We've been asked many times why we decided to go to Scotland and how the application process went, so I thought it would be appropriate to share the story of how we made our decision. I know that everyone may not agree with our decision, but it is a personal one we came to through a lot of fasting, prayer, and research. You may even think we are crazy for moving a family of 5 to a different continent, but so do we (sometimes)! So here's the story:
Dallin has always wanted to go to grad school. It has always been an expectation in his family and it has long been a goal of his as well. He had a lot of different ideas of what to study and we considered many different programs.
Once he settled on wanting an MSc in Human Resources, we started looking at programs. We looked into Thunderbird in Arizona, and Rutgers in New Jersey, along with several other schools.
Dallin told me one day (either shortly before of after Deaun was born, I can't exactly remember), that he thought he'd apply to Trinity College in Ireland, just for kicks because they had a program as well. I was fine with that, but honestly didn't give it that much thought because the idea of going to grad school in Europe seemed so far fetched to me!
Well, I guess it didn't seem that far fetched to Dallin because he looked at a few other schools in Europe, and even requested a packet of information from the University of Edinburgh. Well, it came in the mail a few weeks later and I thumbed through it one evening while I was nursing Deaun. It was full of beautiful pictures of Edinburgh and had lots to say about the beautiful scenery and cultural experiences the city had to offer. I read about the program and how much students enjoyed it, and started to fall in love with the idea of actually moving to Scotland for grad school. And then, I saw the price tag on what a year if school would cost...
It was literally a fraction of the price of schools in America! A fraction! But I was skeptical and thought, "Well, we times that price by two years of school, and it's still pretty spendy." But then we found out that all of these programs we were looking at in Europe were ONE YEAR programs!
What?!
So we could go to school for a quarter of the cost, finish in half the time, and live in Europe for a year?! That was when Dallin and I started to get serious about the idea...
To be continued...
Wow, maybe I'll have Caleb look at his grad school out of the country too.
ReplyDeleteAre there any concerns about the degree being an applicable one accepted in the US?