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Which type of uni is right for you?

If you sent off your UCAS application right at the start of this school year, you might have found that you’ve already received the odd response from your chosen universities. And within a few months, you’ll have certainly heard back from most or even all of them.

And each response from one of your five adds a little more impetus to your decision-making thought process. Back when you submitted all your UCAS bumf you only had to pick five universities that you liked; very soon, you’ll have to whittle that number down to a top choice and a backup, something that many people find more difficult to do than picking those initial five.

So what’s the best way to go about making this decision? While it’s tempting to not think about it until the last possible moment, the savvy student starts weighing up his options as soon as possible. You’re making a big decision and if you get it wrong you’ll either have to put up with a university or course you don’t really like for the next three to five years or alternatively have to waste a year by dropping out and then going through the whole horrid UCAS process once more.

So even if when you made your initial selection of five places you had a firm favourite in mind it can’t do any harm to have another review of your options to make absolutely sure you’re making the right choice.

Now, you may think that this will just be a question of trying to recall what you learnt about your five choices back when you were poring through dozens of prospectuses, university websites and guide books, but there’s really no reason why you can’t do some more thorough investigating to arm yourself with all the information you need to make your choice. Knowledge is power and all that.

So here are some suggestions to help you as you weigh up your options.

Go back to the guides

You may feel that you’ve already gleaned all the information you could from the prospectuses, student guides and other literature that you trawled through when you first started thinking about university. But back then things were different: you were so young, so nave, and, most importantly, had to process tons of information about tens of places all in one go. So now is the right time to go back and read up again–this time more carefully and thoroughly–on everything there is to read about your universities and the courses you applied to at them. It could well be that, reviewing everything again, a place that you only put down to make up the numbers in fact now really appeals to you. Our own university guides are–of course–a great place to start this review process.

Pay an impromptu visit to your choices

It could be that you didn’t have the chance to visit all five of the unis that you applied to. If this is the case, now is a great time to go and have a look at them. And don’t feel you need to wait for an open day, either; while open days are a good way to learn about the academic side of things and also get the official line on life at the uni, turning up and having a look around the campus on a normal uni day is a great way to get a real feel of the atmosphere at the place. Through this you can learn, for example, if the student union bar is buzzing with post-lectures banter over drinks on a Tuesday early evening (as the university’s own prospectus will no doubt have it), or whether in fact students just unsociably scuttle off home after lectures.

Snoop around on the web and social media

This is another way of learning about how your candidate universities really are, as opposed to how they like to present themselves to you in their shiny promotional literature. Get googling and looking around Facebook groups; it’s a great way to get a sense of whether students at the uni you’re looking into are having a good time there and what they think of their courses, whether the information you learn comes from them posting photos of their shenanigans or griping about workloads.

Make use of someone that knows someone (that knows someone)

If you’re in your final year of school or college, most of your friends will probably be in the same boat as you, and so won’t have any first-hand experiences of their own about university life. It’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility, however, that they have older siblings who are at uni; and it could even be that they’re at one of your five choices. They can be a great source of information and will be able to give you the inside track on what it’s really like where they study. And if you’re currently in the middle of a gap year and have friends who are currently at university then you’re in a great position. Even if they’re not studying the same course as the one you’ve applied for, through paying them a weekend visit you can still get a much better idea of what being a student there would be like, and of course a couple of student nights out into the bargain!

Posted in courses-section |

Study gadgets for the festive season

Although with the holidays just around the corner, bringing with them a desperately needed break from your studies, probably the last thing on your mind as you look ahead is studying. That being said, the holidays can be a great time to think about exactly this. Not only is it useful to regroup and reflect on how your semester has gone, it can also be a great opportunity to start thinking about how to improve. Sometimes what you need to do this is some self-motivation and organisation. But sometimes a few study gadgets can really help, especially if they’re shiny and new. And what better time to consider which study gadgets might help you than Christmas. What you think will help you is completely down to you, but here’s a few ideas.

Keeping your desk tidy is a great way to make sure your productivity levels say high. At the same time, a good light source is essential when you’re working away into the wee hours. A clever lamp with desk-tidy spaces in it is therefore a no brainer.

If you’re living in a hall of residence, or sharing a house with some friends, chances are it’s sometimes a bit louder than you like come bedtime. These headphones are specially designed to play you music, podcasts, lectures you’ve recorded (if you’ve been following our study tips!) or whatever you please while you’re dozing off. They’re free of wires, comfy and can help with blocking out other noises.

