Hi, I'm kchoi. Welcome back to my channel. I've had my YouTube channel for
a while but the first time I started regularly uploading was three years ago
when I started my master's degree in London.
I often get asked both online and in person why I decided to do my master's
degree in London so that is what I'm going to talk about today. There are just
three main reasons why I decided to go abroad for my degree so if you are also
considering doing a master's abroad or specifically in the UK or London then
hopefully this will be a little bit helpful for you to help make your
decision. The first reason was time. Master's degrees in the US are often two
years full-time. My particular degree, which was a Master of Science in
Management, was a 12-month program so there were three terms: fall, spring, and
summer. It was a full 12 months from September 2016 to September 2017.
There are some exceptions of course, so some master's degrees in the UK are two
years instead of one year and if I were to do a master's in management in the
US, those programs here are actually also about one year long, but in general
across the board, master's degrees are much shorter in the UK - about half the
time - and for me, I was either looking at a master's in management in the UK or an
MBA in the US and in that case most MBAs are going to be two years long.
Reason number two is cost. The tuition for a postgraduate taught degree, so your
general master's degree, in the UK is going to be probably about £15,000
£25,000 for international students. That converts to about $18,000 to
$30,000. Tuition for a master's degree in the US, on the other
hand, is probably about $20,000 to $50,000 or even $60,000 per year, so again,
going back to the point about time, masters degrees in the US are two
years so you got to pay double the tuition. Again, I was specifically
choosing between a masters and management in the UK and an MBA
in the US and I have a video all about the differences between the two, so I
will link that up here in the cards and in the description box. In terms of cost
of living, London is definitely not a cheap place to live, but for me it came
down to the amount of time I was going to be in London and then the overall
tuition I was paying which was going to be cheaper than a program I would have
done in the US. If you want to know a bit more about how much it costs to live
in London and pay tuition and rent and things like that as a grad student, I
have a video all about how I saved up for my year in London so I will link
that in the description box as well. And finally the third reason is really that
I wanted to live in London. Back when I was a junior in college in spring 2012 I
studied abroad at the University of Bristol (in Bristol, England) for a semester
and anyone who knows me knows that I talk way too much about the time I studied abroad, but it's
because it really did change my life for the better. It opened me up to new
cultures, not only a new culture in terms of the British culture and being
immersed in that, but also meeting lots of people from around the world and even
people from California who I never would have met if it weren't for that program.
That year was the first time I ever traveled to Europe. I got to see so many
different amazing cities across Europe during that time and it helped me
realize that the world is really big, but also really small, and you can have so
much in common with someone who comes from a completely different background.
So after I finished that semester abroad I knew that I wanted to live abroad
again in some capacity and one of the easiest ways to do that is as a student.
The visa process and everything is definitely time-consuming but in terms
of approvals and the straightforward nature of it, getting a student visa is,
in my opinion, much easier than trying to get a working visa or something like
that. Something I wanted to add but forgot to while I was filming this video
is that the UK just reinstated their two-year work visa offered to
international students with a degree from a British university this used to
be available several years ago but they stopped it in 2012 so it wasn't an
option for me. When I was in London the only way an international student could
stay and work there was to apply for and get approved for a Tier 2
work visa. Now, it seems like international students will be
guaranteed a two-year work visa, should they want to stay in the UK and work, so
if that's something you want to do, then there's another reason to get your
masters in the UK. I think that if anyone has the opportunity to live abroad
whether it is as a study abroad student in college, whether it's going for grad
school to get your degree, or for a job, or even if you're just traveling, I think
it's just such a great experience. I really encourage anyone watching this to
try and do that if you have the means and the passion to. In terms of how
applicable my overseas degree is here in the US, there definitely is a little
bit of a barrier, especially because a master's in management program is not as
popular or well-known in the US because it was started in Europe, but for
me it was really about that life experience of living abroad and that
experience and the things I learned and the connections I made are priceless.
So those were the reasons I decided to get my master's degree abroad and in London.
I noticed in my program that there were so many international students, so I
would love to hear -- if you also are an international student who is getting
their degree outside of your home country -- I would love to know the reasons
for that in the comments below. Also, let me know if you'd like to see a video
more on how I went through the process of going abroad for my degree from my
visa and my student application and things like that, because I think that
could be a good companion or follow-up to this video. That's it for now.
As always, thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one. Bye!