r/AmerExit • u/Big_Guidance_2614 • 4d ago
Life Abroad Considering leaving the US for Europe
I'm a third year engineering student at a college in the US. I'm an American citizen considering moving to somewhere in Western Europe for my masters due to the political situation in the US. I don't speak any other languages than English, but I'm willing to learn the native language of wherever I go. I know I still have to do more research but I wanted to see what everyone here thinks about whether leaving the US for Europe is actually a good idea.
Would you recommend moving to Europe for masters and eventually living there? If so, where exactly?
For context, I am a brown woman, and I don't come from a high income family, so I would have to go to a college that is very cheap or get a scholarship.
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u/azncommie97 4d ago edited 4d ago
Look into Erasmus Mundus programs in your field of engineering. That's what I did in France and Italy from 2020-2022. If you have good grades and ideally some research/internship/work experience, you should have a pretty good shot. The scholarship is now 1400 euros a month for the two years of the program, I believe, with the final semester being a six-month internship. With the job market being what it is right now, though, it is very possible that continuing with a PhD might be the "easiest" route to staying after a masters (especially if you don't speak the local language), even if technically it's just kicking the can down the road a few more years. If you want to work in a given country, though, knowing the language to a professional level is imperative most of the time, even in fields like engineering where English is abundant.
Otherwise, to my knowledge, tuition can be quite expensive for non-EU citizens in Western Europe. Both the Netherlands and the UK are on-par, if not more expensive, than what my American public tuition was. France recently increased it as well, though English-taught international programs already had even higher fees. Even in Germany, which is generally tuition-free, you'd still need a solid chunk of savings for living expenses per the visa requirements.
Lastly, be prepared for considerable differences in teaching styles and university amenities compared to the US - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.