How To Plan For Moving To University: The Essentials

Planning for change helps in taking away the overwhelming fear the same brings with itself. Moving to University is one of the biggest changes that we through in our young adult life, and thus planning for the same is essential. Here are a few things that you should look into if you’re lost and don’t know where to start :smile:

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1.- Confirming your firm choice: This is an obvious step, yet one that can slip through the cracks and sneak up on you in the form of a missed deadline. This step is quite easy to do and is the most rewarding as completing it is the first step to actually starting your higher education! The same can be done via UCAS with just a few clicks. In my personal experience, it is best to confirm your choice as soon as you’ve made it, well before the deadline, not only to avoid unnecessary stress but also to give yourself adequate time to prepare comfortably for university.

2.- Finance: Being an international student, figuring out how much my education was going to cost and more importantly, how I will be making the payments was a sphere that I wish I’d paid more attention to. I was unaware of the exact way I was supposed to pay, which lead to me rushing around and getting together the documents needed for an international transfer from my country, at the last moment. This can be easily avoided by going through your university’s website, planning out how you’re going to pay, and setting everything up well in advance. I would also highly recommend contacting your university’s finance team, if you’re unsure about anything, as absolute clarity is essential when it comes to finances.

3.- Accommodation & Travel: The next step is figuring out how you’re going to travel to university, especially if you’re an international student, and where you’re going to stay. Starting off with travel, if you’re an international student, it is essential to figure out the documents you’ll need from the university for your study visa. Doing this as early as possible will give the university enough time to provide you the same, in time. It is also essential to do this early as for me, the required documents had to be altered several times at the university’s end to meet the embassy’s requirements, thus having some margin for error is ideal. After getting your visa, book your flight tickets well in advance to get a deal that suits you. Be sure to check the baggage allowance for the same; you’re going to need it. As for accommodation, for international students, I would highly recommend going with your university’s accommodation as it is very hard to gauge things like connectivity, safety etc. of any other private option over the web. Being in the university’s accommodation will also mean that you’ll be surrounded by your peers, which will help out greatly in making new friends and fighting feelings of homesickness and loneliness.

4.- Welcome Events: I would highly recommend checking out your university’s welcome events such as freshers and first year centric events such as first year only nights in your local clubs. In my personal experience, I bought the union of Kingston students fresher’s week wristband, which turned out to be a great decision and something I would recommend whole heartedly. Not only were the events extremely fun which helped fight the homesickness, but also, most of my closest friendships till date started as a direct result of me going to these events. A less obvious benefit, is that everyone that you meet at such events is in the same boat as you, which means that you’ll find solutions to most of the problems you could be facing, just by interacting with your peers.

5.- Miscellaneous Research: Before moving to university, I took the time to look up everything from clubs to museums to grocery stores, close to my accommodation. This not only made it extremely easy for me to settle in, but also helped take away a lot of that fear of uncertainty, that you might face before making the jump.

If you’ve completed these steps, then I assure you, you’ve got the essentials checked.

If there’s anything else you’d like to know about planning for the move to university, I’d love to be of help!

Cheers :smile:

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-Addy (Kingston Rep)