The IUF is in Cluj today, to wisk you off to a university in Romania or abroad. Is it worth going? Well, there are ten universities in Cluj, and a few online degrees based in Romania that you might already know about. I’m tempted to go, just so I can blog about it. But I already know a lot about universities.
How do you apply to university courses in different countries? It depends on the country.
The simplest is Sweden. There is a central website for everything. You can search by useful topics, and then upload your documents to apply to many universities at once. The Swedish only ask for the relevant stuff (proof you meet the qualifications. So, for an EU citizen doing online study, that tipically means upload your degrees and your diplomas with transcripts to prove your background, your proof of citizenship/identity, and your proof of language proficiency. )
This seems ironic. We expected private universities or expensive ones to be the simplest. This is not the case. Tuition fees and application fees themselves provide a degree of paperwork.
The most complex seems to be the USA. The United States doesn’t have an application system, or a standard method of application. It is up to each university to decide how they will accept universities and proceed. Some ask for personal essays, others might consider extra curricular activities, there are at least two sets of standardised exams, and so on. And it might be expensive to prove that you speak English, or to translate your credits to the American system. (It’s usually quick, but expensive.)
Romania is also complex. It’s the one of the few countries that requires a fitness test. (Some universities in Malaysia do too.) I’m not sure if this applies to online course, and it doesn’t apply to summer courses.
In general, applications are becoming more complicated, even to summer schools. Why? People are automating applications, I suppose. Or maybe they had bad experiences in the past with students who chose the wrong course by mistake.
Austria
We swear, there was a much better website for Study in Austria last year. You can search under “find your program.”
Cyprus
Depends on university… but the system seems similar to Romania, where you apply to each University individually. University websites end with “ac.cy”
There is a central page, which tells you just to check each University’s website. But Cyprus isn’t very big, so you can realistically check each university individually.
China
China has some great universities. It also has crazy entrance exams which are fun to learn about. Then there are other Chinese speaking countries, like Taiwan and Singpore.
The Confucius institute used to have some information about studying in China, I would check their social media page if you’re interested.
Denmark
We used to think Denmark had a great portal, but it loads very slowly. So, we can’t confirm whether it’s still as good as it used to be. But you could search short courses, degrees, and the results were pretty clean. By the time it loads, however, we think you’ll have missed the deadline.
Estonia
Estonia has a centralised portal, which prevents fraud. They currently use “Dream Apply” which is also used by other parts of Europe. https://estonia.dreamapply.com/
You can copy and paste information from one application to another. However, each university asks for its own documents. It is easy to see that you have the documents required for the specific course. There is a limit to how many courses can be applied to in a season, which is often just two. (This is small compared to other countries.)
You can work for many hours as a student, but of course, that increases your chance of failing the course.
Finland
For Finland, beware of fraudsters. If you want a scholarship, you will find it on StudyInFinland.fi
scholarships tend to cover tuition only. You need to prove that you have enough money to live in Finland during your studies, because you probably won’t get a job while there.
France
https://www.campusfrance.org/fr
We love the website, do we have to say why?
Germany
Daad.de lets you search for scholarships, University degrees at every level, and even German language classes. There is also a daad.ro targeting Romanians.
It seems Germany will be one of the most represented country at the IUF fair, so if you’re interested, why not go there? (It costs ten lei to enter.)
Greece
Study in Greece is a pretty good search engine. unlike the swedish one, it doesn’t appear to have a centralised application portal, but there is a lot of useful information there.
I would say it is easier to use than the Study in Italy, but not as easy as UCAS.
In addition to studying in Greece itself, they include a database of places where you can do Greek studies abroad. (There are two in Romania, but Cluj sadly does not seem to be among them.)
Korea
One of the best search engines out there, but the results do not give as much information as Study in Sweden or Germany’s Daad. Still, it is a clean search, you can search by subject, level, duration and town. There is also a search for Korean language classes.
https://www.studyinkorea.go.kr/en/search_v1.do
Netherlands
Like Estonia, it costs a lot of money to apply to university in the Netherlands. Living there isn’t cheap either, and people often get afraid they won’t even find a place.
However, it is easy to find study courses. And while it doesn’t make it easy to find online courses, you can select scholarships for your search. (You’re probably going to need them.)
https://www.studyinnl.org/dutch-education/studies
Malaysia
Malaysia has some interesting courses that you don’t find much in Europea, like Islamic finance. It also has a lot of standard courses that you expect from top universities everywhere. The search engine might not be completely up to date, but it is above average (and a lot of the courses look very good.)
https://studymalaysia.com/what/
Portugal
Study in Portugal has a database of places where you can learn Portuguese. (You can also learn through the UBB’s institute.) Most countries have a database of where to learn the language, some are easier to find than others.
