Living my Harry Potter Dream (How I chose to study in the UK)

One Saturday morning in third grade, I woke up early and made a choice that would change my life forever.

I decided to start reading Harry Potter.

I tiptoed downstairs to the living room bookshelf where the paperback waited for me.

Soon I was immersed in a new world of magic, wizards, and fantastic creatures. I met amazing characters who I would go on to grow up with until I finished the series in fourth grade and the movies ended in middle school.

When I turned 11, I waited for a letter from Hogwarts that never came.

But even though I wasn’t accepted into Hogwarts or Ilvermorny, I never let the magic die. I remain an avid fan to this day, even though the original movies and books are long over. I still dream about what it might have been like to go to school at Hogwarts and grow up as a witch. And while I knew I wouldn’t get to go to the British wizarding school, I never expected that I would end up attending to school in the home of Harry Potter.

While following my Hogwarts dream may have been a small influence when choosing to study abroad in the UK, it wasn’t the real reason I chose to go there. In fact, the UK wasn’t even my first choice country.

When I originally started looking around for a study abroad program, I had actually wanted to go to Ireland!

At the start of my search, I knew one thing for sure: I had to study in an English speaking country. As much as I would have loved to go back to Germany, or experience Sweden, or any country that spoke a different language, I knew I had to stick with English. This wasn’t because I wasn’t up for the challenge; I would love to become bilingual. It was because I knew I would be going to school there and my perspective colleges would be seeing my grades.

One thing I have always prided myself for is my grades. Keeping my grades up is my top priority as I have high hopes of getting into a good school and hopefully earn a merit scholarship. But I knew that, in order to keep my grades where I want them, I’d have to understand what the class was actually teaching.

As I have no foreign language skills under my belt except middle school French and three years of Latin (which isn’t going to help unless I’m talking to the Pope),

I had to limit my country options.

I lowered my list down to three countries: Ireland, the UK, and Australia. Each offered a foreign experience, but was still in my comfortable limits.

I ended up having to rule out Australia, as their school terms did not match with my own in America (dang backwards southern hemisphere!) That left two.

Ireland became my first choice. There seemed to be more programs that offered and Irish experience, and it was a culture I knew less about compared to the UK. So I dug in deeper, comparing a bunch of different Irish programs, trying to find the best one for me (with the lowest price tag!)

I went through and emailed a variety of different companies. Some responded with high fees. Others required me to be an EU citizen. And a few of them never responded at all.

Finally, I found a program that seemed great. They offered exactly what I was looking for and it was also the cheapest.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so cheap. At over $7000 (not even including airfare) it would be difficult to come up with that money in the few months I had. So I kept searching.

While I searched for more Irish programs, I looked at English ones too, comparing the prices. They were in the same range, if not more, so it looked like I was set on Ireland.

But then I found a UK based company that seemed great. They offered more services and extras than any other, which would save me money in the long run. The only issue: they didn’t list their price on the website, which, to me, was a red flag. With all those extras, they must try to lure people in, then hit them with a high price tag. So I shelved this program for a while, deciding to see what else was out there.

After searching through dozens of other companies and programs, I decided to send that UK program an email, just to see.

To my surprise, I received an email back the next day with figures that were cheaper than every other program I looked at.

Now of course, this raised another red flag. How could a company have all these extras and still be the lowest price? I immediately thought there must be something fishy with this company. Maybe it was a scam, or maybe it wasn’t reputable. It seemed too good to be true.

But with a few more emails back and forth, and an inbox filled with lengthy answers and explanations, I started to realize that I had jumped to conclusions. The emails were very detailed, offering plenty of informations, and we personally sent from the one of the workers. They were sophisticated and trustworthy.

This was the program for me.

Not just because of the low price tag, but because of everything they offered, and because of the informative personal contact.

It wasn’t the first country I had my heart set on, but I wasn’t at all disappointed! Now I’m here writing this exactly a week from when I will leave for England and I couldn’t be more satisfied with my decision.

, today, September first at 11am, I won’t be on a train to a mystical castle in Scotland, but very soon I will board a plane to attend school in England, which is more than any American muggle can dream of.Unfortunately

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