11 Plus Exams Forum

With DC in yrs 10 and 11, I am starting to look at the concept of university. I'm not at all keen on them accruing monster debt and both speak reasonable French.

I also read about degrees being offered in Germany in English.

Has anyone else looked at this option?

The Netherlands too, I think. It would be interesting to know if these degrees are well thought of.

Germany isn't the only option - I know that some universities in Sweden and the Netherlands (Maastricht for example) offer courses taught in English, and I'm sure that there are others if you look for them.

had quite a look last year and went to a talk about it.

the Dutch look good and organised well - often entry twice a year able to assess UK qualifications OK - good time scales for applying. (can often apply to start february)

Re germany -
we had a look at germany for first degree but they had a somewhat frustrating application system that did not fit with UK exams - you had to apply by July and have ALL your results ... no predictions... OK so A levels don't come out until mid August and they didn't want to give conditional offers - so that meant only applying the next year

They interview in August and tell you if you have a place in early september to start October ... on the whole most students would want to have sorted themselves before that and likely to have accepted somewhere else by then.

Having said that it was a new course and maybe they hadn't thought through the timing - or maybe everywhere does it like this and the UK is the wonky one - when contacted it was a case of "that is how we do it here"

Have heard that the german unis can have VERY large intakes and lectures etc with people feeling a bit lost sometimes - tutorial groups can be up to 50...

Curiously there are lots of german students studying abroad (UK) but not many dutch ...

These people were helpful - arranged the talk I went to : http://www.studyinholland.co.uk/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; had good knowledge of Canada / Aus / NZ / USA /italy / France and Spain too.

Most countries examine at the end of the school year, mark the exams and give the results out a couple of weeks later.

That is a real pain with our very long system.

I can't make a very good offering on this thread, however, 90% of my (extended) family are Dutch and my cousins studied courses in English (language) at University and have also sent their children to secondary schools where everything is taught in English. English is widely spoken (to a better standard than many English people ) so prior knowledge of Dutch won't be a barrier. The reason my family all give is that no-one needs, or wants, to speak Dutch and to 'get on' Dutch children need to speak English. There are therefore an increasing number of uni courses / schools where subjects are taught in English.
Lovely country.

Thanks, another one to look at. Nice and near too.

depends what they want to study but the liberal arts &science degrees in the netherlands look good - all in english and in some of the univeristy colleges the students are all residential and speak english all the time - apparently some colleges develop an accent all of there own. Utrecht, Leiden, Maastricht come to mind

If anyone knows anything about Utrecht University College or knows of an English student that has gone there I would love to speak to them.

Quite impressed with what I have seen of UCU - all students resident on the campus together and good range of subjects to take - very broad.

Haven't spoken to any of the students but there are some on student room I think ?