Romania
(universities tend to have a portal where you can submit documents.)
But, you can check the information from a centralised network. It might not be 100 percent up to date, if you know which university you want to apply to, we listed the universities in Cluj a few months ago.
You can do a search yourself. through the Study in Romania web site. Last we checked, there are 103 different accounting degrees in Romania. Most are probably not online, but in Cluj there are 13 programs. (“Accounting and Business information systems” at UBB looks like it’s duplicated four times, but that’s because you can study it in Romanian, English, or French. Those are different programs of study.)
UBB’s portal has about 100 ethnicities to choose from. If you don’t understand the ethnicity, you’re probably not that. A lot of them are Rroma, a few are varieties of German, and there are Romanian varieties like Vlach.
Would I go to the fair for Romanian Universities? Well, I don’t want to call anything Mickey Mouse degrees, but they actually have something called the “ECHO School of Technology, Digital Arts and Video Games.” And yeah, there are others that look just as bad like Tiffin University… sorry to anyone who went to these. No, they’re not Mickey Mouse degrees. They are Super Mario degrees.
Saudi Arabia
Expensive, but interesting programs. And some have scholarships. If money is no object, you speak Arabic, and you’re interested in studying in the middle East, I would definitely consider Saudi Arabia. Some classes are in English, too, and some are affordable.
Spain
You can check out https://studying-in-spain.com/ . I don’t find that website particularly easy to use, but Spain does have some excellent Universities that you can find in other ways. (Belgium is also not the easiest country to search.)
Sweden
There are a couple of pages. When you already know that you want to study in Sweden, the University admissions page lets you find a course, like they all do, but also apply to almost any undergraduate or masters program from the same page. Before I saw this, I thought Ucas was the only system to be this simple. But yeah, this goes a step beyond UCAS. I would definitely study it if I were designing a portal for my own country.
https://www.universityadmissions.se/intl/search
The United Kingdom (apply via Ucas.)
For the UK, most programs at bachelors level apply through Ucas (any university worth going to probably goes through UCAS for undergrad and PGCE). UK universities always have domains that end in “.ac.uk” and are ranked in the Times University Ranking.
I thought UCAS used to end in ac.uk as well, I don’t know what happened, it now forwards to a dot com. How tacky.
The UK’s UCAS is pretty simple and similar to the Swedish system. However, in the UK, there is a form that asks for a statement, and more. And paying tuition fees adds another level of complexity. Added to that, the website now includes a lot of other fluff and is no longer as easy to search as it once was.
And education used to be free in the UK. Now, it’s pretty expensive.
USA
(depends on the university… often documents can be submitted by email. University websites end with .edu)
Most US universities require taking the SAT, scholastic Aptitude tests, before applying. (For a time they didn’t, but they decided it was a good idea after all.)
American universities seem simple at first, but more paperwork comes in after you’ve been accepted. They need to do statistics for their internal registers, their various funding bodies, and sometimes just to fix internal mistakes.
Illogical pricing
A terrible university can cost ten times as much as a good one. Courses at the same university can vary incredibly on tuition fee. The pricing of US universities makes no sense, but you can usually find a scholarship if you are a top student. (It might be easier than getting a visa.)
Soviet style propaganda mind training
Even if you are an art student, you have to take mandatory BS courses that you don’t get credit for. BS stands for bologna, not as in the bologna system of education, but as in balderdash, nonsense, useless waste of time, waffle… you get the idea.
And no, these aren’t punishment for bad behavior. Everyone has to take these courses.
American Universities might also make online students take alcohol awareness courses. (Yes, if you’re in a country where the drinking age is 18, and you’re a mature student anyway, you need to learn how it is illegal to drink under 21 in the US, and the consequences for doing so, even if it has nothing to do with your course. And no, there is no opt-out box for teetotallers either. I promise you, I will not drink until I turn 21. I don’t drink, and I’m over 21. Nope, still have to take the stupid training.)
In addition, there is diversity training (in which you learn how you are a victim), complex graduation rituals (which can cost an arm and a leg), and people who feel offended if you ask them if they are “feeling alright.” It feels like an online gulag.
But at least you are allowed to complain about it, or at least my classmates did and none of them seemed to disappear.
Other countries
Many countries have interesting programs, but their websites are difficult to use. We struggled with the websites of Italy, Bangladesh, Ireland, and a few other interesting countries. If you know you want to study in those countries, invest a little extra time for research, as they do have programs worth pursuing. (Or look for the universities in international search engines.)
Some are above average like (https://www.studyinturkiye.gov.tr/) which works alright on computers and on mobile devices.