International Students - Arrival and Enrolment

Hi, everyone. My name is Gabriella. Thank you for joining us today. I hope everyone is having a good time right now we're just going to talk a little bit about Middlesex University and the process of arriving at Middlesex.  

As I said, my name is Gabrielle and I'm the regional officer for the Americas and Caribbean regional office. I am also joined by Zee and Artisa who are student ambassadors and they will tell us a bit about their experience too.  

We will be talking about the different stages, some things to keep in mind before and after you arrive in the UK and also share a little bit of the international orientation program and that stuff. And after they speak, I'll do a little Q&A section.

So if you have questions, start putting them on the chat, start preparing for them, because we will have some time to answer those. So without further ado, let's get started. So let some things in mind before you arrive in the UK.  

So as you prepare for your new life as a Londoner, these are some essential recommendations. So taking on travel insurance in case of any mishaps during your trip, such as the leave on the flight or a loss of a suitcase, for example, those are things to keep in mind.  

For those of you who've already applied to your student visa, you'll know that at the end of the application, it was paid a visa application fee plus a health surcharge. And that fee is determined by the length of time that you will be in the UK.  

This will cover your health care during the time in UK, but you can also opt to take out private medical insurance if you wish. Another common question that we get during this stage is about packing, especially if your transportation company only allows a limited amount of suitcases.  

So, think of this, you'll need clothes for all types of weather. Honestly, those of you who live in the UK will attest to this. But all type of the weather, most importantly for the winter as that's the fastest approaching after your arrival in January.  

So be mindful of that. And it's also important to note that the UK has strict importation rules. So, be very careful about packing food items, which you can also very likely find in the UK anyway.  

So finally, the most important thing you should remember from this slide is they carry all important documents, including your transcripts, scripts, your English language test if it was part of your application.  

Anything that's on your CAD should be on hand luggage because this will be requested at border control. So be very mindful of that. We have partnered with a company called Movido and they can give you a discount which is the promo code is MDX2021.  

You can find them at go-movido.com And basically, this company just provides support for international students who are getting settled in the UK. You get something sent over to your house currently, or to accommodation in London.  

And they just really help out with all the support, especially in a virtual environment, as we have So, another most, probably the second most important thing that you should know, or probably the first, is to be aware of the travel advice for your country.  

You know as many of you in the UK is constantly updating their travel rules due to COVID and experience. So I advise everyone to keep close attention to that by constantly checking www .gov .uk before their travels.  

Two months before your travel, a month before travel days before you travel. This is constantly being updated and we don't want you to miss out on any important information. So please keep an eye on that.  

And if you're unsure about this, please firstly check the government's website and then contact your regional office because that's what we're here to do. We're to help. For example, if coming from a red lip country and it's like a quarantine hotel package before you arrive in the UK.  

And you can see currently as of yesterday, the nine, eight, 10 countries that are currently on the red list. This can be updated tonight, this can updated tomorrow, this change very quickly, so please be mindful of that.  

And we also need to take a negative COVID -19 test result. No more than three days before your flight departs, and then complete a passenger locator form. This is regardless of vaccination status. All right, so what to do when you arrive in the UK.  

So assuming that you're fully vaccinated, you must still quarantine at home or at the place that your staying until you get the results of your day two COVID test. If it's negative, then you can leave quarantine, obviously.  

We also ask that contact us before arriving in UK so we know how to best support you. If you're a January starter and you haven't already, then you'll get enrolment details and open up a UniHub account.  

Please make sure that you give us the right mobile number and email addresses that will have available in the UK so we know how to contact you. As a reminder, COVID-19 vaccines are free in UK and if you have not gotten it in your home country, you are still more than welcome to get after your quarantine period ends.  

So at the airport, if your a short-term student, please make sure that you get a stamp at the border. You may be tempted to go through the e -gave, but please do not simply get that stamp. Basically, an immigration officer will look at your passport, check that your visa and any documents are in place and that any document that they may request.  

They should also be satisfied of your English knowledge without the need of an interpreter. So keep that in mind, be relaxed, speak your best English and communicate fluently. So the immigration officer will put a stamp on your passport, and you should be good to go.  

Some of the documents that you bring with you on the hand luggage are your offer letter from the university, any relevant transcripts, your CAS, any bank statements that this is required for your visa application.  

Some countries are exempt, so if this isn't a requirement for a visa, you don't need to show bank statement. And the accommodation in the UK, such as your hall of residence or wherever it is that you're staying.

Make sure to print this evidence and bring it with you. Please don't rely on electronic devices because we don t know when they just turn off or lose battery. So please bring them with us in physical.  

Xool. So after you go through the border control, grab your luggage, you must go to customs, if you have anything to declare, you should go though the red channel. If you're coming from the EU, then you should join the blue line.  

And if yo have nothing to declare, then you can walk through the green line, although keep in mind that an officer can still pull you for extra screening, whichever line you take. Just be mindful of that.  

Alright, so in the UK, yo you can easily find a location we're trying to, you can easily find the location where you're trying to go by simply typing the postcode into any app like Google Maps, Citymapper works really well, and the TfL Journey Planner.  