Or perhaps you’re just looking for something to make studying a little bit more fun. Some special pencils that when used let out delicious fruity scents may be just the answer, encouraging you to take lots of notes. Or if you’re more musically minded you might want to consider some pencils that double up as drumsticks. There’s nothing like a bit of percussion to help you think, unless of course you’re not the one doing it. So don’t take them to the library with you!

You could also ask for a more traditional study aid, such as a recording device so you can make sure you never miss a word your lecturers say, or perhaps a tablet or new external hard drive to back up your coursework and lecture notes. You could also ask for some room decorations to make sure that you’ve got a cosy place to do your work when you can’t make it to the library.

So remember as Christmas is approaching and you’re getting ready to take some time away from your studies, this is a great opportunity to get a head start on next year’s studies without any effort on your part. Think about what would help you, talk to your parents (or write a letter to Santa) and you might just find that they’re quite happy to treat when you mention how it’s going to help you through your degree! If you don’t celebrate Christmas, it might still be worth asking. Just be sure to emphasise that it’s going to help you improve your grades!

Posted in university | Tagged , , |

Good reasons to consider postgraduate study

Last time you heard from us we were issuing warnings about the inadvisability of doing postgraduate study based purely on the desire to extend or relive your student days, since postgraduate study can be hard, hard work, and often quite expensive.

However, as we hinted at last time there are lots of good reasons to do postgraduate study. So, if you’re thoughts are turning towards postgraduate study based on purer motives than wanting to not give up your regular seat in the union bar, read on!

Postgraduate study can make you more employable

The job market for young people is more competitive than ever, right across the spectrum of skill levels. Competition for jobs requiring degrees is very intense nowadays, primarily because a higher proportion of people than ever have an undergraduate university education.

In this climate, postgraduate study is a great way to stand out from the crowd. Employers know that it is much more demanding than an undergraduate degree, and so accordingly it equips people with more advanced skills, whether they relate to a specific career or are transferrable ones. For example, while a BA or BSc in economics will give people some quantitative (i.e., equations and statistics) skills, an MSc in the same subject will contain a much more advanced set of skills in this area. The same goes for skills such as research, writing, problem solving, giving presentations, meeting deadlines and a whole lot more besides.

Postgraduate study can give you essential qualifications

With some career paths, it isn’t even a question of postgraduate study enhancing your chances. Instead, it’s an essential requirement. This can either be because the field requires both an undergraduate degree and a Master’s, or–and more frequently–because if you don’t have an approved undergraduate degree in the subject, the only way into it is by doing postgraduate study in it (technically you could often do a second undergraduate degree, but the expense and time involved make this option unrealistic for the vast majority of people). Examples of careers where postgraduate study is required if you want to move into it are (to name but a few) teaching, law, librarianship, translation and medicine. So if you have an idea on a career that your undergraduate degree doesn’t equip you for and that needs specific qualifications, postgraduate study could be your best bet.

Postgraduate study can be intellectually enriching

Career prospects aren’t the only reason for considering postgraduate study. It’s also the best possible way to study something for its own sake and develop a greater and deeper appreciation of it. When people begin life as an undergraduate in many subjects–particularly the traditional disciplines and in non-vocational subjects–they think that when they graduate they’ll have reached the peak of that subject area. When they graduate, they find out that said peak was just a false summit, and there’s still a long way to climb before they get to the top. For those with the stomach and the desire to face that challenge, postgraduate study it what’ll get them there.

Posted in university | Tagged |

Are you considering postgraduate study for the right reasons?

At some point, the undergraduate adventure has to come to an end. And with it, many of the great things about being a student are replaced with the pressures and pains of life out in the real world. While moving on to the challenges of a career can replace many of these perks–whether in terms of providing you job satisfaction or a healthy pay packet–there’s no denying that post-student life will involve more in terms of responsibilities and less in the way of lie-ins, midweek partying and the freedom to devote most of your time to social and intellectual pursuits that truly interest you.

“But wait,” you may be saying, “there is a way to let the good times roll on. It’s called postgraduate study. It’s definitely a real thing; why else would there be people in the union bar who look like they should’ve been slung out a decade ago?”

