Hi all,
its been a while since I had the last post, but i've been extremely busy and didn't have internet at home. Therefore, I'll try to give you a retrospective of the previous happenings.
After succesfully settling accomodation I had to break the dreaded Visa wall. For all those unfortunate to be born in a country that UK does not have free entry, you are about to face a great challenge.
Namely, unlike other countries the UK has outsourced a company to gather the Visa applications. I liked this approach, and in the beginning it was OK. I filed applications on the Internet and scheduled an appointment in Dusseldorf. At the Worldbridge site in Dusseldorf all the proceedings went excellent - they were very kind and professional, and all the procedure was done in a matter of minutes with minimum waiting. Unlike the queues outside embassies I got used to...
However, the idila stops right here. It was August 3rd and I was told that its a peak visa season because of the students. I filed the visa requests for the 15th of September, regarding 6 weeks as more than sufficient time for processing. Besides, there is a rule that you can not apply for visa more than 3 months before your entry.
So, I waited patiently for 3 weeks and since there was no reply I tried to find out how far is the procedure. I checked the Worldbridge web site and there is a nice functionality there called "Check VISA Status". It stubbornly replied with "Application submitted at Visa center". At the site there is a query form with which you can (supposedly) contact Worldbridge. It doesn't expose the email address however. Also, I notice that there is a bug at their system with which I can only report technical problems and not directly query the Visa status. So I write them a kind email exposing their bug, explaining my situation and requesting information. I press send - I get a message "Email sent succesfully" and that's it. A week passes-no response. I write another email. Another couple of days passes - still no response.
Then I realize that they have a pay line that you can use to inquire about the visas. As a matter of fact, I already used it once before applying - they didn't tell me anything there wasn't already at the web site and got 14$ for it. Ah well, lets try that again.
I call them, enter my credit card number and the system says - transaction denied. Now, I'm sure I have money on my account and try that again. This time it went through. So I tell them about my situation and they say it is notified and they will let me know. Another week pass - nothing. I start looking for direct contact at the UK consulate but realise that they have shut down any visa related access to the people that actualy process and grant the visa (the consulate visa department) and force contact through Worldbridge. And I'm not going anywhere with that.
I call Worldbridge again, pay 14$ again, and they say, oh, you called last week eh? Now we will escalate the issue. And still nothing.
At this point I start to raise the alarm. My studies begin 29th of September and it would be extremely stupid to miss classes because of visa problems. I write my sponsors, I write my school and ask for all the help I can get. At the end my school succeeds to get to the consulate through the UK foreign office and 1 week before my last deadline I get contacted from a person of the consulate saying that I have to provide them a new bank statement and a certificate that the school is registered under the UK registry of education and training providers. Apparently they could not find Said Business School there. Well they were so shortsided to miss the next line saying "University of Oxford" which is the most distinguished UK education institution!
After all these trouble, I finaly get the visa 3 days before leaving, with lots of nerves lost somewhere in Germany. When I think of it now, it somehow makes me think of Franz Kafka...
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
A housing oddisey
Hi all, yesterday I finally secured acommodation! Whew! It was extremely difficult to find, and here is a very brief descriptions of my perils in the seek of a warm home in a cold and wet country.
Oxford is a city of 150 000 people of which more than half are students. As an exclusive place for study, the prices for housing are very high, and finding a solution to fit your budget is a very difficult task. There are 3 solutions for housing: college, university and private.
College housing is most convenient, as it is the cheapest available (from 350 pcm to 500pcm for a single person), provides catering and an excellent opportunity for meeting people of all ages and specialties. However, they are the first to go off the market so if you plan for the best acommodation option you have to apply very early. This especially applies to accomodation for couples and families, as they go out immidiately.
The university itself has a large number of dwellings they rent to students. The pricing is still convenient (from 450 pcm for a single room with shared facilities) but is a bit more expensive than college. There is a significant number of appartments for couples and families as well. This is exactly what I got! I was lucky to get an appartment for a couple for 580pcm, which was the cheapest available. Lucky me :)))
Private accomodation is the most expensive by far. Prices start at 400pcm for a single room in a shared 3-4 bedroom flat quite away from the center, and if you're lucky to find one. For a couple, the most inexpensive appartments cost 800pcm. With the university estimated living expenses of 950pcm there is absolutely no way for you and your wife/partner to live on your scholarship.