So our campus is located in a neighbourhood called Hendon, which is on the Northern Line in North London. The nearest tube is the nearest to station is Hendon Central. And if you're coming from an amber or basically, if you are coming from a green list country, you can make your way to campus on the tube.  

Middlesex is partnered with Movido, a company that basically helps international students get settled in the UK. So it can also include travel from airports. So you can register using the Middlesex student code, which is MDX 2021, and get your starter pack sent to your current home address before you travel to the UK.  

You can also book Addison Lee taxis which offer decent rates and they can even, when you book them online, they can monitor your flight in case if there are any delays. So it's very convenient and a lot more affordable than the black cap.  

All right, so after you settle in, make sure to attend our orientation program, which we'll talk about in just a bit. Register with your general practitioner or GP, which is your assigned doctor in the UK.  

Their surgery or office will likely be closest to where you live. Also register with the police if and only if this is a requirement. So if your visa vignette or the sticker on your passport says police registration or register with a police in seven days upon entry or however many days on entry, then you should register with the police.  

It costs 34 pounds to register, and you can find more information, including what to bring by searching UK visas and registering with police on www.gov.uk. The other things to do during your first few weeks from arriving is collecting your BRP card, which is going to be your ID, your national ID in the UK, and opening a bank account.  

So you must collect your BRP card within 10 days of arrival in the UK from any post office branch, or the university, depending on where you selected this to go. When you were applying to your visa. Please remember to bring your passport and offer letter when you go collect it.  

These are very important so you can receive your VRP. Please note that also to open a bank account you'll need your passport, you will need a bank application form, and the student status letter which you have access to request on UniHUB after you receive the login details.  

So please note this might take a while, so it would be a good idea to travel with enough cash and credit or debit cards to go through your first few weeks, I would say even through first month because it may just take a little while to get a UK bank account.  

All right, so some of the student support that we give at Middlesex. Honestly, Middlesex is known for its excellent student supports. So if you have any questions, we can ask the international students advice team at INT Advice.  

That's [email protected]. We also have a Chinese student liaison who helps the university's Chinese community and your regional office can put you in touch with them. Please reach out to your regional officer.  

I'm the Regional Officer for Americas and the Caribbean so if you live in North and South America and The Caribbean by all means feel free to contact me but if you're from another region please contact your Regional Office and they'll be able to tell you more information.  

So let's see what we have about the international orientation. So we will be hosting a hybrid model to January's international student orientation. So on the 10th and the 11th of January will host various online events, which we invite you to join and on the 27th, we'll host an in-person event to make sure that everybody can join us. The early arrivals, the later arrivals can all join on us on 27. So we can make this great event with our big happy family.  

You can find more details and register on UniHub. So please, whenever we have access, go on UniHub, register for the event. All you need is your name, email address and student ID. So if you have these three things and you're planning to join us in January, go ahead, go on UniHub and join up for these events.  

All right, so that is the end of my presentation, but I will now invite Artisa and Bee to join. Whoops, none of you can see my slides yet, can you? Perfect, now you should. All right, so I'll introduce you to Vi, she's a student ambassador at Middlesex University and Vi wanted to tell us a little bit more about yourself.  

Well, hello everyone. Well my name is Vi and I'm your international student master. And I will continue the webinar with a bit of self -introduction by myself and share you guys some live experience I have when I arrive to UK and also give you some tips along the way.  

So let's get to it then. So I'm from Vietnam. Yes, I am Vietnamese and we welcome you guys to come to my country anytime. Of course, with the coronavirus it's kind of difficult to travel, but still it's worth to visit once in a while so welcome you all to my country and that's it.  

It's a little bit brief about myself and now we'll go to my experience about arriving to UK for the first time. So far I've been UK for nearly four years now and I still remember the first I came to the UK it was a very long queue.  

I don't know why it can get that long but maybe people coming at that time they get a little bit excited so but bear in mind that you might have to stand for a queue for about 40 minutes max or 45 minutes but although it's a long queue you should keep yourself hydrating and everything because you will need to get the top of it when you get to the border officer who will assist you with the document and password and everything.  

So at the time he was really kind and gentle to me and I feel very welcome when he greet me with a smile and everything so yeah everything went smoothly but the only problem was I I don't know where was my luggage yeah it was horrible like in my country the airport was quite more and then I come to UK is enormous so it's hard to find my luggage I have to ask here oh excuse me so where's my luggage and he help me to help so find help when you can so that was my experience when I drove to KK airport for the first time and the the thing first for when when you come to UK is based on my experience.  

The top tip is remember always to forget, sorry, always forget. Always to collect your BRP first. That would be your identity to do everything else the following weeks. So whenever you can, the earliest thing you're gonna do is go to university, sign in and then collect the BRB.  

And then you start open your bank account and also register with the Oyster card. The Oyster card is a travel card that you can use to travel and transport London throughout zone one and zone six. So I think it's a great offer for you to use the oyster card also to remember to register with your GP near your area as well.  

So it helps you with medical problems or if you want to have your vaccine, they also help you with that too. So that I think is a good thing to do when you have the first free time in your week, although I thought you might be a little bit exhausted in the first week but yeah, that's the thing that you need to want to be aware of when you first come to the UK.  

