Working in the English speaking world
Research
Kyan Snijder
Sacha van der Woert
Index
Introduction 3
The universities 4
University College London 4
London School of Economics 5
Imperial College Business School 6
London City University 7
Analyzing research data 8
University College London 8
London School of Economics 9
Imperial College Business school 10
London City University 11
Diary 12
Conclusion 14
Sources 15
Introduction
We want to find out if we want to get our masters’ degree in an English speaking country.
After getting your Bachelor in tax law, you can only work as a tax return consultant. If you want to be a tax advisor, you need to have an academic degree. As an advisor, you will be able to do more challenging tasks and grow faster within the company.
Since there are a lot of graduates every year, you need to be more distinctive than the rest.
Therefore, we want to find out if getting a masters’ degree in an English speaking country will help us improve our position on the job market.
To support our research, we will use the following methods: desk research (primary) and field research (secondary). For the desk research we will use the internet to narrow down our possibilities in universities to visit. While searching the internet for universities we kept the following aspects in mind:
• University had to be in London
• University had to have a campus
• Finance/economics/law master’s program
• Preferably an extracurricular program
• Close relations to the job market
Besides those aspects is was very important to keep in mind that we had to be able to visit the university during our stay. Therefore, we looked for open days and events taking place in the first week of November.
We narrowed our search down to four universities: University College London, London City University, London school of Economics and the Imperial Business college. The reason that we chose those universities is that those offer quite different programs, and therefore, we could compare all our criteria.
Then, we did some research about those universities. In order to be well prepared before going to London, we made a short summary about all those universities and the programs they offered.
For the field-research, we were going to London and visit those universities. We were following lectures, taking tours around campuses and visited some local pubs to get a good feeling of the London student life.
The universities
University College London
University College London (UCL) was founded in 1826. It is known as the first university in England to allow students of any class, religion or sex. The university has approximately 11,000 staff, and 38,000 students originating from 150 different countries. Therefore, it is a very international school.
UCL is in the top five universities of the United Kingdom. Besides that, in 2009, the university was ranked as the fourth best university in the world. Moreover, the university is very well-known since the UCL academy also includes 53 fellows of the Royal Society.
UCL is known as the biggest leading multidisciplinary university of London. The university has a lot of faculties that offer a lot of different subjects. UCL comprised 11 faculties, including laws. All those different faculties are spread around the center of London. Most of these faculties are surrounded by a campus. These campuses provide student housing, libraries, restaurants, pubs, common rooms and sport facilities. All the locations are nearby a metro station, and therefore they are very easy to travel to. As an extra, UCL does not only have faculties in London, but also in Doha, Qatar, and in Adelaide, Australia.
Besides the faculties and different departments, UCL also has a library, some museums and even its own theatre. That is why UCL feels more like a small village than just a campus.
The reason why we decided to visit this university is because it is really well known. It is probably the first university that comes to mind when you ask people. Besides that, UCL is very internationally orientated, because UCL offers programs to students from all over the world. They provide student housings, and you can apply for scholarships and special funds. UCL has a law department, that we were both interested in. UCL felt like a typical university that you imagine when you think of the universities you have seen in American high-school movies. Therefore, we agreed that we should definitely visit UCL if we want to be able to compare the London universities.
Written by Sacha van der Woert
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about
While visiting UCL, we were a bit overwhelmed at first. We couldn’t really find what we were looking for, because it was such a big and impressive campus. We walked around for a few minutes to get a feeling of the university and the campus. We talked with a couple of students about their life at UCL. They told us that they really liked UCL, and that they would really recommend it to any international student, since UCL is very international orientated. Moreover, we also got to join a student during a very interesting lecture. This was very nice, because we really were able to get a feeling about how the lessons are taught at UCL.
All in all, we got quite a good look of UCL that day. We were able to follow an interesting class, and to drink a coffee in the coffee bar on campus.
The university and the campus really appealed to us. It was really close to the city center, and the university looked really nice. The main building was quite an old building, and inside there was a lot of art and antique stuff. It is also a pro that the student housings are very close to the campus buildings. Unfortunately, the housing is quite expensive.
Nevertheless, we both decided that UCL was not the university we wanted to go study. Unfortunately, they do not provide a lot of economical courses, so therefore it doesn’t really connect to our current study.
Although UCL was probably not the best place for us because of the courses they offer, we would really recommend UCL for students who want to go study abroad. We really felt like UCL provides a lot of services for students to make their life around campus a lot more interesting.
