Surrey meets the Middle East

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.