The International Student Blog

International Students at Texas A&M University are rallying around to save their “International Week” which they hold each year to celebrate their cultures, traditions and show their identity to all students on campus. This year’s International Week was canceled due to logistical problems with the International Student Association, however despite these problems a group of international students have banded together to put on “International Day”

“International Week is a very important event in which we are able to
show our identity and show it off in a good way,” said Ana Monson,
president of the Guatemalan Student Association. “It is a chance to
teach our fellow Aggies and other international students about our
culture.”

Instead of “International Week”, students will now be celebrating “I-Day” on April 12th where there will be cultural displays, shows and events to celebrate the diversity of international students studying at the university.

“It’s important to the international community that we take the time to
display their hard work and effort over the years,” said Zach Gibson, International Student Association Vice President of Advocacy. “For a lot of the organizations, it is the main event and what they work for all year long. The event is especially for the newer groups that are still growing and recruiting. It’s important to do something together and for the student body. This is a way to grow and to give back to the student body but also to receive and gain new members.”

To learn more about this, and to read the full article, please visit the Battalion online.

Are you an international student at Texas A&M University, then let us know in the comments below how you will be celebrating the new I-Day.

Now that the dust has finally settled on another holiday period, we would like to formally introduce our two new student bloggers into the International Student family. Regular visitors to our site will have already met and know about our new bloggers as they were both winners in our 2009 travel video contest, one actually winning the contest and the other coming in third.

Sandy Florez – Study Abroad Blogger

Sandy was our winner in the 2009 travel video contest with her fantastic video “Hello 2 Ciao” which charted her desire to travel to Italy to study abroad. As part of her prize, Sandy will be blogging about her experiences abroad as she prepares for Italy and both studies and travels over there. She has already started blogging and her posts are excellent so take some time to head over to her blog and check it out!

http://www.internationalstudent.com/study-abroad/blog/

Lindo Lindo – Study in the USA Blogger

Lindo Lindo came third in our 2009 contest, and inspired us all with his funny spoof video “The Study Abroad Show”. Originally from the Philippines, Lindo is taking part in the Global UGrad program and studying at North Central College in Illinois. He brings with him an excellent sense of humour and his posts reflect this so check his blog out! “Lindo Lindo a name so nice you’ll say it twice!”

http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/blog/

Both blogs have an RSS feed which you can sign up to and you can also follow the International Student Twitter Account as new posts will be tweeted out as they happen:

Sandy’s Blog RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/InternationalStudent-StudyAbroadBlog

Lindo Lindo’s RSS Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/study_usa_blog

A feature that not many of your will be aware of on InternationalStudent.com is our video profiles for various schools around the world. The video profiles are of schools from the USA, UK and Europe and offer you the opportunity to learn more about campuses and what a university is really like through online videos.

A few of the schools that we currently have online video profiles for include:

• University of Richmond, USA
• Columbia College, USA
• Georgian Court University, USA
• Nottingham Trent University, UK
• UCL, UK
• University of Greenwich, UK
• InHolland University, Holland

You can also see all the college/ campus video profiles online at:

http://www.internationalstudent.com/school-search/video-profiles/

Continuing on from our series of posts that are addressing concerns and issues from our Facebook international students, this post is concentrating on how to save money buying college textbooks.

College textbooks are an everyday item that you will need for any course that you take, and depending on your course the costs can certainly mount up. Luckily, thanks to our friends over at Edvisors, they have created this fantastic new eBook which provides an overview for students on how to search and find cheap college textbooks.

The eBook is free and will certainly provide you with some excellent tips and hints on where to find the very best deals and the cheapest prices.

>> Download the Cheap College Textbook eBook here!

If you have other ideas and suggestions on how to get free or cheap textbooks for college please post your comments and suggestions below.

The eBook is available in Abode PDF format, and you will need to download and install the appropriate PDF reader in order to view this document. You can obtain this from the Adobe website for free.

As we have announced recently, we have a brand new student blogger who is joining the InternationalStudent.com blogging team. Laura is now our resident study in the USA student blogger and will be blogging throughout the year on all aspects of being an international student in the USA. She has already started her blogs as she starts her new college in the USA and you can follow her at:

http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/blog/

We are also excited to announce our new study in the UK student blogger who has just started on our sister UK site. Juan is an international student who has just started to study art at the Glasgow School of Art and will be blogging throughout the year on all types of topics that affect an international student in the UK. You can follow Juan online at:

http://uk.internationalstudent.com/blog/

How can these blogs help me?
We have student bloggers on our site as we feel it provides you with a fantastic insight into life when you are abroad, and what better way to share information and advice than from current international students who are experiencing it all first hand.

