Michael Selkirk – Theatre & Film – Level 3
Eastern Connecticut State University, USA
I am now at the end of my Study Abroad semester. I began documenting my experience from the day I decided to apply and documented the process of leaving for the host institution. While my focus has been on academics during the semester, I am now on the wind down and have time to reflect in the aftermath of finals.
This short essay will briefly detail the key elements of the pre-arrival process, reflect on my personal experience at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) and will be populated with quick, straight-to-the-point tips and insight that I hope you find valuable as you embark on your own journey.
If you are reading these reflections, you are probably thinking of applying to a Study Abroad program. If this is so, I want to begin with finances; my first piece of advice is to start saving before you apply. Even if you do not go ahead with the application or are not chosen, start to save regardless. Do not wait to hear back about a decision and utilise those waiting months to prepare for the best outcome.
Below are details regarding the costs you can expect and information regarding the J-1 Visa Application process. These are accurate as of July 2022:
The costs for applying for the J-1 visa can total £330 (£175 DS-160 / I-901 fee + £125 Embassy Application Fee (MRV) + £10 photograph costs + £20 delivery fee for you passport to be returned to your address with your affixed student visa). The fees are inescapable as they provide you the paperwork needed for the embassy to process your J-1 visa and for entry into the US at your port of arrival. This cost doesn’t include any costs incurred from travel that may be required to and from courier locations or embassies should you require or be called in for an in-person interview, which must take place at the US Embassy in London. Thankfully, I was not required to attend an interview.
Other costs can include sufficient insurance (approx. £250), academic book rentals/purchases (approx. £125) and housing application deposits (that enables you to apply for campus housing, £200). Different institutions will have varying prices and fees in this regard.
Together, so J-1 visa fees and related US embassy fees, insurance, required academic reading material and housing application deposit (if you are living on-campus), you are looking at around £900 – and that is before you select housing or purchase flights.
Housing is on average, for a single room (your own bedroom) on campus, £4500 and flights are a further £600. Adding these costs together with the expenses listed above, one can expect to spend anywhere in the region £6000 to go on a semester abroad [please note, these costs are based off a Scottish Citizen studying for the Fall ’22 semester at Eastern Connecticut State University in the USA, living in the High Rise or Low Rise Apartments on campus at ECSU, flying British Airways via Edinburgh > Newark airport using IMG Patriot Exchange Program provided medical insurance].
On top of this, there will be moving-in costs (groceries, electrics, bedding, clothing, stationary, homey touches] as well as general costs of living (eating, drinking, socialising, exploring, adventuring).
It is my recommendation that any student who wishes to study abroad for a semester should begin saving money the moment they decide to embark on such an experience.
After you have been accepted, you will have to complete a rather taxing application process for your J-1 Study Visa for the USA. You will be bombarded with terms like DS-2019 and SEVIS Receipts. It is imperative that you grasp the process and break it down into easily digestible parts for it is easy to become overwhelmed at the bureaucracy.
To obtain a J-1 visa, it is necessary to print off and send various documents to the US Embassy in London via a special, pre-selected courier. These documents can include:
1. Your passport
2. The DS-2019 form which is sent to you by your US Host University which you must sign [BLUE INK, BOTTOM OF PAGE 1]
3. Your DS-160 Confirmation page – this is the process that costs $220
4. The I-901 Receipt Confirmation
5. The Courier information page (this is page 2 of the courier document; page 1 is presented to the courier at the courier depot with the visa documents when you go to send them)
6. A 5cm x 5cm US Visa photo (option available from most photo booths).
7. Adhere to your given instructions as closely as possible.
To send the documents, you must send them through an approved courier called DX. The nearest depot to Edinburgh in is Livingston (in OakBank industrial Estate, accessible via X27/X28 bus from Lothian Buses, West End of Princes Street; NOTE: it may cost slightly more to return to Edinburgh on this bus). During the DS-160 application, you can pay £20 for your documents to be returned to your address, otherwise you must travel to another location, usually Manchester, to pick up your passport and other US Visa documents once they have been processed at the embassy. I recommend to bite the bullet.
To mitigate the costs laid out above, I put in the work and did the research to discover ways to safely save money on costs such as accommodation, flights and books.
When it came to accommodation for a semester abroad, I investigated all options available to me on-campus. It is an eye watering amount that continues to rise every semester. Privacy that one may be accustomed to is at stake with room sharing with up to three beds in one bedroom. Privacy, as with everything else, is expensive, with single bedrooms and ‘efficiency’ apartments adding several hundred pounds on to the base cost. Additional costs ($3000+) may be required due to a mandatory meal-plan put in place on certain housing on campus. You are most likely to be placed in Low Rise or High Rise as a Study Abroad student (and from my research, they are the most private and self-sufficient blocks on campus).
