Hi!
Majorly awesome thread you got here, it's really helpful when you're stuck with stupid questions.
I'm an international student (Denmark) hoping to enter SOAS in 2013. I have a bunch of worries however!
1) Danish schools do not provide students with "predicted grades". As far as I've understood - not being very well-wandered into the British schoolsystem - those are required to apply for British universities. What the .... am I supposed to do?
2) I am not sure I will be able to achieve the average mark required to enter SOAS (students from Denmark are supposed to have an average mark of 10, mine probably ending up around 9.something). Can I still give SOAS a shot, or should I decide to become a stripper instead?
3) Is there any place I can contact to help me applying through UCAS? It confuses the life out of me, asking me for a bunch of weird stuff that I have no idea what is.
(my entire family and almost everyone around me are about just as able to help me as a sock would be)
4) I'm hoping to take a joint degree in Japanese and Korean, probably focusing on Japanese. I already hold the JLPT lvl 2 taken after a year of exchange in 2009. Will they recognize it, and how will that place me?
- will I be able to enter directly into year 2, and how would that affect me socially? I'd be pretty bummed if everyone were already bffs and I'd be forever alone.
- I'm sure my spoken Japanese would suffice to the lvl 2 still, but I'm not a 100% sure about the written part, while almost positive that I'd be bored to death with oral lessons of year 1....? Any advise or anyone I can contact to ask about this?
5) Is it possible to enter SOAS as an international student without having taken a TOEFL or any English test of the likes? I'm more or less fluent in the language and have only ever received A+ in English lessons my entire school life. The test is EXPENSIVE. Any way around it?
6) I'm not a hippie, have no idea about politics and do not practice religion. I am however quite an outsider around here, being mostly interested in Asian cultures, languages and so on. I feel extremely at home in Asian countries (China, Japan), will I be forever alone at SOAS?
Hope you can help me out! (>.<)
Thanks.