Well, strictly speaking, you’re right. Postgraduate study is indeed a real thing, with the postgraduate community in the UK getting bigger every year. However, just because something does exist doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

We’re not saying that postgraduate study is a bad idea–far from it. It’s a fantastic way of gaining new skills or scratching intellectual itches that your undergraduate degree couldn’t reach, and for some careers postgraduate qualifications are a basic requirement.

What we are saying, however, is that in considering postgraduate study you have to ask yourself the following question: Am I just doing this to avoid the real world/to continue living the student dream? Because if you are, it could well be that postgraduate study is not for you.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, there is the question of expense. While undergraduate study is expensive nowadays, postgraduate study is also pretty pricey, especially if you take a science or business course. And unlike with your undergrad tuition fees, if you go down the route of postgraduate study you’ll have to pay your fees up front. And there’ll be no cushy government-backed student loan with generous repayment options, either. Secondly, postgraduate study is no walk in the park. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that in many cases the amount of material you cover in a single year of postgraduate study equals or even exceeds what you do in an entire undergraduate degree. And as you’ve probably discovered already, nothing eats into student life like hard work.

So if you’re panicking about finishing university, or are yearning for a return to your undergraduate glory years, postgraduate study may not be the answer to your problems after all. As an alternative, why don’t you have a look at our careers section and start looking for something different though equally rewarding to turn your efforts to?

Having cast a sceptical eye over the suitability of postgraduate study in this blog post, next time we’ll have a look at it in a more positive light, examining its many benefits. So if after reading this you’re still convinced that you’re not just contemplating postgraduate study to avoid the real world, then be sure to drop by later in the week to find out just what it could do for you.

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Tips for formatting a bibliography when doing essays and coursework

As you progress in your education, you’ll be expected to do more and more independent research. This means making bibliographies to show the reader/marker all the research that you’ve consulted. You may even have found already that you’ve received some coursework feedback and have lost a few marks because of issues with your bibliography. This can be really annoying, as can, in fact, the process of formatting a bibliography itself. After all, surely it’s only the bibliography and doesn’t represent your main ideas?

Well, in fact the bibliography is an important part of academic practice, and the further you progress through university the more you’ll appreciate this. And on a more pragmatic level, remember that a well-crafted bibliography also represents an easy opportunity to get some extra marks in your coursework. Just by taking that little bit of extra time to learn the correct techniques for formatting a bibliography, you can win yourself some easy extra marks.

If you’re unsure about formatting a bibliography, consult your department’s style guide. This should be available through your department’s website or the library’s website. It’s never a good idea to just assume that it’ll be a certain way; the expectations when it comes to formatting a bibliography vary from department to department within a university. If you’re having trouble locating the style guide, ask one of your lecturers where you can access it; the chances are that it’ll either be included in your departmental handbook or available for download on your course’s VLE.

When formatting a bibliography it’s important to take the time to get the basics right. This means putting items in alphabetical order, and maybe subdividing between books and journal articles, if that’s what your style guide tells you to do. Another mistake to avoid when formatting a bibliography (again check how your style guide does this as each one varies!) is not to keep writing the same author’s name for each entry if you’ve used several items by one person. Check how dates should be ordered for this scenario as well (e.g. do you list the earliest or most recent publication first).

Check you have all the relevant bits of publication data for each work you consulted when you are formatting a bibliography. This means the obvious ones, such as author and title, but also the place and name of the publisher and year of publication if it’s a book. If you’re using a single chapter in a book, make sure you have the name of the book that it’s taken from. And if you’re using journal articles, you’ll need the issue, volume number and page numbers (note that for some online journal publications, not all of these things will be relevant or obvious). If you don’t find this information straight away, don’t assume that it doesn’t exist. Sometimes checking how an item has been cited in another article can give you the missing bits of information.

When formatting a bibliography it’s also a really bad idea to just copy and paste all the items from the reading list. These are, of course, important resources to consult, but you should also be finding other items on your own. And don’t dishonestly over-pack the bibliography. The marker will be able to tell whether you really used all of these items.

Using different types of resources can also be a really good idea. Ultimately your bibliography will show what sorts of research you’ve done. A key part of creating a good bibliography (and good essay) is to consult a wide range of documents. There’s no checklist for this, but think about using books, journals, conference proceedings and authoritative websites when gathering your research.

