The Student Room Group

Mixing with students from different backgrounds at uni

In most of my classes/seminars students group together with people from the same country, background etc. There are groups of international students, then Brits who stay in cliquey groups, then groups of Chinese students. We don't mix up and hardly ever talk to each other. The lecturers then put us in mixed groups for group projects but it doesn't seem to work out. Is it the same where you are?
Yh. People don’t even move sometimes
Original post by V123?
In most of my classes/seminars students group together with people from the same country, background etc. There are groups of international students, then Brits who stay in cliquey groups, then groups of Chinese students. We don't mix up and hardly ever talk to each other. The lecturers then put us in mixed groups for group projects but it doesn't seem to work out. Is it the same where you are?

It's very common, but also understandable - gravitating towards people from a familiar culture and who speak the same language is comforting in a foreign country. In my experience, this was most prevalent among students whose English proficiency wasn't high, so they probably found it a bit intimidating to talk to native English speakers (for fear of being misunderstood, embarrassing themselves etc.). In a similar way, I saw that home students found it awkward to approach a group that wasn't conversing in English, or presumed that the international students weren't making an effort to be friendly. Essentially, you're then stuck in a Catch 22 situation where no one makes any moves to bring the groups together.

That being said, almost of all my friends at university were international students from all over the world, so it's not a steadfast 'rule' for students to automatically segregate themselves.
In the few group projects I have had so far I haven't had that problem ,because we didn't get to choose our groups.

I have hung out with a range of people. North,South,Midlands and international students. I did find that my accommodation was cliquey but not neccessarily based on background

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