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"You Alright?" Is Not a Question
What Nobody Told Me Before I Moved to Manchester
Before I left Singapore for Manchester, people kept warning me about the rain. I grew up in Singapore, where it rains heavily and often, so those warnings never really landed. I figured the weather would be fine. I was mostly right about that part.
What I was not prepared for was everything else.
The Accent Problem Nobody Talks About
The first thing that genuinely threw me off was understanding people. I have lived an international life, I am used to different varieties of English, and I still struggled with some Manchester accents in my first few weeks. There were entire conversations where I smiled and nodded and had genuinely no idea what had just been said.
That gets better with time. You adjust, your ear tunes in, and eventually it becomes second nature. But I want to be honest with future students: it is a real adjustment, not a minor one, especially in the first month. Just be patient with yourself and do not be embarrassed to ask people to repeat themselves.
The Greeting That Is Not Actually a Greeting
The second thing that caught me out was being greeted with "you alright?" and quickly realising that is not an invitation for an honest answer. In Singapore, if someone asks if you are alright, they want to know if you are alright. In Manchester, "you alright?" means "hello." The expected response is "yeah, you?" and then you both keep walking.
I spent the first couple of months giving full answers to a question nobody was asking. It felt ridiculous in hindsight, but it also illustrates something real: even between English-speaking countries, social norms can be very different. The language is the same. The unwritten rules are not.
On the Weather, From Someone Who Has Never Experienced Winter
Singapore sits near the equator. There are two seasons: hot, and slightly less hot. The sun rises and sets at roughly the same time every day, all year round.
Nothing prepares you for November in Manchester, when it is dark by four in the afternoon. I had genuinely never experienced anything like it before. The seasonal shift in mood that comes with it is real, and I say that as someone who did not think they were the type to be affected by daylight. You will want to get outside during the daylight hours when you have them, and you will want people around you who are going through the same adjustment. Both of those things help.
The cold itself was manageable. Coming from Singapore I had no winter wardrobe at all, so buying that was its own experience, but you figure it out.
Why Manchester Is Actually a Great City to Be a Student In
Once I settled in, Manchester gave back. I live near Rusholme, which most people know as the Curry Mile, and it is genuinely one of my favourite things about where I ended up. The food, the atmosphere, the range of restaurants all packed onto one road. It is always an experience.
Whitworth Park and Platt Fields are close by and I run there regularly. The University of Manchester campus has that rare quality of feeling like its own neighbourhood inside a real city. You have the campus community and you have access to everything a major city offers, without having to choose between them.
The Friend Group I Did Not Expect
My friend group here is what I am most proud of from my time so far. We joke that we look like a university brochure because between us we cover so many different countries and backgrounds. Africa, Asia, America, the UK, everything in between. That level of internationalism creates a very specific kind of closeness. Everyone is figuring out the same place from a completely different starting point, and that shared experience of being new somewhere bonds people faster than I expected.
If I had one piece of advice for a student from Singapore or anywhere in Southeast Asia specifically: do not be put off by the cultural differences you have heard about. They are real but they are navigable, and they make you more adaptable in ways you will appreciate long after you have left.
Manchester was not the culture shock I expected. The real adjustments were smaller and stranger than anything I had anticipated. And they were completely worth it.
- Alexis
The Course won't build the car
What Aerospace Engineering at Manchester Actually Looks Like
When I was applying for Aerospace Engineering at the University of Manchester, I pictured a degree packed with hands-on projects, CAD software, workshops, things you could build and test and iterate. The reality of first year is more theoretical than that picture suggests.
The fundamentals come first: maths, physics, mechanics, thermodynamics. The content is rigorous and it absolutely matters, but if you are coming in expecting to spend your early semesters designing things, you may need to recalibrate. There is less computer-aided design than the course description might lead you to expect, and more derivations and problem sets. This is not a criticism, it is just the honest picture. Application comes later. Concepts come first.