That's enough of the experience when I first arrived to UK, The next one I will talk about my student life as MDX. So are you aware, I always, sorry, I already as a member of MDx team and my, my degree is BSc Economics and with Foundation Year.  

So I have been with MD X for two years, nearly three years now. So, I, always like to study as Schaffert Library where you can have a lot of area to study and group up with friends and meet up with books.  

If you like books like me, then it's a perfect place for you to study. And you can have some time in joy with a friend in the court. There's the picture there when you have a big heart with Leonid. That is the first impression I have when I first come to MBX.  

The Christmas tree, if you come a time like this, you see that we also put up the Christmas and some Carol over there to celebrate Christmas. We have tons of events that you can also take part in as well.  

So like international Oriental event and a lot of work opportunity. You can learn a new language if you register with an LCE exchange scheme where you learn French, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish. if you have any interest.  

So currently I'm having some Chinese lesson with this scheme and it's going perfectly fine. So yeah, that's some of my experience that I want to share with you guys as a current student at MDX. Thank you.  

If you haven't a question, just pop me the chat here and then I will answer them. Thank You. Thank your V, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. So now I'd like to introduce you to Artisa.  

He's also a student ambassador and he's going to tell us about himself and about his experience at Middlesex University. How are you, Artis? Hello, Gabriel. Thank you very much for your time and presentation.  

Hello everyone. So my name is Arti, as you can see, and my journey with Middlesec started way long back in 2011 when I was doing my bachelor's. So I complete my undergrad in 2014, then I completed my master's because I never wanted to leave Middlesex.  

So, I truly love Middleses and they even got me a scholarship to do my Master's course. So i stayed in there, did my Masters, finishing in 2015. Then I worked for a couple of years, moved to France and I recently, well not recently with the pandemic, I started my PhD in the beginning of the year 2020 and right now I am actually in the library in The Shepherd Library as my my fellow ambassador we was mentioning the Shepherd library.  

This is where I'm sitting right now on the first floor. So any questions during this presentation and webinar feel free to write in their chat box and we'll be happy to assess further. I'll going through my experience of how life in general is as a MDX student and what to expect about my experiences when I first arrived in the UK.  

It was my first international country travel to any other country apart from my home country which is Pakistan. So I'm a Pakistani, I come from Pakistan, I don't know if you've ever been there, beautiful country especially the North side.  

Good food, spicy food. We love spicy food not as expensive as London so you can buy cheap clothes and you can literally go on a shopping spree if you go to Pakistan especially my city which is Karachi.  

So if you have the next slide please. Right, so my journey with Middlesex has been of complete aspirations and inspiration. It has given me a lot of personal and professional development skills studying an undergrad course.  

There were a lots of conferences that give me their skills to go out there and attract employees. Because at the end of your degree, that's the most important thing, that you have transferables because of what you've studied at university.  

And then you can go out and when you work for an employee, whether or not you'll be able to, you know, use your academic knowledge to work in the practical world. So here, as my colleague mentioned, we have got Learning Cultural Exchange, where I polished my friend's skills, because when I went to a work with, in France, this language cultural exchange really helped me because it's absolutely free.  

You get to meet a lot of students from different part of the world having their own language and that really helped me a little. Especially and then also when I moved to other conferences and other parts of Europe, my academic modules were drafted in a way that I have to participate in those conferences.  

All these international experiences really help me develop my professional skills. If you have the next slide, and then. Yeah, so the state of God learning facilities and you know, from the, from as a student that you've got student learning support we have got brilliant faculty members I'm from, I am studying criminology so I from this school of law.  

And there is one thing that I can tell you that here at Middlesex, the faculty members are extremely supportive, they're extremely helpful. I remember in my first year, I was like quite nervous because it was my first ever travel to a different country and then a completely different way of learning, way teaching.  

And I was really nervous about when I was coming towards the end of the deadline for submitting my my assessments. And then I just sent an email to my professor. And so why don't you come down to my office and during my working out, during my hours hours, and I went there and and they really helped me out with explaining everything and all all the problems that I had.  

It was like literally gone. And so this is like kind of a support that you get from members of the staff here. Plus the well -being support is still there. It's still amazing. It is outstanding. We have got Students Union here at MDX that really caters for students' needs here as well.  

If you can have the next slide. Yeah, so as I was saying that my course and the academic curriculum is my academic curriculum was drafted in a way that I have to travel different parts of the European Union countries where I was participating in conferences.  

So, as you can see, the picture on the right -hand side of this screen is of Greece, where i was part participating, in there in a conference where all different students from different part of the concert that used to come.  

And on the left-hand side the screen. This is me working at one of the open days on campus this year. As you can see, this is a red, old red shirt wearing student ambassadors and I'm in the middle. So time has gone past now and we literally have our open day last couple of weeks ago, I think.  

It was really nice after the pandemic. So yeah, this is something you, I mean, I've made connections, personal, professional connections all over the world. I have met people which I probably wouldn't be able to have such long lasting and professional connections if I had been to any other country or if have been staying at my country.  

