Choosing to travel for higher education can be stressful to say the least. In this column, we try to get you some real student feedback and experience hoping this would help you make up your mind about your choice of university, major, but also career path.
Zainab Ali completed a Bachelor of Science in International Business and Management at the University of Bradford. She describes her overall experience as “quite satisfying”. She adds that “the university provided plenty of support for international students and has a great faculty staff. Even the campus is quite spectacular with a huge 24/7 library where you could find almost any book of any genre. I had an incredible learning experience and practice. As satisfactory the whole experience was, I still wish the University would have offered placement opportunities to their students”.
When it comes to the international experience on campus, Zainab said “the university is quite diverse, plenty of international students from different regions of the world. So, it’s quite inclusive and made everyone feel welcomed and at home. This enabled me to make plenty of friends and network with various groups of people. Furthermore, leaving the comfort of your own home and starting new is a must have experience for growth and increasing your potential not just in career but in life”.
Zainab stressed on the importance of experiencing an international campus and meeting people from around the world: “It’s definitely essential for a student to gain international experience to broaden their perspective and learn”.
After graduation, Zainab decided to immediately jump on another adventure by enrolling in a master’s degree in Management and Technology at LUISS Business School in Italy. In fact, she felt like she needed to “learn more about the field. Additionally, after COVID there is a huge skill gap, so the more you learn, the better opportunities open up for you”. Moreover, she understood the need to acquire a more digital approach to Business: “I wanted to learn about digitalization. Due to COVID the world is moving into Digitalization, my BSC in international business was more traditional than digital. Hence, I decided to pursue a degree in business transformation which could help me understand the digital transformation era of business. My current program is a digital version of what I pursued in my bachelors. Skills such as leadership, people management, negotiation etc. are quite generic and most often used in my current master’s degree”.
On the choice of course, Zainab pointed out the importance of having an interest and “passion” for the chosen degree in order to successfully complete it. “It’s not about following the trend”, she says “but what you truly enjoy doing the most. Your degree should feel more like a brain training exercise rather than mentally exhausting activity that you have to complete just because you paid for it”.
Check out what other students had to share about their experience in our alumni close-up section.