Why I Joined a Motorsport Team in My First Year
That gap between what I was looking for and what lectures were delivering is exactly why I joined Manchester Stinger Motorsports within my first few months at university.
Stinger is the university's Formula Student team. Every year, the team designs and builds a full racing car from scratch and competes at Silverstone. The scale of collaboration involved is genuinely impressive: mechanical engineering, aerodynamics, electronics, project management, all happening in parallel, all needing to come together into something that actually works on a track.
I came in with no specific automotive background. I told the team that upfront. They took me on as a junior engineer and people just started teaching me things. That is the environment: if you are willing to put in the work, the knowledge flows freely.
What Progression in a University Society Actually Looks Like
Over the course of my first year I moved from junior engineer to team engineer. Next year I will be sub-team leader for intake, cooling and exhaust. That did not happen because I had a particular skill set coming in. It happened because I showed up consistently, asked questions, and took responsibility for things.
The honest lesson here is that a lot of what makes a UK degree valuable is not in the lecture hall. The lecture hall gives you the theoretical foundation you need. The extracurricular work gives you the environment to apply it, make real mistakes, and work toward a goal that actually matters to the people around you. The combination of the two is where the real learning happens.
For anyone considering engineering at Manchester specifically, Stinger is genuinely worth your time. You do not need to know about cars. You just need to want to build something.
The Other Opportunities Worth Grabbing
Beyond the motorsport team, Manchester runs regular careers fairs which are genuinely useful for seeing what is out there and starting to build connections earlier than you might think to. I also picked up a part-time job during my studies, which has helped both financially and in terms of building a different kind of network outside of university.
I am also a Global Student Advisor at the University of Manchester, which means I help provide feedback on the international student experience and contribute to how the university shapes its programmes for students coming from abroad. It is a meaningful role and another reminder that if you look for ways to contribute to the university community, the opportunities are there.
The world is your oyster if you are willing to show up for it. Most of it is just showing up.
- Alexis
A Coin, a Stranger, and a City That Felt Like Home
My first five minutes in Manchester did not go to plan. I landed at the airport with heavy bags, a head full of nerves, and absolutely no idea that the luggage trolleys required coins to release. Everyone around me seemed to know exactly what they were doing, grabbing trolleys and heading off, while I stood there trying to figure out what I was missing. I had just flown in from India and did not have a single British coin on me. A kind older person nearby noticed, came over without being asked, and sorted it out for me. We exchanged a few words, they smiled, and off they went. It took less than two minutes. But standing there with my bags finally loaded, feeling the cool Manchester air for the first time, I thought to myself: this is going to be alright.
That small moment turned out to be a good introduction to the city. Manchester has that quality about it. People are straightforward and warm in a way that does not feel performative. I have thought about that stranger at the airport more than once since then.
Why Manchester and Why This Course
Choosing where to study took me a long time. I had been working in engineering and project coordination back home in India, and I knew that to move into senior roles internationally, I needed a postgraduate qualification that was both rigorous and genuinely respected. The University of Manchester kept coming up in my research. Its engineering faculty has a long and distinguished history, and the MSc in Engineering Project Management specifically stood out because it bridges technical knowledge and leadership in a way that most programmes do not. It was not just another management degree.
There was also a scholarship opportunity attached to my offer, and that mattered. Studying abroad is a significant financial commitment, and knowing that Manchester had recognised my application with funding support made the decision feel right in more ways than one. It felt like the university was investing in me, and I wanted to invest back.
More Indian Food Than I Expected, and I Am Not Complaining
One of the first things that genuinely surprised me about Manchester was how large and visible the South Asian and Indian community is here. I had prepared myself for homesickness, for missing the food, the familiarity, the small daily things you do not even notice until they are gone. What I found instead was a city where I could walk down certain streets and feel an unexpected sense of recognition. Indian grocery shops, restaurants serving food that actually tasted right, communities with their own events and spaces. It did not make Manchester feel like home in a shallow way, but it did make the transition far gentler than I had anticipated.