After deciding that the costs of on-campus living simply were too expensive with too many sacrifices, and after not hearing back from the host’s housing office nor having access to IT services before I arrived at orientation, I looked at services providing housing in the local area. Many of these sites which offer off-campus student housing have minimum 12 month leases, which is an obvious problem for a student who cannot stay longer than 6 months. Insurances of different kinds is often required to be a renter. There could be issues with landlords or roommates that may have no framework to be solved from.
I looked at Airbnb, and in this case, it proved to be the best option. I found a suitable accommodation offering cooking facilities, privacy and the type of living I am used to. When booking a long-term stay through this service, please be aware of Airbnb’s refund policies
which override the policies laid out by the hosts for regular duration stays. Additionally, before booking, please contact the host to see if they accept long-term bookings and to introduce yourself. This is also a good opportunity to ask for more information about the stay, the host, facilities provided and the local area. The house I selected was £1600 cheaper than on-campus accommodation. It is a short walk to campus, with many grocery stores, cafes, bakeries and other stores nearby. Supermarkets were also nearby, but not very walkable (indeed, most of the USA isn’t pedestrian friendly). One must be cautious using Airbnb as there are well-known problems that may arise, sometimes last minute. With the obvious benefits of on-campus living being offset by the increasing cost, one is welcome to explore other opportunities in the local area.
To save on flights, I called a relative who works in the industry. Nepotism, I know. But I provided dates and destinations, and they managed to find the same flights I had already been looking at no difference in cost. However, it is still worth asking round any friends or family who work in the relative industry. Additionally, I travel extremely light and so saved money on using a checked piece of luggage (around £100). You can fit all you need in a carry-on and a backpack if you plan on purchasing bulky items when you land, for example, thick winter coats, large gloves etc. Really exploit your airline’s carry-on policy – sometimes it allows you take a carry-on case, a backpack and a laptop bag. Save extra space by taking a book in your hands whilst boarding!
Regarding books, I was provided a list of around 20 books marked as essential reading for the relative course. There is an option to rent or buy these books from the campus bookstore (and there is a public library on Willimantic Main Street; please bring your passport, proof of address in the USA and your student card), and this was costing around £125. Some books I already owned. Some books I owned but were too bulky to carry. I looked for ways to save on this aspect.
I wanted to read the required materials over the summer, and so I bought a Kindle/eReader and purchased the required books on Amazon’s Kindle store. I managed to save 80% by purchasing the kindle versions compared to the bookstore versions. I am able to keep these books as well as being able to read them before the semester, which was a massive plus. For the books I was unable to purchase on Kindle, I managed to find as PDFs through Google Scholar searches and through QMU’s online LRC. Ultimately, there were 4 books that I decided to rent from the campus, costing around £15.
I recommend that when you are in contact with your host university before you arrive that you sort out your host university email address. I couldn’t get this sorted before orientation and missed out on applying for housing (for the housing portal is accessed through your ECSU Microsoft account). In hindsight, I should have flagged this up again as it would have allowed me to check syllabuses before my first day of orientation and apply for on-campus housing. I did have some issues with communication with the housing department and with sorting out access to IT services. Ensure this doesn’t happen to you by being assertive, knowing what you should have gotten and being ready and prepared.
As well, ensure you are able to travel from your chosen airport to Willimantic. Coaches (Peter Pan, Greyhound) enter Hartford, and from there you can grab an Uber to Willimantic. ECSU may be able to pick you up from Hartford or from the nearby airport, Bradley International.
I hope this rundown of the costs and pre-arrival process has been of some use to use and has helped to demystify the process of applying for the J-1 US exchange visa, as well as highlighting some of the more immediate costs of applying for such a visa and embarking on a study abroad program. I hope it provided more information on the overall costs of the program, along with some tips and advice on how to save a lot of money without any loss of experience.
I can now move on to the more reflective part of the essay. This was a fantastically intense learning experience. I have been pushed academically through difficult papers and mountains of reading and I have been pushed socially with perhaps the most intense group of people I’ve ever met. You must come with an open mind and you must become assertive, both in class and with your peers. I found that relying on British politeness gets you eaten alive; embrace your main character syndrome for you will need it.
