Study abroad - London Baby!

Introduction
I wanted a medium sized school and when I came here, it just felt like what college is supposed to be like -it’s gorgeous. Oxford is a really small town. I think it would be nothing without the university.

I came and stayed with a friend of a friend who went here and I met all of her friends and I really liked them, everyone was so nice to me, but I hadn’t heard about all the preppy stuff of Miami. I think that as a whole, it’s upper-middle class and so there’s a lot that you don’t experience. They talk about diversity at this school and while there is diversity, it’s still generally I think within the same class. There are a lot of preppy kids but I also think that people are really accepting - it’s not necessarily pretentious. I love the school, I love the people. I think the people are what make this school. Most of my friends are either from my dorm freshman year or from my sorority.

Campus Life and Social Life
I’ve done Habitat for Humanity for the first two years and then I went abroad. I went to London. I didn’t go with Miami’s program, I went with Boston University’s, but Miami has a huge library and many resources to help you find where you want to go. Miami have a program in Luxembourg - you live with families over there and you get a lot of opportunities to travel and stuff. It's a great experience. I knew that I wanted to go to London, and since Miami doesn’t have a center there, they were helpful in helping me to find a program that would be suitable for me and that had my major that would transfer credits.

Overall I think studying abroad was the best decision that I made. It was probably the hardest decision that I’ve made since I’ve been at school because it’s so hard to leave your friends and you think, “nobody’s going to remember me when I come back” and “where’s my place going to be in all the clubs and stuff that you’re leaving. But it was an unforgettable experience that opened my mind so much. I travelled loads when I was abroad and met so many people. I just feel like I became so much more cultured. I actually did an internship program abroad where I took classes for 5 weeks in London and then an internship for 8 weeks, where i was working in a hospital in London with a bunch of psych patients. They don’t have as many restrictions in the UK as we do in the US, so I was able to get hands-on experience that I wouldn’t be allowed to do without at least a Masters in the United States. And it helped me to decide that I would rather go into psychology than go to medical school. Advertisement
Academics
I think the professors are a mix. It depends who you get. Some of the professors are certainly more centered on their own experiences; working on their own books or their own theses, or their own research projects. But I’ve had a lot of really great professors who have been extremely helpful to me. I have a lot of big classes, I take a lot of science classes that are just the big lecture classes and I make it a point to go and meet all of my professors, talk to them, try to make it to some of their office hours. They’ve all been so accommodating. If you need to take some extra time to do a test or to write a paper they’re so helpful. Or if you’re just not getting a concept or you need them to go over things, they really go out of their way and they’ll stay late, make the hours, whatever it is. Email back and forth and if you want a practice test or something like that, they’ll take the time to make something like that for you. I also do research with 2 professors in the psychology department. They’ve been so helpful to me, helping me decide what I might want to do, looking into graduate school programs. Helping me write grants so that I can get money to support my own research.
Freshman year I think I had more TA’s than I had later. I have had some TA’s who are extremely helpful and they’re closer to your age and they know more exactly what you’re going through because they’ve just been there. So, I’ve really liked some of the TA’s that I have and I think they’ve made the experience better.

Student Body
I felt that the first two weeks was like camp, but after those 2 weeks passed, I think you got to know all the other people and then that made it feel like home because you had all these other people going through the same things as you. I didn’t have a problem adjusting to the school itself being in a small town because I think, I’m very focused on academics too, so it’s not like I was missing the sky scrapers and all that. It feels like it’s a place centered around Academia. There are a lot of people who find people that they want to date and then there’s also people who just decide they would rather just be promiscuous…I think you find what you’re looking for!!!

Greek is a huge part of Miami and it always has been. I think it’s a strength of the school so I hope that it stays that way. It adds a lot to the social life. It adds a lot to the philanthropy, it adds a lot to I think people feeling like they belong. I have a lot of a lot of friends that are in different sororities - it’s like me joining a sorority opened up doors for me to meet all my other friends in their different sororities. Greek adds a lot to the party scene. I would like to say that it doesn’t really matter if you’re Greek or not. But I have friends and housemates that aren’t Greek and it was a huge struggle for them when everybody else was going through recruitment. I think it becomes something that everybody’s so centered on that people do feel left out if they’re not part of it. Generally it’s just people who choose not to be part of it, it’s very rarely that you try to get into it and you can’t.

In Closing...
If you're not in Greek it is definitely still possible to find what is right for you. One of my friends started to do club basketball and it took her awhile, but then she got into it and she loves it and that’s where her friends are and she puts so much time into it and gets to travel a lot with it.

Miami is a truly great school - hard work but lots of fun. if i had my time over i'd do it exactly the same way...