To keep track of all the blogs, you can either subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up to receive the latest blog posts to your email address. If you need more information about student RSS feeds, please see our previous post.

You can also post comments on the blogs, so if you have any input about what our bloggers are writing about or you would like to ask them questions – please post comments!

After sending our email to the members of the InternationalStudent.com Facebook group asking for feedback on what you wanted to hear and read more about – we have our first posting covering one of the topics – Fraternities and Sororities.

We are covering this topic via a guest post from Elena V, who responded to our email with a great viewpoint on Fraternities and Sororities from an international students standpoint. Her post follows:

Being an international student I frequently interact with the members of these groups and it seems to be both a fun and exciting experience, however, I’d not recommend an international student to join one in their first year of studies.

First of all, sororities ( I will speak about them because I am a female so it’s easier for me) have their own culture and it’s very American. I live in the South and here people are not generally very receptive of foreign cultures or are not aware of international developments all over the world. It could be hard to become one of the “sisters” right off the bat, because activities and events conducted by an average sorority imply prior knowledge of American culture and expectations.

We, international students, have a tiny bit more to accomplish during our years of study than an average American student- 1) learn foreign language 2) adapt to the local culture and lifestyle 3) make new friends 4) excell acdemically and socially 5) personal goals

A social sorority might help initially as a friend-making mechanism, but later it will take time for things that don’t matter as much in the long run. (Functions, volunteering, tailgaiting, bake sales). Yes, volunteering is important, but the thing is you have to pay a membership fee to do that.

However, major-related fraternities and sororities can be a wonderful addition to the resume and can bring important contacts into the horizon. Instead of being a part of a big group with many interests, I’d join a smaller one with a focus on something that matters to me. My friend Anna from Spain joined a Tennis Club and an Advertising Club, both of which involved people with similar passions.

Joining groups is a must for an international student, I myself am a part of the Student Ambassador Program and it helped me to meet some wonderful students and their parents. Moreover, now I know there is a network of American students that can help me with advice, rides, or other college-related issues.

Before you make a decision to join a fraternity or a sorority, think about these things: 1) is it worth your time and money? 2) will it bring good dividend? 3) will it take your time from other activities, such as classes?

Thank you to Elena V for providing us with a great insight into her thoughts and views about Fraternities and Sororities for international students. Elena has also asked if other international students could post their comments with their views – so please let us know what you think.

If you would like to find out more information about Fraternities and Sororities, please check out the Wikipedia Sorority and Fraternity Page

We have great pleasure in announcing the relaunch of the Study in the USA student blog. Following on from our hugely popular and successful Study in the UK Student Blog and the Study Abroad Student Blog – we have have a brand new student blogger who is joining the InternationalStudent.com community.

Laura Herrejón is an international student from Mexico who has been studying in the USA for the last year as an international student, and is just returning to the USA to start her second year as an international student. Laura will be blogging about international student life and covering loads of topics that many of you will be going through – so please take a look, sign up for email updates and post your comments back to Laura.

The blog is available online at:
http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/blog/

Some great news that has just been released from the Annual Open Doors report is that International Student enrollments saw a 3% increase this past year to a new total of 582,984. This increase is the first significant increase in the number of international students since the 2001/ 2002 year – and shows that the USA is moving forward and rebounding after a few troublesome years.

Even better news is the report of a 10% increase in the number of new students that are enrolled compared with last year.

As for where the students are coming from, Asia is still the largest sender of students to the USA with a share of 59% of total enrollment (up 5%), and with an increase of 25% in the last year, the Middle East is one of the fastest growing sectors for sending to the USA.

For US Students Studying Abroad, this has seen an increase also up 8% to 223,534.

For more information about Studying in the USA, or Studying Abroad please see our website and be sure to check out the full details on the Open Doors Website.

If you subscribed to the International Student Newsletter, you will know that we are doing a lot of work on the site to add new and interesting resources. We recently added the new Study Abroad pages that include an enhanced study abroad search and new study abroad blog, and now we are launching the Study in the USA Blog.

The new blog is going to chart the life and times of a “real-life” international students, Giselle, as she studies in the USA. Her first post is great and talks about how she choose her school – and we are looking forward to her other posts as she talks about what its like to study in the USA. Gisele was one of our winners from our competitions from International Education Week.

Check out the new blog at:
http://www.internationalstudent.com/study_usa/blog/