So this the part that I really love about London and standing in London that you make connections from all over the world. People from Far East, with them is our friends from Thailand, from Malaysia and then European.  

So if you come and the culture there, it's such a vibrant culture here at campus that, you made lots of friends and it it such lovely atmosphere at the campus. So, if we have the next slide. Oh yes, it's a once -in -a -lifetime student experience, that's for sure.  

When you're studying in London, you have the world of opportunities at your doorstep, it is just a matter of opening up that door. We have got a huge application market, internships market. Now with the life is becoming normal slowly and gradually, hopefully we don't have another spike in the cases, fingers crossed.  

But the job market here in London is booming. And even the government is giving more and more incentives to international students. So I think it's a brilliant time to come here. The nightlife is amazing here in a London and literally the campus, as my colleague mentioned, the campuses is located in neighborhood Hendon, which is literally 25 minutes by public transport to central London.  

So we are not that far and we're not right in the heart of central London, so it's about at a fair distance of 25 minutes from campus to Marble Arch Circus. You are banging there 25 minutes and then you are there.  

And here I would like to touch upon my colleague we mentioned about the student orchestra. It's fairly simple application process. All you have to do is Google TFL Transport for London, create an account over there.  

And then your, your oyster card will be delivered on campus to the Students' Union. You come to campus, go to Students Union, show them the email and they'll send, they will give you the student oysters card.  

It gives you 30% off on your travel throughout your student journey, which is, which trust me, makes a lot of difference. Transport is expensive in London but if you do get that student oyster card, that gives you 30% off.  

That's a blessing for me. I mean, I literally pay like 50, 60 pounds a month and that gets unlimited travel for a week if I make the best travel pass. So that's one thing. Also, i would like to touch upon the bank account thing, it's really important, you know, these two things are really important especially, actually three.  

The first one is bank accounts, the second one student always to guard on the third one is registering with the doctor registering with a GP. The same way you go and Google NHS or the National Health Service, you put in your postcard, and then it will tell you how which is the closest surgery or which is a closest closest GP in your area, click on there, and then register yourself gone with your passport and that's it's important with the pandemic, it is important that you register with GP.  

And with regards to the bank account, I mean I am personally using Barclays. It's one of the high street banks here in London. All you need is a student status letter, which you can easily get from the uni help in the library.  

You need a passport with at least three months visa on there and a biometric residence permit that you will also receive here at the campus. So that's three most important things that I would say when you do arrive here, that's the three most important thing that in my opinion, it's good.  

So if you can have the next slide, please. That's it. All right. And that pretty much it, so any questions, feel free to talk in the chat box and thank you very much for being here. Yeah, we can wait for you to become part of Team Thank you.  

Thank You. Especially for reassuring the importance of getting your bank accounts registering with the GP picking up your BRP. I keep telling students this all the time we can't even. I can even explain how many times I say this and then after their students they email me back or call me because they're like, How do I do this, how do i do that and I'm like I told you a million times.  

Because you know it's important. I also understand that there's a lot of students playing, traveling, doing all these. But this is why we do webinars like these, and this why each region has a regional office because we speak your language, we understand your situations, we want to give you the best support that we can, even before you become a student at Middlesex University during your time as a students and even after.  

Because after you graduate, You still have access to the Employability Center, which helps students find jobs, stay connected with the industry. You can check your CV, update it to mock interviews, and all of that.  

So with all that, we just want to encourage you to become part of Team MDX. And if you have any questions, this would be a great time to write them on the chat. I have a question that came directly to me.  

I don't know if you guys have any question, beer, or tea, that you can read out loud. One of the questions that I have is, can we quarantine at our college accommodation, or should we quarantined in a hotel?  

This will depend from which country you are coming from. So once again, I would say, after this webinar, go on www .gov .uk and see what travel restrictions are in place for people coming in from your country.  

This is especially if you've spent 10 days in the country prior to where you from traveling in UK. For example, you can be a U .S. citizen, but if are in Pakistan, the rules may vary. So it's not so much about what passport you have, where are you coming from 10 -days prior, where you've spent 10 days prior to your arrival in London.  

So to give you an example, if you're coming from the United States and you are completely vaccinated, then you do not need to, you just need basically quarantine until you take the day two test. And if it's negative, you can leave quarantine and live happily ever after.  

But if your coming from another country, for example Zimbabwe, then that is considered a redless country. you will need to book a quarantine hotel before your arrival and stay at the hotel during your time of quarantine.  

So it really varies, it depends. If you have any doubts, please contact your regional office and they will be able to send you the right links and give you the most relevant and most updated information.  

Any other questions? I don't know if you If you have any questions on your end that have been sent directly to you, no? Okay. Well, if we don't have anymore questions, I just want to say thank you to everyone for spending this half hour with us.  

I hope it has been useful. Again, If You Have Any Questions, please contact us, it's our job and it is our pleasure. I have another question saying, is GRP only for students with a visa? Yeah, no worries.  

I just wanted to make sure if it was GP that you were mentioning or BRP. So BRP is only for students with a visa. It's basically your ID or your national identity card in the UK during your time as a student or during the period of your student visa, because it may be your identity.  

