International Student Advice Thread (University)

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Welkom/Welcome!

So, you've decided you (may) want to study in the Netherlands, perhaps as part of your degree on an exchange programme, or maybe you're planning to do a full degree here.

In this forum (and this thread in particular) you'll be able to ask us everything you want to know about studying at a university in the Netherlands and living here as an international student. We (FOK! crew) cannot guarantee you the answers to those questions will be correct or perhaps sometimes people will simply not know and will tell you so, but, it's a start! So always double check with your school of choice once you've made a decision to double check with them, for example about the costs involved, documents you need to send in and the visa you might need.

For most questions you'll be able to contact the international office of the school of your choice, but perhaps, this is one of the first times you went looking for some information, so if you need a little help on where to start your journey, this is the place for you.

Where to go?

There are a lot of things to consider, of course, when deciding on which school you want to go to. You can get a lot of information from their websites (see below) and of course rankings can be a guiding force in your search of where to go. Next to this, of course, there's also the city or town to consider, because it would be nice if, next to completing your studies, you also feel at home where you live. There is a massive difference between university life in Groningen as opposed to Amsterdam, for example. So if you have the chance to visit before you decide, go and do a tour of the universities that are on the top of your list. The great thing about the Netherlands being not the largest country out there is that you can get around a few universities over the course of a week(end)! If not, visit the website of the city/town as well as the university, and see what's on offer in terms of nightlife, cultural sites and perhaps you're more of a nature dweller. Get your read on!

Levels of higher education in the Netherlands

There are a lot of 'hbo' schools out there in the Netherlands that call themselves 'University of Applied Sciences' or sometimes just 'University', with a lot of larger towns and cities offering at least one option, but academic universities aren't that widespread. Where in other countries there is less of a difference between universities and universities of applied sciences and the courses they offer, there is a significant difference here, as the 'hbo' aims to prepare people for employment, whereas universities are aimed at academic / research development. This does not make the one 'better' than the other, they mostly have a different focus and course set-up. For Dutch people the difference is that you can only go to an academic university after doing an extra year at a higher level of secondary education, after obtaining a pass on the first year of you 'hbo degree' (and perhaps some additional certificates) or what is called a Colloquium Doctum, a test that people over 21 can take to grant them access to a specific academic course.

_{For more information on the Dutch School System, have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Netherlands.}

In practice, for non-Dutchies, this means that you have to be careful of where you start looking for the degree and/or subject of your choice, because you might not find it in the place you'd expect it, or you might get confused because of multiple options. For example, in the UK, nursing is a university degree. In the Netherlands you'll find it at a 'hbo school'/university of applied sciences. On the other hand, some courses are offered on both levels, with the academic university course being considered the most difficult of the two, and will have stricter/higher entry levels. One example here might be Computer Science and the hbo version 'hbo Computer Science'.

I will, in the near future, also open a thread on 'hbo schools', but in order to keep it a bit contained and clear, I'll focus on just the main universities here.

The main universities in the Netherlands are (linking to the English pages):

• Radboud University Nijmegen
• Wageningen University
• University of Groningen
• Maastricht University
• University of Technology Eindhoven
• Tilburg University
• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• VU Amsterdam
• University of Twente (Enschede)
• Universiteit Utrecht
• Delft University of Technology
• Universiteit Leiden
• Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

There are also some specialist Universities such as:

• Theological University Apeldoorn
• Catholic Theological University
• Nyenrode Business University

I'll leave it at this for now, any questions, just ask.

[ Bericht 0% gewijzigd door motorbloempje op 04-01-2016 18:49:56 ]

As I stated somewhere earlier, the 'hogescholen' are more employment-oriented than universities. Meaning that, for example with computer science, the focus should be more on working with existing knowledge within working environments, more 'specific', where the university variety will approach computer science from a more general and (hopefully) more progressive and developmental angle, scientific, creating and developing new things. This is of course very short-sighted description and there will be hogescholen or perhaps individual courses within those institutions that mimic the academic variety as well as university courses/modules that are more practice-oriented, but in general academic universities are (supposed to be) more about development and research of new knowledge than more specific applications of existing knowledge, if that makes sense.

It will depend on your background in your home country, and the type of courses you have done there, where you will fit in. The faculty staff of your desired degree will have an idea of whether your background and experiences will fit within the one or the other, but, again, that is depending on the institution, faculty and specific course you want to apply for. I could not 'recommend' anything on the basis, of, well, nothing It all depends on what your end game is, as well as what your 'level' is, so to speak, what are you capable of in terms of education, as in general universities require more academic, and a different kind of, thinking than hogescholen. Academic vs. practical knowledge, again. So say you would be interested in doing 'something with computers', it would be worth it talking to someone at a university and a hogeschool, just to see what the courses are like and where they could take you.

I do believe that academic universities are attracting more international students than hogescholen, and therefore they often have a very good international office and support network for their international students.

The first two you mention, julien, are academic universities, the other three are hbos. If you can handle it, go for one of the universities, I'd recommend.