Let’s face it, creating and formatting a bibliography can be a bit of a pain. But it’s worth putting some effort into this as it’s an easy way to gain or lose points in your coursework. If you’ve managed to create an extensive and well-constructed bibliography in the process of doing your coursework, chances are you’ll have a pretty good essay to go with it.

Posted in Uncategorized, university | Tagged |

Top tips for formatting your CV

Formatting your CV is a nightmare, especially if it’s your first time, but it is something very important to do. If you’ve already got a CV, it probably needs an update, which can also be difficult to do neatly, especially if you didn’t quite get the formatting right last time. With that in mind, today we’ll highlight a few tips for formatting your CV that you can use to make sure that your CV not only looks good, but can be modified without too much hassle in the future.

When formatting your CV, one common mistake that people make is to use different fonts and lots of bold or italics to separate out each section. This can lead to a CV where there’s just a bit too much going on. It’s better to stick to a single font (something classic though, nothing that will take anyone extra time to read it), and to use bold and italics sparingly, for example only for your headings. This will make the end product easier to read and will make it more obvious where each sections begins and ends, allowing the reader to quickly jump around and gather the information they want.

It can be easy to get caught up in trying to format your own spacing for bullet points, headings, etc. This is a dangerous trap to fall into, as you’ll likely end up with slightly wonky line starts and you will have a really hard time modifying the CV in the future. So avoid just using the space bar to get something where you want it. Instead, use bullet points and other options that are already auto formatted. This format may not be your first choice, but it will likely look better in the end than trying to sort it out on your own. Likewise, if you’re going to use separate columns to list your skills, use a table. Using a table keeps things neat and allows you to use the auto formatting for bullet points. Just remember to remove the table boundaries and check this in print preview before you send it off anywhere.

We’ve mentioned before that it’s not a good idea to have your CV covering only part of page. When formatting your CV, it’s much more professional to make sure that it fills one or two full pages. So what can you do if you’ve got something in between? A good trick to use for formatting your CV in this situation is to modify the margins of the page. This gives you a bit more space to talk about your accomplishments. Use this in moderation though. It’s not going to look very good if the text stretches all the way to the margins on every side. And if you are going to modify the margins, try to keep them in the same ratio so that the text isn’t all squished on one side of the page either.

While formatting your CV is a bit of a pain, putting in the effort to get it right now will save you loads of time in the future when you’ve got even more to add. Play around with the formatting tools a bit until you find something that works, and try to avoid the space bar for anything other than spacing between each word!

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Last-minute checks to do before applying for a job

The news coming from the government and the broadsheet papers for the last six months or so has been that the UK economy is finally, decisively dragging its way out of recession and is enjoying solid and steady growth. That can only be a good thing for all of us, though it’s especially welcome news to young people who’ve been having no luck when it’s come to applying for a job. After years of very limited job prospects through no fault of their own, it could finally be that we’re going to see more vacancies in the coming months, and with a bit of luck the youth unemployment figures tumbling.

However, there’s a world of difference between the economic picture getting a bit less bleak and there being such an abundance of jobs that employers are willing to hire just anyone. The job market is still highly competitive, and that means that you simply can’t afford to sabotage your chances of getting an interview or being offered a position by making silly little mistakes.

Here are the top three things that any young person applying for a job needs to do before hitting the send button on that application email or employment site.

1) Check your CV and cover letter for mistakes and typos

We all know that making a CV is a real pain because of the fiddly formatting involved in the process. And because it’s often the last thing you do before you complete applying for a job, writing a cover letter ends up feeling like an obstacle that you want to get beyond as quickly as possible.

But at this stage of applying for a job and until you are invited to interview, these two documents will likely be all that your employer knows about you. And so it’s essential to get them perfect. Little spelling mistakes and missing full stops might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but to many employers they suggest that the position was not sufficiently important to you for you to double check for small mistakes.

And sometimes these little mistakes can be real clangers. Write your email address or phone number incorrectly, for example, and you could miss out on that vital message inviting you to interview. And spelling the name of the person your cover letter is addressed to makes the very worst possible first impression.

2) Check the job ad again to make sure all instructions have been followed

Applying for a job in theory should just be a simple question of sending off a CV and a cover letter. However, in practice each job has procedural requirements that differ ever so slightly. Some employers will want the names of referees to be written on the CV; others will request that CVs only be sent in PDF format.

Again, these things might not seem like they are particularly important, but think of it this way: when you hire someone, you’re going to want them to follow the instructions you give them precisely. So if they can’t even follow the instructions for applying for a job correctly, why should you believe they’ll be able to follow instructions once you’ve hired them?