I still missed my family and the particular comfort of food cooked by someone who loves you. That kind of homesickness does not really go away, it just settles into something manageable. But knowing I could find a familiar meal or a familiar face nearby made the harder evenings easier.
The Course and the People in the Room
The MSc in Engineering Project Management has challenged me in all the right ways. We cover risk management, stakeholder engagement, infrastructure planning and construction project delivery, and every module pushes you to apply the theory to real situations. What makes the learning environment genuinely valuable is the diversity of people in the room. My classmates come from across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and when we work through project case studies together, the range of perspectives is remarkable. In India my engineering education was excellent, but this kind of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary thinking was new to me and has changed how I approach problems.
The teaching style here is also different from what I was used to back home. There is a much stronger emphasis on forming your own arguments, questioning what you read, and thinking independently. At first that felt unfamiliar. Over time it has made me a more confident thinker and a better communicator, and I think that will serve me well professionally long after the course ends.
How Much I Have Grown, and Not Just Academically
If someone had asked me before I left India what I expected to gain from this experience, I would have said a qualification and better career prospects. Those things are happening, but what has surprised me most is how much I have grown as a person. Living independently in a new country, navigating everything from university bureaucracy to figuring out which bus to take, building friendships from scratch with people from completely different backgrounds, it all adds up to something I did not have a word for before. Confidence is part of it. Perspective is another part. A quieter kind of resilience is probably the most accurate description.
The friendships have been a big part of that. I expected polite course mate relationships and got something much closer. We have explored the Northern Quarter together, cooked each other food from our home countries, travelled to the Peak District and beyond, and spent long evenings in the library getting through difficult assignments. There is a particular bond that forms when you are all equally far from home at the same time.
Manchester Is Worth Getting to Know
Before I arrived I knew Manchester mainly for football and its music history. What I found was a city with genuine texture. The industrial past is visible everywhere, but alongside it is a creative, forward-looking energy that feels alive rather than preserved. Walking through Ancoats or the Northern Quarter, you get the sense of a city comfortable in its own identity. It does not need to be anything other than what it is.
Getting around the rest of the UK from here is also easy and affordable, which I did not fully appreciate before coming. Liverpool, York, Edinburgh and London have all been part of my time here. The variety packed into a relatively small country still catches me off guard. It is probably something people who grow up here take for granted.
Would I Do It Again?
Without hesitation. This experience has given me far more than I came here for. If you are a student from India considering a UK master's, my honest advice is to research carefully, choose a programme that genuinely fits where you want to go, and then back yourself. The hard moments are real but they pass quickly. What stays is everything you gain.
And if you land at Manchester Airport and find yourself staring at a coin-operated trolley with empty pockets, do not panic. Someone will help you out. That, more than anything, tells you what kind of city you are arriving in.
- Joel
Studying Abroad; A Modern Englishman in New York?
It’s the cliché of all cliches, leaving your small town and watching the horizon broaden. Writers way above my paygrade have relished in watching your life disappear in the rearview and waiting for your bones to grow old enough that you want to come back. Regardless, it was indeed my lived experience. University was always the dream, and I was around eight years old when I realized that I wanted to go to the United Kingdom. I was young, had unsupervised internet access, and used it to browse the QS world rankings. This lead me to the conclusion that I belonged in a big, bustling city of academics, and once my youth was on the cusp of expiration, a quaint town consisting of nothing but perhaps a Tesco and bridges between castles. The Boris Brexit Escapade was none of my concern because I was to study the stars. Freshly nineteen, I did indeed make it to the University of Manchester to complete an integrated master’s in physics. Disheveled I stumbled off my Ryanair flight, overwhelmed and my pockets deep in debt. I arrived, like many students, to the Fallowfield campus where my journey began.
I didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly didn’t know to expect Fallowfield. A cultural embroidery with south-Asian silk, and so undeniably run by and for students; I’d never seen anything like it, nevermind lived it. The campus itself stuck out like a sore thumb with the backdrop of Rusholme, and small-town life had grossly underprepared me in terms of scale. Everything felt few and far between, even though I’d never been surrounded by more options and diversity in my life. As I came back from my first official day of university and said my teary goodbyes to the family that had helped me move, it dawned on me that for the first time, I didn’t have any friends. Yet, anyway. A massive yet; I’ve found that being alone in Manchester attracts experiences, friends, and opportunities pretty immediately. My wide eyes and annoyingly American accent was a flame that few welcoming northern moths could resist. I signed up for lacrosse, a sport where the extent of my knowledge was that it was Regina George’s true calling in Mean Girls, I started volunteering and I cemented my love for astrophysics with a membership at “astrosoc” and a trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, third biggest radio telescope in the world, international headquarters in an interferometry project; the Jodrell Bank. This is where I met one of my best friends, a lovely five-foot scouse girl that has carved a home into my heart forever. She and I have been inseparable since; she introduced me to British (northern, rather) drinking culture, small-talk, and showed me grace when I repeatedly exclaimed “I don’t do if buts and maybes, I do absolutes”, sounding more Irish if anything. It was like my heart settled into every nook and cranny of Manchester, but my anxiety still ran wild regarding the actual degree aspect of it all.
I had absolutely no idea what it meant to “have A-levels” and I was absolutely sick to my stomach to learn that people sat three papers per subject. I also realized that a difference in syllabus, regardless of how slight, could really impact your enjoyment of a module, and unfortunately your view on a lecturer. I’m actually quite glad to say that first semester was a humbling experience. It was hard to adjust to exams and the way they were conducted; I suppose anyone pursuing a university degree can relate to that, but studying in the UK means you also have to accept that everyone else has actually sat exams of this time crunch before. I was used to the Nordic five hours; snacks decorating the desk, computers and textbooks front and center, but restricted internet access. The most valuable thing I learned in Manchester in January was that it was okay to be a little more lost than you thought you were. I learned that regardless, I couldn’t lose my spark. I stayed a student rep, and even joined the EDIA (equality, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility) committee. If there is ever a moment of darkness, the best support will be immersing yourself in what you love and what you know. I adapted my study methods to improve how much information I retained and reduce how much content needed proper revision once the spring exam time arrived. I swear by the Cornell method and even though the sound of stylus hitting iPad screens is becoming evermore deafening in the Engineering building, you can pry my paper notebooks from my cold, dead hands. With even more challenging material, I found myself improving in second semester and being excited to see what second year has in store.
Unfortunately, I can’t claim that this is transferable to anyone else. I can’t guarantee that you develop a strange fondness for the Sainsbury in Fallowfield but a preference for Morrisons, or that your local Costa coffee will be where your pre-uni de-briefs take place. All I know is that studying at a world leading university, at such an accredited and famous department, in a city so vibrant, is going to change your life. I’m forever grateful for the massive suitcases my family and I dragged across the sea, the lecturers I’ve met so far, and for the nights I’ve spent in both libraries and club lines. Fear, uncertainty and imposter syndrome can turn into something so truly exciting and beautiful. I am so glad I had the chance to refresh my email on the beach, and to see that UCAS confetti in the backseat of our family car- it altered the course of my life, and it can yours too.
- Ajla
Student Accommodation in the UK
Where do you live when studying abroad? Do universities in the UK offer student housing? How much does student accommodation cost? Did you know that as an international student, you are guaranteed on-campus accommodation for the first or all your years studying at most of our UK universities? You will need to apply by the housing application deadline, and of course the best student accommodation in the UK goes first - so that is a good reason to apply early! There are several different student accommodations, price levels and facilities to choose from!
Most students choose to live on campus in their first year. This is social and a fantastic way to get to know students from all over the world! After that, most students choose to move into privately rented accommodation with their new friends. We recommend everyone to live in university accommodation in their first year, as it is a great way to get to know other students (and not just those on your degree).
Learn more about the different options, on-campus accommodation, how to arrange private accommodation and everything you need before applying for student accommodation in the UK via this webinar!
