Studying in Europe

Does the prospect of spending a year or two hanging out with French girls appeal to you? How about living like a local in Amsterdam, Rome or Barcelona? If you’ve got a sense of adventure, and the grades, you too could move to Europe to study, whether it’s for a semester or for a full degree. Along the way you’ll learn new skills, possibly a new language, and have experiences you’ll never come near as a tourist.

Whether you just want to spend a semester somewhere a bit more interesting, plan on completing a full undergraduate degree or have your eye on post-graduate training, you’ll find European universities are more than happy to help you live your dream.

Where should you go? Well, first and foremost, think about what you want to get out of your time studying, and what sort of experience you’re looking for.

If English is your first and only language, and you still want to study abroad while receiving a world-class education, you might want to consider the UK. Yes, the weather can be heartbreakingly dismal, the people a bit odd, and it lacks the bragging rights of a year living as a native in Estonia or Hungary. But head to London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or one of the other world-class university towns or cities and you’ll be able to study in your native tongue, you’ll settle in much more quickly, and you’ll be able to communicate well enough with the locals (even if they pretend not to understand a word you say).

If you’re fluent in any other of the European languages, a world of dazzling continental European opportunities awaits you, whether you head to Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland or Romania.

Even if your studies are conducted in your native language, the locals you buy groceries from or meet in bars are unlikely to communicate in anything other than their native tongue. This kind of total immersion can be a terrifying prospect, but the rewards are huge. Not only will you get an education, you’ll be improving your language skills and making yourself immeasurably more attractive to future employers.

So, let’s say you’ve got the grades, you‘ve got the funding, and you’ve decided which country you’re interested in. What next?

If you’re hoping to just spend a semester abroad as part of your degree, the next step will be to talk to your course supervisors. Assuming they’re encouraging, they’ll probably have information about exchange programs you can take part in. These range from local deals with partner universities to programs that operate across Europe like the Erasmus Mundus program.

If you’re looking to study for a full undergraduate or postgraduate degree, congratulations: you don’t need anyone’s permission! But you do need to pay even more attention to your selection process—you’ll be living in a foreign country for a year or more, not just for a few weeks. Spend lots of time considering which country you’re interested in, and whether you can cope with speaking a foreign language for most of the time that you’re there. Also find out as much as you can about visa requirements for students.

Once you’ve settled upon a country you want to study in, you have to decide which university you’d like to attend.

Find as much information as you can about each of your options, then think about what you want from your life in Europe. Are you looking for academic excellence? Good times? Great sports facilities? Location?

When you’ve got a shortlist of options that you think you might be interested in, it’s time to look at the course details. It’s important that your time away actually results in more than just a suntan and some cool stories, so try to find a course that fits with your academic interests and the kind of work you might like to go into.

Once you’ve got a course and a university in mind, you’ll probably find yourself facing a mountain of paperwork, including getting transcripts from your previous schools, letters of recommendation, and possibly even additional tests. Hopefully you’ll eventually find yourself staggering out of the application process clutching a letter of acceptance, a visa and a starting date. Success!

What next? Well, along with making plans about where you want to go on your weekends, or brushing up on your language skills, you should talk to your physician about how you’re going to manage your hemophilia when you’re away.

One issue to consider is that the quality of hemophilia treatment and the availability of factor across Europe is by no means consistent—some countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Spain and others have higher levels of factor supply than places such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Croatia. If you receive prophylactic treatment with recombinant factor concentrates you may not want to study in a country which can offer you only a limited amount of factor.

If you’re looking at spending a semester abroad, you need to discuss how best to travel with your treatment and identify local physicians to contact in case you have an accident. You should also ensure you always carry some type of medical information identification (ideally in the local language) in case something goes wrong.

It also makes sense to learn how to explain your condition and treatment in a variety of foreign languages (you might be studying in Paris, but Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are just a few short hours away by train). You may want to look into local hemophilia organizations in advance—the World Federation of Hemophilia’s Passport directory at www.wfh.org is a great place to start.

Before you go, also make sure you have as much information from your current physician translated into the local language and carry it with you wherever you go—you never know when accidents could happen.

But most important of all, remember you’re doing this to enjoy yourself while gaining a valuable educational experience, so make sure you make the most of it. Don’t let your hemophilia hold you back. Make sure you take all the usual precautions you’d take at home, and with just a little extra planning you’ll be ready to accumulate experiences and memories that will stay with you forever.