Surrey meets the Middle East

Hello, following another busy week at university I think it will be best to talk about how to get your life sorted out in surrey and make sure you settle in as quickly as possible.

Over the past four years my experience at Surrey has generally been very pleasant, aside from having to study for exams (that was a given I knew what I got myself into when I cam here). My first day at Surrey was both a very pleasant and nerve wrecking experience. As this was a completely new environment to me I did not know anyone in the UK to give that support you often find when surrounding yourself with people you know.

From my experience, the best thing to do in these situations is to do two things join as many societies as you like in university and don’t be afraid to approach new people on the first day as they are in the same boat so they will be having the same experiences as you are. Also you might as get to know your flat mates, as you will be living with them for an entire year. The easiest time to experience the social life of university would be during welcome week where you can see the different societies the University has.

After getting you social life sorted out the other main thing that needs to be taken care of is FOOD!!

Surrey is filled with lots of place to eat both on and off campus. Personal favorites for off campus dinning areas are Five guys, Franca Manca and GBK. If you want to get food on campus then I would recommend Wates House, Hill Side, Young’s kitchen or even simply fresh.

However, this will be getting costly if you eat out everyday. So you will most definitely need to learn how to cook especially if you are on a tight budget. Guildford has tow main stores from which you can buy food Tesco and Sainsberries. I personally do all my grocery shopping from Tesco, as it is cheaper. Tesco is a 15-minute walk from the university campus. However, if you are lazy like myself Tesco does deliver to your doorstep. I use Tesco delivery when ever I want to do any grocery shopping because it save time so I can focus on other things and just because I can the bothered to go to Tesco and do my grocery shopping.

Now that you have your food it time to cook. If you have no cooking experience like myself just know our cooking will get better. In the first two months of my of my first year my cooking was very pour that I had to force feed my self just to get the sufficient amount of energy to get through the day. However, you must know it will get better. Things you can do to improve your cooking is just watch as many online tutorials as possible.

Also important tip if you did not already now. The UK is very expensive when compared to Egypt. You may find you’re self-spending about £200 -£250 a month on grocery shopping (depends on how much food you eat). So my advice would be make sure you have enough money to be able to eat or get a job.

This brings me to my final point for today. Working while studying. Students in general have a wide range of opportunities to work both on and off campus. The advantages of working while studying is you get to expand your social circle i.e get to know more people and of course get to make money. As students you might feel that you will not have enough time to work due to your studies, but from my experience if you manage your time well and reduce the time you spend procrastinating it is something that can be done. However, if you really don’t have time to commit to long hours of work there are various opportunities in the university where you can work around your studies such as being a student ambassador.

I think that is for today. Hopefully now you will now coming to the UK will be a much more Placement experience overall than the one I had and you will be able to settle in much more quickly as well which will allow you to enjoy student life experience at the University. Stay tuned next week to know how to manage your time effectively during your studies.

Seif

Hello lovely people! My name is Seif Farid I am a third(final) year Aerospace engineering student at the University of Surrey. Although this is my third year at the university I have actually lived in the university for four years as I have done an international foundation year.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt but straight after I was born I moved to Dubai for three years then came back to live in Egypt and now I have lived for four years in the UK. I am very active person I like to do all kinds of sports.

My first blog post will mainly be about how I came to chose surrey.

Why I chose Surrey

The university of Surrey was not my first choice. I know you would usually expect people to say that the went to there first choice university on there blog, but that was not the case for me. when I was applying to universities I did not apply to the University of Surrey.

Like most students I had to decide on which university I should go to from the options that were presented to me. So I decided to consult my parents they advised me to go to Manchester University as the course that they offered would have gave a wider range of possibilities as the course had an integrated management course in it. So this basically means I would have been learning about engineering and the business behind the engineering world.

So I decided to listen to my parents advise and I accepted my offer to the University of Manchester. After accepting my offer I thought I was done and I will just book a flight and go to the UK ( I know I need a visa). So when I was told that I need to get a visa I thought that the process should be fairly easy and I just go apply and get my visa. Like anything in life plans never go to plan. I applied for my visa twice and got rejected both times. This lead to not being able to go to my first choice university.

So after having an extended summer vacation I realised that I had a lot of time on my hands as I was practically doing nothing for two months. I decided to do some research and see if there are any UK Universities that have January/February intake for an international foundation year. This was the moment where I found out about the University of Surrey.  The more research I did about the university the more I liked the University. I decided to go to the university fair in Egypt to learn more about the university. From that point I was very happy that I was not able to go to my “first” choice university. The thing that most attracted me to apply to surrey is that I did not just like the courses they offer, but that the fact that it is a campus University which allows you to focus on your studies and have fun at the end of the week.

The University of Surrey had  checked all the boxes for me in various ways such as: having a high ranking in the UK, has a state of the art sports park which I practically lived in my first year and the employability  rate Surrey has  contributed to my decision to apply to Surrey.

So here I am four year later, about to graduate from Surrey University.

Stay tuned to hear about my experiences at the University of Surrey next week.