3) Check your social network settings

The person who is denied or loses employment on the back of an ill-advised tweet, shared photo or status updated has almost become a clich in these times. We hear comedic stories of such occurrences almost every week in the news. Rather than just being entertaining, however, these stories should serve as a warning for the job seeker. After all, what’s stopping a potential employer putting your name into Google and finding your Twitter or Facebook account?

The answer is nothing, and unless you have the most squeaky clean of Facebook profiles–no photos of you out on the town, nor naughty words contained in any of your status updates–you’d be better off making sure that all of your social networking is protected from prying eyes. It may seem unreasonable for an employer to expect you not to publicly display a more exuberant side, but hey: Do you want a job or not?

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What to do if you miss a class at university

One of the greatest temptations you’ll face when you are at uni is to skip the odd class. Of course, some of the time you’ll miss classes for genuine and legitimate reasons such as illness. At the other end of the scale, you’ll sometimes miss classes because of reasons that aren’t quite so pressing. While you shouldn’t make a habit of it, even the most diligent student will occasionally skip a lecture. And then there are other reasons in between, like having commitments to university sports clubs, societies or work experience.

Whatever the reason that led you to miss a class, however, the fact is that in doing so you will have missed out on information that is in some way relevant to the coursework or exams you’ll be required to do later on, which in turn will form part of your grades and, by extension, your degree classification.

For this reason, if you do miss a class–whether it is due to a real illness or a self-inflicted one, shall we say–it’s definitely worth making the effort to make sure that you catch up on what you’ve missed. Here are some of the key ways to do this.

Check your course’s VLE

In this day and age, it’s very rare for lecturers not to produce handouts and PowerPoints to go with their lectures. Often they’ll cover a good chunk of what the lecturer went through, even if they’ll lack some of the detail or extra insight you’d get from the class. In most cases your department will have a virtual learning environment page (Moodle, Blackboard, WebCT etc) where these materials will be uploaded. So if you head on over to it you should be able to download them.

The alternative to this is emailing the lecturer and requesting a copy of the materials. The downside of this is that it’s not appropriate to email the lecturer to inform them about missing a class if there wan’t actually a good reason for it.

Copy a coursemate’s notes

Lecture handouts and PowerPoints will point you towards what was covered when you miss a class, but they won’t tell the whole story. The lecturer is likely to have expanded on the points laid out in these materials, with it often being the case that the handout and PowerPoint won’t make full sense without knowing what was said in the lecture.

So if you miss a class, the best way to find out what was said is quite simply to borrow lecture notes off someone who did attend. If you don’t know anyone who does your course particularly well, don’t fret. While in the past borrowing someone’s lecture notes involved a fair bit of trust as you’d have to take the handwritten notes away from their author to either rewrite them or get them photocopied, now it’s just a question of quickly snapping them with your phone’s camera.

If you do copy notes in this way, do remember the good turn that person’s done you by being similarly helpful if someone asks to copy your notes at some point in the future.

Ask a friend to record the lecture

While sometimes it’s last minute things that cause us to miss a class, at others we know in advance that we won’t be able to attend. If this is the case you’re at an advantage, as you can make preparations to catch up on what you’ll be missing.

By far the best way of doing this is requesting a friend who’ll be going to the class makes a recording of it for you, either through you lending them your phone/tablet or them just recording it on their own device and sending you the file. This way even if you do miss a class you’ll still know exactly what happened in it.

Do remember, though, that while these tips will help if you do miss a class, there is no substitute for actually attending, especially when it comes to seminars and other classes where you get to actively participate, ask questions and put across your thoughts. So don’t go relying on them too often!

Posted in university | Tagged , |

What to do if you get a bad assignment of coursework mark or grade

It’s likely that at some point in your academic career, whether you’re in secondary school, college or university, that you’re going to get a coursework mark back that is not quite what you had expected or hoped for. This can be a really demotivating experience, especially if you really put your all into the assignment. While we can’t change a coursework mark for you, we can make a few suggestions about how to deal with this experience.

It’s likely that you’ll be feeling quite upset and possibly angry when you first get the news. The best advice here is to not do anything rash (e.g. don’t find the marker and have a go at them, or decide that this course is not for you). If you give yourself a few days to calm down and consider the feedback, you might come round to understanding why the coursework mark turned out as it did. Whether or not you really feel better, it’s a good idea to just reflect on what may have gone wrong.

