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Overseas Grad Studies for US Students?

Posted by Cliff on from the higher-education-on-foreign-shores dept.

foidulus asks: "I am currently a senior undergrad at Penn State looking into studying overseas. I spent 6 months working in Japan at an R&D lab and have published 1 paper with another pending publication(though I was researching security, however I would like to study bio-informatics). I am confident in my Japanese language skills, however it seems very tough to get any scholarships or funding there, but in the US a lot of schools seem to have tuition waivers and stipends(some even have health insurance!). Have any US Slashdot readers done any Masters/PhD work abroad? Do people from outside the US have any information on grad school in their country? What were your experiences? How did you get funding? Were your language skills adequate?" What differences can one expect when dealing with Graduate School in a foreign University compared to those in the United States?

2 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Don't? by sakusha · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My professors (native nihonjin) all said I should not do grad school in Japan. They said you just end up slaving away for the senior professors, who get all the credit for your work. They universally described it as inferior to US grad schools. Of course these same professors had no problems exploiting grad students for their own benefit while teaching at a US school.

  2. in Korea by oathean · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I'm in my first term as a CS PhD student at KAIST in Korea.

    I'm getting a Korean government scholarship, which is about 2 or 3 times the amount what my labmates get from their various sources of funding (private companies, government, others). The cost of living here is lower than the U.S. or Japan and while health insurance is not included in the scholarship, it is also relatively cheap in Korea.

    My Korean language skills aren't good yet, so I'm taking classes that are taught in English. Textbooks are all in English and of course all research papers are written in English. So while you can get by with just English, I feel like I miss out a lot by not being able to fully understand Colloquiums or discussion in the lab. But one of the reasons why I came to Korea was to improve my Korean, wanting to be more involved in the lab is good motivation.

    Culturally, there are many labs whose Professors are rather dictatorial. Indeed, students are expected to pay more respect to Professors than in the US and even do errands and such (like clean the Professor's office), but there are many Professors who like to teach/advise in a more collaborative manner. My Professor is one of them and his teaching style is one of the reasons I came to KAIST.

    So far my experience has been a positive one.