itself (can be horrible trying to find a piece of paper six months later). also, photograph everything that isn't 110% perfect, cos keeping your deposit is a national pastime for landlords and letting agents.
if moving in with other people, set up a spare bank account (banks love students), and then have everyone pay the rent/bills into that account from their main accounts. this makes it easier for you to pay the electric/gas/telephone/internet bills. bear in mind that as a non-uk person, the utility companies may charge you a £500 deposit, cos some people arrive, use electricity and then leave without paying. if the house only contains students, no-one has to pay council tax. if you are a tenant in a house of non-students, the house-hold gets a 25% reduction in council tax.
Choice of uni: basically, avoid the midlands at the moment. there's lots of racial tension that just isn't present in other cities. Unless you are going to yale/harvard/princetown/brown/oxford/cambridge (aka the big six), no-one cares where you studied, only what your grades were.
part-time jobs: this usually means working in a bar,which just makes you tired the next day. I recommend that you get a job working in the uni library on weekends - you can sit at the desk and study, whilst getting paid, and you usually have evenings free as the library closes around 10 or earlier. There are many jobs that now require police database checks for you to do them (baby-sitting, etc), so if you want to be a baby-sitter (its quiet and you can do your homework in a nice house when the children are asleep), you should sort out your references straight away - many of the lecturers have young families, and need cheap baby-sitters.
bear in mind that you might not have lectures everyday, and the holidays can be embarrassingly long. I lived above a bar, (rent = cheeeeeeeeap), and worked there, cos i only had to go to lectures two days a week. During the long holidays you can work lots. In fact work as hard as you can, so that studying becomes much much more relaxing.
How to study:
Never study on a saturday night - you need to socialise or you become weird
eat fish. omega 3 oils are needed by your brain to make cell connections, which is how we make memory. if for some reason you don't eat fish, buy Phosphatidyl-serine, which is the pure compound made from omega 3 oils.
repetition + repetition + repetition = retention
if a stimulus is repeated twice within 24 hours, your brain 'decides' to remember it.
if it is re-repeated within 7 days, it 'decides' to keep it
if it is re-re-repeated within 28 days it decides to make it a long-term memory, and from this point on it cannot be erased.
so, you need to set up your study calendar: re-WRITE (not read) the lecture notes from today, last week, last month.
dont forget to include todays lecture notes into the calendar, so that you know when to re-write them.
My first uni, i didnt do this system, and just scraped by. Second uni, i used this system, and got an upper first with distinction, and was valedictorian. Third uni i used this system, and was able to hold down a full-time job and get a first (just missed out on valedictorian, but meh).
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