The student visa may run for a little bit longer than your studies, so I just wanted to clarify that for the purpose of the accuracy. So if your visa is four years long, then your BRP should be four year long.  

And yes, it is only for students with a visa. Oh, I'm going to add something on this. So BRB literally stands for biometric residence permit. So what what that means is that when you do apply for a student visa in your home country, you give your biometrics to give your fingerprint and thumb impressions.  

And then when you come and you land at Heathrow at the end, when you are giving your passport to the border officer, and he stamps at you, he again asks you to do your biometrics, your thumb impression and your finger impression.  

So that literally goes onto your BRP. So I mean, that's the most important document. I would highly recommend you to keep that safe, because if that gets lost, I don't know, it has to be reported to the police and a lot of other places.  

You won't be able to open an account, you won t be ready to say with the GP, you don t want to do anything if you lose that piece of document, so it's really important and that you keep hold of that biometric residence permit.  

Yes, I agree with their teaser. So you say, I only stay five months so I won't have a visa is that a problem? If I don't a BRP, that's a complicated query. I would say as long as- I have the answer for it.  

Oh, you have that answer. Go ahead. So if assuming, if you see that your only staying for five month, I'm assuming that, you're a short term student in which case you don't need a student visa because you will have, I'm assuming that you're from the U .S., for example, and you have the ability to stay in the UK for a short term.  

If that is the case, then you won't have given your biometrics and won t have a BRP. Will it be a problem? It won t be problem. You just need to travel with your UFID or wherever you re coming from, and maybe a photo of your passport or any documents that show your identity.  

But it's not a problem if you don't have your BRP because you never got one. I have another question and this is a good one, I think it is common doubt. If you travel, since the Oyster Card is for traveling with public transportation, how do we travel before we get the oyster card with the student discounts and two responses number one you can purchase an oyster card without a student discount and number two if you have a contactless method of payment such as a creditor debit card with a contractless sign or your phone you can use those methods of payments for swiping or for capping in and out of the tube or in with a friend, they don't need to purchase an Oyster card specifically.  

If they don t want to, they can just tap in and out with their alternate methods of payment, such as a creditor debit card. And it's a good question, actually, because sometimes we emphasize so much about the importance of having student Oysters cards that we forget some of the basics that sometimes students, you know, and in some cases, they won't get one immediately before.  

And thank you V4 for the link on the student oyster photo card. It's also I think a nice souvenir after you leave the UK as a student to get that oysters photo card with how you looked like back then when you were a student.  

This is my case. You have three. We have 3 great souvenirs. Any other questions? Yeah, I've got two as well. I just have one. I have just one, okay. I feel left out. All right. Well, thank you everyone.  

I know that all of us are busy and at least do, but we're very, very grateful for your time. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Also, if you are not yet participating in this Facebook group, please go ahead.  

We've just sent out a link. A student ambassador will be there to answer your questions. So please engage on the Facebook group. Please engage with your regional office. Let us know when you're coming so we know that you are ready and have everything you need.  

And thank you once again for joining us. Have a great rest of your day.

Okay, I think we're good to go then. Hi everyone, thank you very much for joining us today for this webinar. We're going to be talking today about the topic of enrolment, online enrolment for you students, and then just getting you set up and started for the best way possible for your time at Middlesex.

So my name is David Galani, I'm the Head of Student Engagement and Advocacy here at Middlesex University. And then I'm also joined by two of our brilliant student ambassadors. So we're joined today by first of all, Masha.

Hi, I'm Masha. I'm a master's student from Iran. I'm currently doing my dissertation in biomedical sciences, specialising in medical micro. Nice to meet you all. Fantastic. Thanks, Masha. And also my name is Nicole.

I'm doing master's in law. I'm also writing a dissertation on diplomacy. So I'll later I'll tell you more about myself. Brilliant. Thanks very much both. So the webinar in whole will last for about 60 minutes.

We'll do a quick presentation just to kind of talk through some of the information. And then we'll have plenty of time after that for a Q &A. So you can ask any questions that you've got, and we'll do our best to answer them.

If you'd like to ask a question, you can just type them into the chat along the side of the call. And then we'll come back to those questions at the end of the session. This webinar is being recorded so that we can share the recording and presentation slides with you in a follow -up email in the next day or two.

So that's everything to get started. Let's kick off with the presentation. So first of all, just to give a bit of context. So as I said, I have the student engagement and advocacy team. What that means is we have this wonderful team at Middlesex, which is entirely dedicated to helping our students get the right information through our communications channels. We run lots of wonderful and colourful events and engagement programs. And ultimately we're here to try to make sure that you can make the most of your experience with us as part of what we call Team MDX.

So helping you to feel part of the community and just get the most out of your time at university. There are a few things I'm gonna run through today. So I'm gonna kind of just start going through bits of information.

And as I said, we'll then be able to cover any questions you've got about at the end of the presentation. So first of all, I wanted to talk through some of the stuff you just need to check off your checklist to get started as a new student at MDX.