Seeking accomodation from abroad is an especially difficult task. There are some good sites with daily offers such as oxford.gumtree.co.uk, dailyinfo.co.uk and flatshare.co.uk where you can register your profile and seek for accomodation, rent or flatshare. The first problem here is trust to the remote party. Even if you find a suitable place, since you can't check it yourself you get a cat in the bag. Particularly for flatsharing, you won't know what kind of freek you'll end up with. And there are a lot of frauds lurking for people seeking from abroad. Their characteristics are that the offer is a real bargain (like 400pcm for a room in a great flat in the city center, or 500 pcm for a whole flat), they may even talk to you on the phone, and thay will request an advanced payment (security+rent) which they will request through Western Union money transfer service. That is the point when your alarm must be ringing! You must request for them to authorize themselves properly, but don't beleive on their scanned id's! The scans are easily forged in Photoshop. What you may do is request to pay with bank transfer (they must have an open bank account which can be open with provision of personal identification only) or to use an Internet service like Netcred. Only then proceed with the payment. The problem is not so much you might lose 1-2000 pounds sterling but you may arrive there with no place to stay.
Another very good solution is to contact and team up with a colleague who is already in England, so he may do the search. This is not bad, as it is highly unlikely that you would get doublecrossed by a classmate. However, there is an additional risk there - if they are offered a better housing option in the meantime they will most probably go for it and leave you alone, which is understandable when housing is so precious.
My oddisey started 3 months ago when I applied both for college and university housing (you may and should apply for both, if you get both offers you'll just decline one) and started seeking private as well. Every day I spent hours checking for offers, negotiating and so on. Frauds tried to fool me 3-4 times, but every time we got to the authorization part they just took off.I established loose alliances with other students 5 times and they all broke when they were offered from the college or university. This is something that you must account for and tell your fellow that if anyone gets better offer the deal is off, and you should not have bad feelings about it - its just business :)
Now, as I got my place, I am SO RELIEVED... I can spend the incoming month in relaxed preparation for the Oxford experience. To all incoming students still without housing - work hard on the matter and you'll succeed!
Oxford is a city of 150 000 people of which more than half are students. As an exclusive place for study, the prices for housing are very high, and finding a solution to fit your budget is a very difficult task. There are 3 solutions for housing: college, university and private.
College housing is most convenient, as it is the cheapest available (from 350 pcm to 500pcm for a single person), provides catering and an excellent opportunity for meeting people of all ages and specialties. However, they are the first to go off the market so if you plan for the best acommodation option you have to apply very early. This especially applies to accomodation for couples and families, as they go out immidiately.
The university itself has a large number of dwellings they rent to students. The pricing is still convenient (from 450 pcm for a single room with shared facilities) but is a bit more expensive than college. There is a significant number of appartments for couples and families as well. This is exactly what I got! I was lucky to get an appartment for a couple for 580pcm, which was the cheapest available. Lucky me :)))
Private accomodation is the most expensive by far. Prices start at 400pcm for a single room in a shared 3-4 bedroom flat quite away from the center, and if you're lucky to find one. For a couple, the most inexpensive appartments cost 800pcm. With the university estimated living expenses of 950pcm there is absolutely no way for you and your wife/partner to live on your scholarship.
Seeking accomodation from abroad is an especially difficult task. There are some good sites with daily offers such as oxford.gumtree.co.uk, dailyinfo.co.uk and flatshare.co.uk where you can register your profile and seek for accomodation, rent or flatshare. The first problem here is trust to the remote party. Even if you find a suitable place, since you can't check it yourself you get a cat in the bag. Particularly for flatsharing, you won't know what kind of freek you'll end up with. And there are a lot of frauds lurking for people seeking from abroad. Their characteristics are that the offer is a real bargain (like 400pcm for a room in a great flat in the city center, or 500 pcm for a whole flat), they may even talk to you on the phone, and thay will request an advanced payment (security+rent) which they will request through Western Union money transfer service. That is the point when your alarm must be ringing! You must request for them to authorize themselves properly, but don't beleive on their scanned id's! The scans are easily forged in Photoshop. What you may do is request to pay with bank transfer (they must have an open bank account which can be open with provision of personal identification only) or to use an Internet service like Netcred. Only then proceed with the payment. The problem is not so much you might lose 1-2000 pounds sterling but you may arrive there with no place to stay.
Another very good solution is to contact and team up with a colleague who is already in England, so he may do the search. This is not bad, as it is highly unlikely that you would get doublecrossed by a classmate. However, there is an additional risk there - if they are offered a better housing option in the meantime they will most probably go for it and leave you alone, which is understandable when housing is so precious.