Written by Sacha van der Woert
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics (LSE) opened its doors for the first time in 1895. The university has over 3,000 staff and 9,600 full-time students from over 140 countries. An interesting fact is that over 100 languages are spoken on LSE’s campus.
LSE is a specialist university with a very international intake. A total of 16 Nobel Prize winners have been either LSE staff or alumni. Besides that, 38 heads of states from all over the world have studied at LSE. It doesn’t come as a shock that LSE has been highly ranked over several times. It is a very popular school and has an acceptance rate of only 6%.
The London School of Economics is based in the city centre of London. There are a couple faculties, and those are spread around the city centre, but all just a walking distance to each other. All these faculties provide a lot of different courses and seminars, open for all the students. The main courses they provide are economics, politics, law and sociology.
London School of Economics has his own campus, surrounded by local pubs, restaurants, student housings and a library. It is remarkable that LSE-students loan four times more books at the library than the national average person in the United Kingdom does.
The main reason that we decided to go to the London School of Economics, is that this school really connects to our field of expertise. Since it is quite a famous school, we were really interested in how the school would look like and what courses they offer. When we found out that this school even offers a masters’ program in tax law, we really decided that we should definitely bring this school a visit during our research trip.
Written by Sacha van der Woert
Since we only visited the tax law department of the school, we probably did not get a good overall look of the university.
While preparing for our research trip, we got a really good look about this very prestigious and high-end school. But, while being there, we were quite disappointed.
Again, we only got to see the tax law department and therefore we probably do not have a perfect look of the university. This department was combined with some other studies. Unfortunately, the law department did not appeal to us at all. The building was really dark, grey and sober, and it did not really attract to us to get in. Nevertheless, we got in, because we had appointment to have a tour around the building. Due to a misunderstanding with the receptionist, we were not able to follow a course, but only walk around by ourselves.
By knowing what we read and what we heard about this school, we probably made the wrong choice by only visiting this department. It really did not appeal to us, and we both decided that we definitely did not want to study at that department. The reason for this is because the university really felt a bit depressing. It was a quite unorganised and the building just not appealed to us. Regrettably, because we expected a lot from this university, especially since they offer a course in our field of expertise.
Written by Sacha van der Woert
Imperial College Business School
Imperial college business school ranks amongst the top ten universities worldwide. Being accredited by the most influential en largest school accreditation associations AACSB. Imperial college business school in numbers is quite impressive. The school offers several Master Programs in our field of expertise.
Looking at the numbers of these master programs:
Master in Management
20th rank worldwide
16th rank Europe
2nd rank in United Kingdom
Master in Finance
13th rank worldwide
12th rank Europe
2nd rank in United Kingdom
Imperial college business school is strongly focused on building a network for their students. This is achieved by attracting students from all over the world. For the Master programs that appeal to us: MSc Investment and Wealth Management, MSc Economics and Strategy for Business and MSc Finance the percentage of international student were respectively: 89%, 93% and 91%.
Imperial college business school has strong connections with some of the world’s leading organizations. They offer consults to students to prepare them for job interviews and keep close contact to guide them during the process of finding your dream job or internship. Besides that the school stimulates excellent students in the form of scholarships, rewards or let them work on special projects.
Written by Kyan Snijder
We signed up for a seminar about the Master programs on the college. The facility looked new and we had a good first impression. We were received by some students whom guided us to a waiting area. We also received a brochure containing information about the college as well as slides from the presentation we were about to see.
The presentation were about MSc Investment and Wealth Management, MSc Economics & Strategy for Business, MSc Finance & MBA. The programs were really interesting and not that different from any similar master they offer in the Netherlands.
The main difference between Imperial College and the other universities we visited (as well as Dutch universities) was the connection to the companies. Imperial college is mainly focused on ‘getting the job’.
They have a big network of companies with who they work closely together on projects on the school and also invite people from those companies to visit the students all year round. This is quite interesting as it allows you to get familiar with a company and makes it easier to apply for a job.
We were especially amazed by the overwhelming amount of Asians attending the seminar. Roughly 50% of the crowd was Asian. While looking through the brochure we saw that in fact 43% percent of all accepted students are Asian.
A really important factor for Imperial was the fact that they are looking for an ‘excellent student’. Preferably excelling in all their classes as well as outside the classroom. Extracurricular activities are almost a ‘must’. We had the feeling that Imperial just trains you to be ready for the job market and did not put the emphasize on learning.
