Hey folks,
Today I want to
talk about what you should know about coming to the University of Tulsa (TU) as
an exchange student. Everything I will write in this first part and the
following part describes my experience. Some things might have changed, are
generally different for your country/ university or might just not apply to
your experience. However, I do hope that this will help you with your
decisions, preparations and expectations.
In this first part,
I want to address rather the things that play a role before you actually are in
Tulsa. Some of this I already covered in my previous posts, but here I would
like to present it to you in a more precise and direct fashion. So let's get
started!
As you might know,
I study at the University of Siegen. At the University of Siegen you have to
apply for the program and once you are nominated to go to Tulsa, it is pretty
much set that you are going. That is at least how I understood it. Sadly the
information flow from the officials to me about the whole process was not too
great. The next step is filling out the TU application. In this application
they want to have various things that you most likely already have on hand - an
English CV, letter of motivation etc.
The next step of
this application is more about TU itself and helps to prepare everything for
your arrival. Here you get the information about the insurance requirements,
your vaccination requirements, your course wishes, your arrival details and a
few more things. I would strongly advise you to read through ALL of it thoroughly
because these are mostly things you need to organize before leaving to the US.
Get started on your vaccinations early and talk to your physician. Be aware
that some of them might not be covered by your insurance. You should definitely
check with your insurance provider. For the insurance: Don't sweat it too much.
You do not need to present your insurance information until you arrive there
and waiving the insurance of TU is rather easy and online. I personally was
freaking out about it without a real reason to. The requirements might change
for the upcoming years, but the insurance offered by the ADAC covers pretty
much everything and has barely any limits. It is especially handy for members
of the ADAC. I paid around 130€ for the 4 month instead of 600$ (whole academic
year!) for the insurance for TU.
Another thing you
have to organize before coming is Housing and Dining. There are various options
for housing. You can find all the prices and details on the TU website. I
personally very much enjoy staying in an apartment compared to a dorm room. The
dorm rooms are pretty small, you do not have a kitchen to cook ANYWHERE and
you have barely any personal space because you usually share the small dorm
rooms with someone else. If you go for an apartment you can just sign up for
only the apartments and wait until you’re placed but I would highly recommend you
to check out the roommate finder and maybe find an apartment through that. What
happened this year, and I don't know if that is how it always is or if it was
just his year, was that most of the exchange students ended up living in two
bedroom apartments with four people. This basically means dorm rooms but with a
kitchen, a living room and two bathrooms. I went on roommate finder and found
myself a roommate and an apartment. I’m very happy with that choice. I have my
own room, my own bathroom and my own walking closet (dream of every girl or
woman!). Before you can be assigned to an apartment you will have to deposit
250$. I did not know about this when I signed up for Tulsa and did not expect
this (additional) cost.
There will also be things you will need to buy for your room. Plan that in your budget. ;)
Now Dining is its
own thing. If you live in a dorm room and don't have a kitchen you basically
need a meal plan and dining dollars. The Caf however is not too fancy. It is
decent. Most people are not too happy with it. The breakfast is great however.
;) When you live in an apartment and have your own kitchen, you will need
groceries. There is pretty much no possibility to shop for groceries here
without a car. So either save up enough to buy a car while you're here or find
friends with cars. If you cannot manage either, your last resort is the
CaneTransit. Those are shuttles that go off campus to stores like Target and
Reasors where you can do your shopping.
Even with an
apartment it is smart to have some dining dollars on your TU ID which works like a credit card. On campus you can use those dining dollars to pay for food.
At the Allan Chapman Student Union you can find various fast food accommodations
like Pizza Hut, Baja Jacks (Mexican), Sushi, Chick-fil-a or Subway. When you use
your TU ID to pay instead of cash or your debit/ credit card you save the sales
tax. Sales tax is about 8% in Oklahoma and is generally NOT included in the
prizes you see. My guess is that you will eat quite a few times on campus
during your stay and not always alone in your apartment. Do not worry though. You
do not have to choose an amount of dining dollars before you come. You can
still arrange that once you're there or during the semester. I only just
recently added some dollars on my card.
Okay, I think this
is already quite a bit of information! If you have any more question regarding
these things, please feel free to email me or simply comment. Maybe your
question is also interesting for someone else. ;)
Thank you for
reading this post.
Jenny Sch.
P.S. Remeber to get all your prescriptions in order before you leave. You cannot buy contact lenses without a prescription in the US, for example.
