5 Life Altering Mistakes made by Indian Students Abroad

Doesn’t matter how truism it may sound. Studying abroad is an experience of a lifetime, but you need to choose to make the most of it. Over the years in my career as an Overseas Education Consultant I have seen students make the same mistakes again and again:

1. Moving Abroad to Study is for a reason, it’s not a vacation!: For some reason, students feel that studying abroad is more of a vacation than pursuing education. Once a year I witness students fail their classes. I find this remarkable since most classes are designed to reinforce your experience with important and meaningful background information and Case studies. Additionally, to relating on to your experiences abroad, most Universities design their courses to suit your study and work schedule. I always suggest students, if you wanted a vacation, you must have taken one. You may have saved all that money you spent on tuition! Students who make the foremost of their study abroad experience value the education they receive while abroad. After all, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.
2. Spending most of the time with people from their home country: I get it, being in a foreign country and not able to speak the language fluently might be challenging. You may naturally be inclined to spend more time with fellow Indians who share your culture and language and to stay in your comfort zone. While there’s nothing wrong with bonding with other Indians abroad, you ought to also try and meet and mingle with locals and students from other nationalities as well to create a network and understand their culture as well.
3. Prioritizing Entertainment: Many students who study abroad prioritize socializing amongst the other important things. They arrive abroad to find it’s completely legal to do certain things. Of course, many are already tuned in to this, and sadly, it’s their main motivation for studying abroad. This can be not a legitimate reason to studying abroad. Let me repeat, if your primary reason for spending thousands of dollars to Study abroad is to fantasize about yourself, I suggest you reevaluate your priorities and plan your own personal vacation. While socializing might not be a noteworthy factor for you, once abroad many students get swept up in local club culture. An excessive amount of alcohol and too many late nights will quickly derail your experience. Like anything, drinking and partying are best moderately.
4. You budget insufficient and pack an excessive amount: I always advise students to lay out everything they would like to pack. Then subtract half and double your hard currency. While this sounds extreme, I give this recommendation from lots of first-hand experience. Once a year students pack way an excessive amount of and are miserable lugging it around a far-off country, which more often than not is full of uneven sidewalks and many stairs. Many students also underestimate their hard cash and it is usually better to over-budget instead of under-budget.
5. You expect everything to function as it does in India: I don’t know why most of the students expect everything to work like back in India. But my point is that if India was exactly just like the place you are going to study you have no reason to travel to other countries in the first place. you may have disorientation (for sure) and you do not need to love everything about your destination country. But rather try to understand the things and attempt to accept things for the way they’re.

Are you looking to study abroad? If so, what you wish to know more before starting your journey of studying abroad we are here to assist you.