While talking to alumni afterwards they confirmed our feeling about that studying at empiral mostly prepares you for a job in the furute. Eventhough they did not consider this to be a bad thing. One amlumni said the following : ’’Doing my masters at Imperial helped me get a job with a company I really admired’’.
One of cons we had while going through some of the material they handed out to us was the cost of living. They estimitated around 20.000 pound for 1 year of study, and that’s without college tuition and books!
Written by Kyan Snijder
London City University
London City University is a public univeristy located in the United Kingdom. Originally it was founded as Northampton Institute but after a royal charter it became The city univeristy, London. After joining the federland Univerity of London it became part of eighteen other colleges and ten research institutes.
City’s biggest campus is located at Northampton square and offers courses for every form of graduates: Bacherlors, masters and doctoral degrees. The univeristy also offers a online platform of alumni which offer help to current students.
On the website of the university they state : ‘’ City, University of London is a special place. With skill and dedication, we have been using education, research and enterprise to transform the lives of our students, our community and the world for over a hundred years’’.
In numbers they do really well and can be consired to be on the top of universties in the United Kingdom/worldwide. In the top 5% of universties worldwide, 18th overall in the UK, 15th for graduate prospects in the UK and 1st in London when in comes to student satisfaction.
Besides this they are very open to students from all over the world. They provide help or give information for international students regarding living in London, Visa & immogration, offer preparatory programmes en have an Guide for International students.
City offers a variaty of master programs. They even have a Law department which offers master in : European Commercial law, International bank & Fiance law, International business law and Master of law.
Written by Kyan Snijder
London City University
We signed up for an on-campus tour at Northhampton Square. In a group of around 20 students and their parents a student from City showed us around. This was a great way to explore the campus and see some classrooms and students.
To us, this university felt the most like the ones we have in the Netherlands, the classrooms and campus are not overwhelming at all. Also the type of students was more diverse than other universities we had visited.
The student that showed us around was a Law undergraduate and was really enthusiastic about City university. So told us that besides offering master programs City also offers help to (future) students for housing near the campus. Also while walking through the hallways we saw a lot of posters for social activities outsides classroom.
One of the major things we were interested in was the Brexit. As a possible future student in the United Kingdom we were a bit scared of the possible effects of the Brexit on students, especially since City is really commited to European students.
Our tour guide, even though being against a Brexit, was still really positive about the future of City university. So could assure us on the following things regarding starting a program in 2017/2018:
-EU students will be charged an even ammount of tuition fee as students from the United Kingdom
-Support of funding will still be available for students from the EU
-Fees will increase the same amount as inflation
This calmed us down a bit, but there are still some points that are unsure, such as:
-If you need a visa to study in the United Kingdom
-What will happen with the credibillity of my degree
-What will it cost to live in the United Kingdom
So perhaps this is not the best time to start a study in the United Kingdom.
Written by Kyan Snijder
Conclusion
So, do we want to do our masters in London ? After our research we have both decided that we will not do our masters in London.
Studying abroad sounds great but in reality it leads to some complications.
University College of London provided very few economic master programs and did not really connect to our bachelors.
Eventhough we had high hopes voor London School of Economics we were a bit dissapointed. Upon arriving there the facility looked grey, sober & dark. It is often said that you only get one chance for a first impression, and let us tell you, this is the same for a University. We did not pictured ourselves studying there for 1 or 2 years. This was a shame since this is (on paper) the best university to attend with the bacherlor degree we have.
Imperial felt like a ‘job factory’ and we both realised we do not excell enough to be accepted. This was a good reflection moment for us, but both of us do not have the grades they are looking for in future students.
One of other cons we had was that London is really expensive. It is slightly cheaper since the Brexit but still rather expensive. One of the major problems is housing for students. Sometimes univeristies are more than willing to help search for a accomodation, but the prices are just absurd.
Besides housing and prices there is a last argument we had in deciding to not do our masters in London; Brexit. Brexit caused for quite some unrest in the United Kingdom. Eventhough the Universities tried to assure us that it will have little effect on studentlife, we are not that convinced.
Taken all of the above into considiration we came to concluion that we will not do our masters in London.
Written together
Sources
https://wwwf.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/about-us/
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City,_University_of_London
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/what-does-brexit-mean-for-students-we-answer-your-faqs
http://www.city.ac.uk/eu-referendum/eu-referendum-information-for-students
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-support-for-eu-students