You will find that white people have incredibly long and bizarre ways of saying they are white. I suggest to simply nod and say ‘oh, cool’ as the 7th American of the day explains to you that he is Albanian, Irish and Scottish through generations, trying desperately to grasp to anything that remotely spices the term ‘Caucasian’. Latin American culture is prevalent in Willimantic. I suggest you embrace it fully and perhaps learn some conversational Spanish to communicate better with shopkeepers and your peers, many of whom will speak Spanish as their first language. There are plenty of Spanish eateries and convenience stores; explore them!
You will learn and practice independent living, so if you have never lived alone, I suggest you research ways to maintain your boundaries and wellbeing. If you live on-campus, you will be able to edit your housing application so that you are allocated appropriate housing with similar housemates.
My favourite times during this experience were often at dawn and dusk. The romanticism of the USA still exists, and you usually find it at these hours when the place is quiet. There is a beautiful and historic footbridge in Willimantic that I used every single day. The surrounding drives provide fantastic sights of lakes and genuine log cabins. It makes it all the sadder that the majority of Main Street is either derelict or parking lot. The campus is a beautiful, small campus with separate buildings and a cool clocktower. I recommend getting to know it intimately and making extensive use of the facilities provided, like the gym, student centre, the library and cafes (my favourite place on campus is the library café on the ground floor and spent most of my time before and between classes there). I also utilised my time before moving to accommodation to visit a friend in New Jersey and spent a few days in New York City. You will be allocated 30 days before your classes start (usually the last Monday in August) to enter the USA and you must leave on or by the allocated date on your Visa. My first day of class was August 29th, so I was able to arrive to the USA nearer the beginning of the month on the 10th of August. My visa lasted until 23rd of December, the official last day of class, but I left on the 10th December for there was no need for me to remain in Willimantic as classes were over and final paper submission dates had passed or I had finished the work slightly early.
At ECSU, there is a special member of staff who is concerned primarily about your wellbeing. You will come to know her as Dr. P or Mama P. Indeed, she will be your Study Abroad mother and is your most important contact when at ECSU. She is an extremely professional and friendly person and you she will deliver a lot of crucial information to you. She also, with the help of awesome graduate interns, puts on events to neighbouring cities like Hartford and Providence; I fully recommend you go on all of these outings for they are great opportunities to make friends with other international students and to experience the culture. I ate so much food on these outings that I will never be hungry again. Please make use of the Intercultural Centre during your time at ECSU; it is a safe space where you can relax and find assistance if required. Get involved in extra-curricular activities and clubs if they so interest you. There is a wide range of amateur sports and a variety of clubs, from radio to board games.
The experience in the classroom is slightly different from that at QMU. Professors are more of a personality that you must impress and develop a personal relationship with. Indeed, this can actually impact your grades. Participation in class and engagement with the content and involvement in in-class activities and discussions are also highly encouraged and you are in fact graded on such. Your attendance also forms part of your final grade. It is key that you read and understand all aspects of the syllabus that your professor uploads to Blackboard. You will find that American students channel their discussions through their own experiences and often ask and answer their own questions rather than the question posed to them by the professor. It does take some getting used to but have confidence and assertiveness and you will thrive.
My professors were:
1. Dr. Speicher for ENG 328 Children’s literature
2. Dr. Youngblood for ENG 330 Science Fiction
3. Dr. Akram-Soussi for LAS 319 Hispanic Film Through Culture
4. Dr. McNeil for ENG 399 Lord Of The Rings (who also teaches Scottish Literature).
All my professors were fantastic. All were incredibly knowledgeable and approachable and they offer unparalleled academic advice. They are also just nice and lovely to talk to and enjoy talking about content with students. Make those friendships; they are cool people. The classes were extremely useful and interesting and I am looking forward to bringing these resources back to QMU. The options for creative papers were useful in creating portfolios of creative work.
Most of all, I would like to extend a thanks to Santander for the scholarship. The awarded amount seriously made all the difference and I encourage you to apply for this when you submit your own Study Abroad application to QMU. This fund helped tremendously with housing and flights. You will receive most of it before you go and will receive the rest upon your return and submission of relevant necessary exit documents. I also want to thank the Study Abroad departments at QMU and ECSU for their help throughout my application process and the program.
If you are on the fence or are already nervous or feeling uncomfortable, then I urge you to apply and follow it through. The breadth and depth of what you will learn feels essential going forward. The experience and lessons learned will be of great use and benefit to you as you progress through the program and for when you return. It is worth going through the sometimes uncomfortable feelings and experiences because the growth and reward will help you develop academically and socially. This was an incredible experience that will stay with me for a long time.