So here's some of the key things that we need you to do before you actually arrive at the university. First of all, there is this thing called enrolment. Every university does it. It's essentially an online form where you put in all of your details and just confirmed actually being a student at university.

It's kind of like signing the final contract where you... by a car or something which kind of just gives you all the details around what's expected of you as a student and what you're committing to. That opens on Wednesday the 1st of September and you can do it all online.

Before then you will have received login details via email of how you actually log in and complete it. So you'll be given an IT user ID and also a password which allows you to log into your Middlesex account and I'll show you a bit later in the presentation how exactly you can do that and I think Masha and Nicole are also going to kind of share from their experience like what the process was like for them.

As part of enrolment kind of a thing which goes alongside that is your ID check. This now can also happen online and it's a form you fill out where you upload your documentation which confirms who you are.

You know obviously need to know that it's you who's confirming themselves as a student at the university. So you need to do both of those things before you get started. The third bullet point here is around you setting your password.

So you're going to get an email which gives you your password for your account at Middlesex and it's going to be a very long password with lots of different characters in it. What we recommend is that you change it to a password that you'll remember yourself and is unique to you.

That's just a way to make sure that your account is more secure because it means that it's a password that only you know because you've chosen it. In the email that we send you about your password we give you lots of good bits of advice about how to keep your password safe and it's a lot of basic things and they're like you know not sharing it with friends, not writing it down anywhere obvious or kind of writing it in a note stock on your phone that isn't saved or locked or whatever.

So that's an important thing to do. Also before you actually arrive it's good to plan ahead for when you're going to need to be attending your program induction events. So I'll go into this in a bit more detail a little bit later but once you've got your login details you can find your full welcome schedule either within what we call my UniHub which is the student portal online for all students to use or within MDX app, which is the mobile app dedicated for current students at the university. As part of enrolment, you will also kind of have to pay any fees that are due. So kind of for your course, all that information will be provided for you.

And enrolment is then kind of when you commit to paying the fees relevant for your course. And finally, I'll talk about this a little bit more later on as well, but once you've done that, you'll then have access to your own university email account.

It's really useful to have that because there are lots of different discount schemes or websites or groups across the whole world that you'll now have access to because you're a member of a university, which is a really good perk, which I think a lot of students don't recognize as much.

So just by having an email address that ends in .ac .uk, which is what all university email addresses end in in the UK, means you'll have access to them. Your email is also really important to access regularly because it's how your lecturers and other university staff will be communicating with you.

So it's important that you check it regularly, so you don't miss out on anything important. When it comes to your welcome week and your program induction itself, most of them are gonna take place between the week of Monday the 20th to Friday the 24th of September.

It will be in the week before that, if you're a student who's on a education or a healthcare program, but for most of the subjects, it's within this one main week. It's really, really important that you go along to the online sessions as part of your program induction, because this is your chance to meet the tutors who are part of your course.

And they'll be telling you basically how all of your program is gonna run. So they'll give you information about your kind of structure of your different modules. They'll give you information about the handbook that has all of the assessments and exams and coursework that you'll have to submit as part of the course.

And they'll also give you an opportunity to meet new friends as part of your course. You'll meet all the other students who are on the same program as you, so you can start to make friends and find people that you can build your network with, go on socials with, kind of join student groups and societies, or just work with when you've got group work, project work, or someone to ask, if you don't understand something in a lecture, is that really helpful to have other students you know in your program that you can just check if they understood what was going on as well.

All of the details for your program induction schedule can be found within either the places I mentioned before. So either the student portal or my UniHub, which I'll go into more detail around how you access that later, or the MDX app, the student mobile app.

So those are the big key things that we need you to do. Next, I'm gonna go into a few extra things with more organizing, which we really encourage you to get involved with because they'll help you get more out of your time as a student at Middlesex.

So the first is what we call the Ready for Anything program. It's this wonderful array of events, both online, and there are some on campus, but obviously you might not be able to attend them if you're still in your home country right now, and we're running them all the way through the summer.

So, we share this presentation with you afterwards, so you can get a link for it, and essentially on the main Uni Hub page, on the main student website page, there's a big right there, kind of access to the Ready for Anything program, and there are activities we're running where you can meet other new students before term starts, information about how we're going to support you and your wellbeing and your mental health, events and activities around learning study skills, so you know getting more confident with things like numeracy or maths or academic writing and you know how to write an essay, all of those things, we're running them now so that when term starts you're already feeling super confident and you've got everything that you need to get started, that's why we call it Ready for Anything, so we really encourage you to get involved in that.

The second thing is a program completely dedicated to all of the international students as part of the university, so that runs from the week of Monday the 13th of September through Friday the 17th. And in that week, most of the activities are online at that point because we know that not every student is going to be able to go to the UK yet.

So we want to make sure it's accessible to everyone. But then we're going to specifically run more in -person events, trips and activities and socials throughout the first term. So looking onto the program now, it's a way to make sure you're told about all that information as it goes on all the way up to the Christmas break.

So it's basically a one -stop shop of a program for everything that we find international students ask us year after year about life in the UK. You'll have other current students who are international students on that program volunteering and all working as part of the events to help guide you.