My oddisey started 3 months ago when I applied both for college and university housing (you may and should apply for both, if you get both offers you'll just decline one) and started seeking private as well. Every day I spent hours checking for offers, negotiating and so on. Frauds tried to fool me 3-4 times, but every time we got to the authorization part they just took off.I established loose alliances with other students 5 times and they all broke when they were offered from the college or university. This is something that you must account for and tell your fellow that if anyone gets better offer the deal is off, and you should not have bad feelings about it - its just business :)
Now, as I got my place, I am SO RELIEVED... I can spend the incoming month in relaxed preparation for the Oxford experience. To all incoming students still without housing - work hard on the matter and you'll succeed!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Step by step to the MBA
START
If anyone of you considers postgraduate studies abroad, the best way to start is - EARLY! And by early I mean a year in front. People that get accepted in the first round have all kinds of privileges, such as getting the best accomodation at minimum price.
THE TESTS
First of all you would have to do when you have decided to go for MBA is to get good results on your English (TOEFL) and General Management (GMAT) tests. Schedule them early! You have to schedule at least a couple of months before the desired term, if not more. TOEFL is more common, but GMAT you can do at only a handfull of locations and in peak time you might have a problem getting a vacancy.
My best reccomendation on the tests is - GET VERY SERIOUS ABOUT THEM! There is a throng of preparation materials available, you can find reccomendation on the internet, but I would like to emphesize one very important tool that got me very high results - TestMagic forum (www.testmagic.com) . People there single out some very tough questions and then discuss them. Mind you - not every answer there is correct, but the important part is that people give and confront their oppinions of the matter, so you can get your own reasoning that will help you on the test.
Getting a high score on both tests will make things much easier to get a scholarship. Since you get the results, register your profile at MBA sites such as mba.com and mbatour.com. With the high test results, especially GMAT, you will get offers from all kinds of universities, sometimes even with grants and scholarship options. I would say that over 600 GMAT is good, over 650 is great. To see if you are ready, use the prep software and the provided tests that are pretty close to real. I got 680 first time, 700 the second and ended up with 690 on the real deal.
SCHOLARSHIPS
I was unaware about the plethora of opportunities for student grants and scholarship for postgraduate studies untill I got into this matter deeper. The first step is to watch out for public ads in your local newspapers. As a matter of fact, thats how I got mine. I saw an ad in a local newspaper about USAID World Learning program that had a project for help to our country through leveraging the human resources (Big thanks to the American people!), so I applied, did my homework with all the essays, recommendations etc. and got selected. Yey!
Here I would like to break some myths about it. Scholarships are staged and issued to a narrow circle of people. NOT TRUE! Believe me, the institutions issuing the scholarships only want a good candidate that will accomplish the goal of the scholarship. So, I want to tell all my readers THAT EVERYONE OF YOU HAVE A FAIR CHANCE OF GETTING A SCHOLARSHIP IF YOU WORK HARD AND PREPARE WELL! The next place to look for a scholarship is your government site and the ministry of education. There are always actual opportunities there.
Third place to go for is the schools themselves. There are programs sponsored by various donors that grant scholarships to a small number of students each year, so take a good look at the school site. Furthermore, check out sites of foreign institutions, such as USAID or the British Council - you might get your treat there.
The fifth I mentioned previosly - with a good GMAT you'll get offers in your email. And finaly, you can always talk to your company and try to get some financing.
CHOOSING THE POTENTIAL SCHOOLS
Since I took on this endeavor to learn about management and establish myself as an enterpreneur, initially I had the only target to get into a business school. Luck and opportunity is always a factor, and mine was that I got the scholarship in the very beginning. I The scholarship was very flexible and I had the choice of selecting the business school.
In selecting the school you have to make your priorities. One thing I had in mind is that 2 year MBA is too much, as I am a family man, and I wanted an English speaking country. Hello England :)
I took the following into consideration:
This scheme keeps all my options open. You can start to apply early on the schools on the top of the list, and if you are not admitted in the round you may include the next levels. Applications do cost some money, but only for the very top ones. Cambridge is also with no application fee.
APPLICATIONS
Every school has different applications with different questions. I submitted 4 applications and got offers from all of them, so this may be a good advice:
GETTING ACCEPTED
Collect all the offers and make a decision. As soon as you make the decision, notify the other schools of your decline so some other person can get their place. Keep in mind of all the pros and contras of your decision. In my case, Oxford is THE top quality education and image, thriving with people and networking opportunities, but it is very expensive to live there and housing is a nightmare more about that later).
Thats all for now folks - next time about making your arrangements from abroad. Seeya!
If anyone of you considers postgraduate studies abroad, the best way to start is - EARLY! And by early I mean a year in front. People that get accepted in the first round have all kinds of privileges, such as getting the best accomodation at minimum price.
THE TESTS
First of all you would have to do when you have decided to go for MBA is to get good results on your English (TOEFL) and General Management (GMAT) tests. Schedule them early! You have to schedule at least a couple of months before the desired term, if not more. TOEFL is more common, but GMAT you can do at only a handfull of locations and in peak time you might have a problem getting a vacancy.
