Transferring to my study-abroad university

Flashback to August 2020: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I hopped on the plane from St. Louis, Missouri, to move to Charleston, South Carolina for college. 

To my dismay, I quickly found out that Charleston during the pandemic wasn’t all South Carolina sunshine and roses. No friends in our rooms, no in-person classes, and social distancing everywhere – from meals to the library.

If you were caught at a party, you risked being expelled. And because we were aged 18 or 19, we couldn’t go to bars or clubs. I could maybe name 30 people on campus, and I definitely didn’t know them personally. 

Simply put, I was not living my best life. I needed a change…

Choosing to study abroad

I made the decision to study abroad in the hope it would bring that change. I am a procrastinator and chose the University of Nottingham without much thought. I had wanted to study in France but my French was quite rusty. So I decided on England.

I knew I didn’t want to study in London, and Nottingham was one of the few universities outside London with which the College of Charleston had a study abroad programme. I saw a picture of Nottingham’s Trent Building, and I was sold. Halfway through my sophomore year, I made the solo leap across the pond.

Arriving to study abroad at the University of Nottingham

I arrived at Heathrow with my entourage of yellow suitcases and blindly followed the crowd until I finally found the underground station so I could get to King’s Cross and then to Nottingham. I arrived on a gloomy, otherwise ordinary evening at my dorm: Hugh Stewart Hall.

There was something about Hugh Stewart. I don’t know how to attribute the magic: maybe it was the old English manor house, or that the dining hall was a scene straight from Harry Potter, or that there were no resident advisers ruining our fun.

With roughly 350 people in Hugh Stewart, it felt like a high school. You knew almost everyone’s first name, who they were friends with, who they were seeing, and what they had done over the weekend.

We all ate dinner together in the dining hall, and about a quarter of us made it down to breakfast each morning. There, I met some of my best friends: Lizzy, Maddie, Hannah and Arohi.

It had a bar called Latitude and an ivy-covered laundry centre you could only reach by entering the basement from outside. My friends and I went out several times a week, were constantly together and just had the best time. It is such a nostalgic time in my life.

I finally felt like I was at university in Nottingham. 

The process of transferring from study abroad to full-time student

So I began the process of transferring. I officially applied through Ucas, which is the central application system for universities in the UK. I was finally accepted that summer.

My major at Charleston was hospitality and tourism management and my minor was historic preservation and urban planning. They didn’t have either of those at Nottingham.

So I thought, “Oh, I should try to join the business school.” Well, the business school did not accept transfer students. But my adviser told me they could put me in the liberal arts programme. So that was now my bachelor’s degree.

Now, whenever people ask me where I went to college, they are usually quite surprised to find out that it’s possible to transfer abroad during your degree.

I returned to Nottingham in September 2022 after summer break and moved into a flat with three girls I met online: Lizzy, Hazel and Beth, who remain my friends to this day. After another memorable year full of cocktails, hours spent chatting in the library and travels around Europe, I graduated in July 2023.

Lessons learned

It sounds clichéd, but you do have to make your own path. I am the only person I know who transferred to where they did a study abroad programme. It was risky to move countries, change majors and graduate a year early, shaving a year off my “figure things out time.” But it also changed my life trajectory, and I am so happy with my decision.

Studying or living abroad gives you confidence in your own abilities and in your identity. That first semester, I often thought, “Oh, I am never going to see these people again so it doesn’t really matter what they think of me.” Then I transferred and I did see all those people again. But this mindset and confidence have stuck with me.