You'll have chances to meet other new international students from all over the world. We run things like the British Tea Party, where you get a chance to kind of experience what a very kind of like upper class tea party looks like.

Everyone wears nice dresses or sandwiches and tea and everything, all fun stuff like that. We also do some icebreakers so that you can find an easier way to get to know students who might think you have nothing in common with because they're from a whole different part of the world to you.

But actually you realize you've got stuff in common and lots of other stuff all there just to kind of like get you excited and meeting other new students. So that's the second big thing that we recommend you get involved with.

And as I said, what we'll do is after we've done this presentation, I'll do a quick little almost like a tour of how you use the student website UniHub. And I'll just show you where you go to find the information about, for example, international orientation.

It's all very easy to find. And also within this presentation, I've hyperlinked the images. So when we share this with you afterwards, you can just click on this to go right to the relevant page for you.

So what I'm going to talk about next, well, there's one more kind of advantage that I want to share. This is something quite new, actually. So it's the partnership that we've got between an external company called Movido with Middlesex University and then also the Students' Union at the University.

And it's essentially a company who provide what they call a UK starter pack. And we've got to deal with them so they're giving discounted kind of packs for early Middlesex students. As you can see from this slide, they offer a wide range of support based on the things that you might need.

So it might be that you're really needing advice on finding a place to live. It might be that actually transport around London is something you need support with. It might be your phone or getting to your halls of accommodation from the airport.

Whatever it is, you can just click on the things that you need from the service. And then they'll be able to kind of show you what a little pack of support they can offer. Note that there's a little promo code there in the bottom of this tab.

That's the one you use to get the discounts for Middlesex students. That's something you can use just this minute. Sorry, if you've just joined, can you pop yourself on mute so that you're not interrupting?

That would be fantastic. There we go. I think we've got that one there. OK, so I'm going to keep running through more things to share with you. So first of all, kind of there's a few things I wanted to talk about in terms of what it's like to actually be a middle sex student.

So here are some things that we expect from you, which we don't assume you're naturally going to know before you come to the UK or come to university. Some of these things might be similar to what you had when you were a student in school, but some of them might be differently.

So I won't go through all of these in detail because we will share the presentation with you afterwards. But I'll just pick out a few key ones. So first of all, there is a lot more expectation on you at university to be what we call independent.

It's up to you to kind of decide how you're going to use your time and how you're going to study independently. And that's why it's really important to start developing what we call time management skills so that you can build your schedule, work out when you want to be on campus for attending lectures, et cetera, how you're going to use the library in between those sessions to do your own study work and further reading, reading around the topic.

And overall, it's up to you how much effort you put in and how much you choose to engage. The university is always going to be here to support you. We have loads of fantastic ways that we try and help get the most out of you so that you can fulfill your potential.

But I always think that university is quite like a gym membership in that, you know, getting the membership itself does nothing for you. You're not going to get ripped or get huge muscles if you just have a gym membership.

It's all about how much time you put into that membership, how often you go to the gym, how much you kind of make out of it, how smart you are about your training program. It's exactly the same with university.

There's loads of resources, support and other opportunities that we've given to you. But you're only going to get out of it how much you put in. So that's like one big overall point. Especially the other ones are just around courtesy, you know, when you're attending lectures, whether they be in person or online.

It's really important that you arrive before the class starts, so that you're not walking in and interrupting everyone else's learning. It's also really important that when you're in the lecture, you don't talk with other students that are around you, you know, there are some big lecture theatres that we have on our amazing campus where you might have 150, 200 students in a room.

If all of them are having little conversations, no one's going to be doing any learning and that makes the whole thing pointless. So it's really important that when you're in those learning spaces, you treat others with respect, you listen to the academic in front of the class who's teaching you and don't talk over them.

One of the final things I just took you on this slide here is the importance of understanding plagiarism. So essentially, that means copying someone else's work and pretending that it's your own. So that can come in a lot of different forms.

And the university has a great course online, which we have dedicated to academic integrity. which you can complete in your own time to learn more about what this actually means. But it is an important thing and it does get checked for when you're doing your assessments.

If you submit something where you've copied and pasted it from someone else or part of another student or a website and we have a system that will pick that up and then actually it means that you could fail that module because you've plagiarized that you've taken it from someone else.

So it's really important you learn about this. It's a very important thing we have in the UK for universities and not all other countries necessarily approach in the same way. So that's why it's just important to familiarize itself with it.

The other things in terms of expectations I wanted to share is around because of how we're kind of responding to the COVID -19 pandemic. There are a lot of things that we're doing as a university to keep campus safe, to make sure that we can teach people in person and to make sure that all of our students, staff and people within the local community that we work with are looked after and can be healthy.

But because of that there are some things we need from you. Things that we expect from you, things we expect you to do so that you can help keep our wider community safe. All of those things are listed here and if you ever have any questions about them then please do get in touch because it's really important that you know how to look after yourself and those around you.

In the UK we strongly encourage all of our students and staff to get vaccinated and that is possible for international students to do as well if you haven't already been vaccinated in your home country.

And generally before you come to campus we recommend that you take a home COVID test you can complete really easily wherever you're living in halls in private rented accommodation etc and you can order these to get limited to you straight to your home in little packs of seven of them so you can complete them whenever you need to.