My best reccomendation on the tests is - GET VERY SERIOUS ABOUT THEM! There is a throng of preparation materials available, you can find reccomendation on the internet, but I would like to emphesize one very important tool that got me very high results - TestMagic forum (www.testmagic.com) . People there single out some very tough questions and then discuss them. Mind you - not every answer there is correct, but the important part is that people give and confront their oppinions of the matter, so you can get your own reasoning that will help you on the test.
Getting a high score on both tests will make things much easier to get a scholarship. Since you get the results, register your profile at MBA sites such as mba.com and mbatour.com. With the high test results, especially GMAT, you will get offers from all kinds of universities, sometimes even with grants and scholarship options. I would say that over 600 GMAT is good, over 650 is great. To see if you are ready, use the prep software and the provided tests that are pretty close to real. I got 680 first time, 700 the second and ended up with 690 on the real deal.
SCHOLARSHIPS
I was unaware about the plethora of opportunities for student grants and scholarship for postgraduate studies untill I got into this matter deeper. The first step is to watch out for public ads in your local newspapers. As a matter of fact, thats how I got mine. I saw an ad in a local newspaper about USAID World Learning program that had a project for help to our country through leveraging the human resources (Big thanks to the American people!), so I applied, did my homework with all the essays, recommendations etc. and got selected. Yey!
Here I would like to break some myths about it. Scholarships are staged and issued to a narrow circle of people. NOT TRUE! Believe me, the institutions issuing the scholarships only want a good candidate that will accomplish the goal of the scholarship. So, I want to tell all my readers THAT EVERYONE OF YOU HAVE A FAIR CHANCE OF GETTING A SCHOLARSHIP IF YOU WORK HARD AND PREPARE WELL! The next place to look for a scholarship is your government site and the ministry of education. There are always actual opportunities there.
Third place to go for is the schools themselves. There are programs sponsored by various donors that grant scholarships to a small number of students each year, so take a good look at the school site. Furthermore, check out sites of foreign institutions, such as USAID or the British Council - you might get your treat there.
The fifth I mentioned previosly - with a good GMAT you'll get offers in your email. And finaly, you can always talk to your company and try to get some financing.
CHOOSING THE POTENTIAL SCHOOLS
Since I took on this endeavor to learn about management and establish myself as an enterpreneur, initially I had the only target to get into a business school. Luck and opportunity is always a factor, and mine was that I got the scholarship in the very beginning. I The scholarship was very flexible and I had the choice of selecting the business school.
In selecting the school you have to make your priorities. One thing I had in mind is that 2 year MBA is too much, as I am a family man, and I wanted an English speaking country. Hello England :)
I took the following into consideration:
- 2 top schools (Oxford and Cambridge) a very synonym of good education
- 2 great schools with good program (Cranfield and Manchester) for their excellent MBA curriculum
- 1 lower level school, still quality (Exeter)
- 1 late school (Asghridge) course starting in January
- 1 local school (Thesalloniki) case I have any kinds of problems with UK
This scheme keeps all my options open. You can start to apply early on the schools on the top of the list, and if you are not admitted in the round you may include the next levels. Applications do cost some money, but only for the very top ones. Cambridge is also with no application fee.
APPLICATIONS
Every school has different applications with different questions. I submitted 4 applications and got offers from all of them, so this may be a good advice:
- Be totally honest, do not forge information, do not lie and do not engage other people to do your writing
- Get reccomendations from people who are known professionals or academics and they know you very well. They WILL be consulted by the school.
- Think about what are your own qualities, knowledge and experience, and how could you contribute to the classes. Be sure to put that in your essays
- Think about the motives and benefits of the education, not only to you but for your company, local community and even country. Be sure to put that as well.
- Be yourself and let the essays show yourself as a character
GETTING ACCEPTED
Collect all the offers and make a decision. As soon as you make the decision, notify the other schools of your decline so some other person can get their place. Keep in mind of all the pros and contras of your decision. In my case, Oxford is THE top quality education and image, thriving with people and networking opportunities, but it is very expensive to live there and housing is a nightmare more about that later).
Thats all for now folks - next time about making your arrangements from abroad. Seeya!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Off we go!
Hi all,
This is my blog through which I will log my experience attending the MBA course at Said Business School in Oxford. Before anybody questions my English, I know that "A Macedonian at Oxford" is the right expression, but I am so fond of Sting's "An Englishman in New York" :)
See You soon!
This is my blog through which I will log my experience attending the MBA course at Said Business School in Oxford. Before anybody questions my English, I know that "A Macedonian at Oxford" is the right expression, but I am so fond of Sting's "An Englishman in New York" :)
See You soon!
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