Perhaps you feel that you need a bit more information about where you went wrong, and who better to answer this question than the person who marked it? You can make an appointment with them or stop in at the end of a class to ask if you can get some clarification. They may need a bit of time to review your work, so it’s a good idea not to put them on the spot or expect answers right there. One word of advice, though, is to not approach this meeting as a chance to change your mark -unless there was some sort of mix up this is unlikely to happen. This can, however, be a great opportunity to really find out where you need to improve so that you can do better on the next assignment.

Hopefully after reading your feedback a few times and chatting with the marker you’ll have a better idea of what happened. Creating a few bullet points of things to improve on for the next assignment may be helpful, as this can help keep things fresh in your mind so that you can be sure to focus on those points. Perhaps you had good ideas but the structure of your essay wasn’t very good. You could try creating an outline with an introduction, main body and conclusion and putting your main ideas in using bullet points before actually writing the essay. If you were marked down on research, perhaps you need to consult a wider range of resources in the future. If there’s a teacher or lecturer that you feel particularly comfortable asking for help, you could consider getting some advice about how to improve on whatever points were flagged.

Talking to some friends can also help you to see what you did wrong-as well as right–on your coursework. Finding out where they were marked down may help you see that while you had trouble with one aspect, you did really well at another. It’s also possible that they also received a lower coursework mark than expected. By comparing some of the feedback, you can perhaps build up an idea of what the teacher/lecturer is looking for, which can help you and your friends to improve. It can also be really helpful just to let off a bit of steam about the whole thing.

Most importantly, remember that a bad coursework mark every now and then isn’t going to tarnish you for life. In fact, there’s a lot that can be learned and improved upon through getting this kind of feedback that you otherwise wouldn’t even think about. So although it can be demotivating (it kind of sucks to be honest), with a little refection and some concerted effort on your weaknesses you’ll likely do much better in the future.

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Key things to do when preparing for a gap year

If you’re preparing for a gap year, there are some important preparatory steps which need to be followed to ensure that you have a safe and comfortable time. Even if you’re just considering whether taking a gap year is right for you, it’s good to think about some of these practical steps which will need to be followed at some point.

Health and security information

Getting up-to-date health and security advice is an essential element of preparing for a gap year. This means informing yourself about necessary vaccinations and travel risks for the country you’re planning to visit. You can find this information from the Foreign Commonwealth Office website. Choose the country you want to visit and check what’s required of you. You’ll then need to make an appointment with your doctor to get the necessary vaccinations. Don’t leave this until the last minute, as some countries will require you to have these at least a month, if not more, before you travel. And while we’re on the subject of health and security, let’s also not forget that an essential thing to do when preparing for a gap year is to get a comprehensive travel insurance policy that covers all the risks associated with travelling overseas.

Destination information

When you’re preparing for a gap year, you should also look into some good guide books about the places you’re going to visit. You don’t have to buy all of them, but having at least one will give you an idea of places to visit, places to stay and eat and information about how to navigate your way around. More and more guide books are now available in e-book format, making it easier to take a selection without needing to lug them around. If you decide not to go down this route, at least print out some maps, hostel reservation and travel information before you go. Phone and Internet service may not be reliable once you get on your way, so make sure you have this information in hardcopy.

The right equipment

While some people would debate whether the Duke of Edinburgh award really does turn you into a good leader, one thing is for certain: it makes you realise the importance of a good pair of shoes and rucksack! So invest in some good-quality travel equipment, such as a comfortable bag, a waterproof and most importantly comfortable, appropriate footwear. Remember that comfort is more important than style, as you’ll be wearing this stuff a lot. When you’re packing, think about items that can be layered, allowing you to be prepared for a whole range of weather conditions.

Visa requirements

Think about visa requirements well in advance when preparing for a gap year. To find out about requirements, go to website of the foreign country’s embassy or high commission in your country. Applying for visas can be confusing, and processing times vary, so think about this well in advance of your travels. There are also companies who will organise all of this for you, but it will cost you. Consider whether you’d rather pay extra to save yourself the headache or save that money for your travels.

While your travels will likely take some unexpected turns and it’s great to be flexible, these are a few things which really are necessary to do in preparing for a gap year.

Posted in Gap years | Tagged |
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