We recommend generally doing that twice a week before you come to campus just to make sure that you've tested negative before you come on to campus. If you do have a test positive and there's also a team as part of the student website we can contact them and tell us so that we can get support out to you in whatever way that might be needed.

I won't go through everything else here, as again I said like the information is on the UniHub website for more detail, but I thought that was just important to share. And we want all of you to feel safe to know that there's lots that we're doing at the university, make our campuses be a secure place where all students and staff can work and feel confident in doing so.

Okay, so now I'm going to go on to some of the digital resources that we have and where you go for information as a student. So I'm going to talk through a couple of our big platforms that we have that I've already referenced earlier in this presentation.

So first of all is UniHub, which is your main student website. Within that it has basically all the information you'll need as a student. It lists the events that we're organizing, announcements on news for any updates, pages for new students, pages of our support services.

Everything is on there, everything that I've talked about so far in this presentation is on UniHub. how I did core after we finished our presentation about the main pages so that you can see how you can find them.

Also within UniHub there is a place where you can log in with your student ID and password that I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation and it accesses what we call my UniHub which is essentially just the back end of UniHub where all of your personalised information is.

So that's where you can find your timetable, your student email, access to all of your learning resources, everything which basically you need to log in so that we can give it just to you as a student.

There's also this brilliant functionality we have on the website where you can on the little right hand side there's a button called chat with us and if you're ever not sure about something you don't know where to go to find information, if you're struggling, if you need some support, if you just like to try and make more of your time at the university you know and just develop yourself more.

You can click on that chat with this button and you come through to our team which we call UniHelp. It's basically the one -stop shop of places to go if you've ever got questions as a student and then you can just type your questions straight into the live chat functionality and someone will help you with that.

The second of the digital resources that I want to talk about is the MDX app and this is a fantastic kind of everything in one place mobile app that you can download either for Android or iPhone or iOS and in there it's going to have your student email, your timetable, you can check into your classes within the app as well so you can log your attendance, it can all be done within there accessing a library account, basically everything that you need to do as a student you can get within the MDX app.

If you just search for Middlesex University or MDX app within either of the app stores you can find it and download it to your phone. You'll need to log into the app again with your student's user id and your password which as I mentioned will have been kind of shown to you at the, kind of there will be able to before this point and once you've met all of your offer conditions which I think everyone here has.

I'm not exactly sure of that but yeah basically once you've met your offer conditions that's when you get sent your login details for my UniHub and MDX app. So I think that's everything I wanted to show from my side.

So what I'm going to do now is pass over first of all to Masha who's going to talk a bit more about her experience as the student ambassador and Masha when you want me to go forward on the PowerPoint presentation just let me know.

Okay thank you. Hi again everyone as I told you before. Oh you're a little bit quiet Masha is there any way you can speak a bit louder perhaps. Is it better now? Yeah that's a bit better thank you. Okay perfect.

As I told you before I'm an international master's student from Iran so my enrolment was completely online as yours would be and since I moved here in the middle of the pandemic, every other thing, even though my classes and lab sessions were online as well.

So David, could you please move to my next slide? So first of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about the enrolment. As David mentioned, you need your enrolment to access your timetables. So that's the exact time of your classes and you need that to activate your email so that your program leader and lecturers can be in touch with you.

And you also can access your reading list on your library account. That is basically your textbooks that your program leader and other lecturers have suggested for you. So as I mentioned before, you have to do it online on My UniHub.

So this is the first page that you come across when you try to log into My UniHub. What you do is your IT user ID and your student ID. You already know your student ID starts with M and a few other numbers.

And your IT user is your initials followed by two or three other numbers. You will get these through your emails. But I remember I couldn't find my IT user ID, so I had to contact the admissions office and ask them for help.

But they are always responsive and don't worry about it. You just get it. And after that, there's a direct link when you log in. It's big and clear. You cannot miss it. Don't worry. And every other instruction is followed through that link.

Even the payment is online. I guess it was through Western Union. remember clearly. You can attend your induction sessions without enrolment, but it is advised for you to enrol beforehand because honestly it will just make more sense to you because you will have an idea what your program leader is talking about.

And so yeah this link is a checklist for you that you can follow step by step and it just makes it easier. One other thing is I remember that I was worried about my visa because my visa process took longer than usual due to COVID and I wasn't sure if I was even going to get a visa and I was a little bit worried to pay the tuition fee and pay fees for accommodations because I'm staying in a student accommodation and then not getting a visa.

But they, the team, the Middlesex team made sure that I'm comfortable and I know that if I don't get my visa, the fees will be either refundable or referable for the next term. So that's it for my first slide.

Could you please move to the next. So yeah, other things that you can do after your enrolment. I mentioned the induction session before. That's, of course, pretty important, but you have to complete your ID check as well.

That's all you have to upload a certain photo, the instructions are online and your visa after you get it, you have to upload that as well. And your email will be activated after twenty four hours, I guess.

And the other thing is you can access my learning. So my learning is the place that you have all the details about your modules and your assignment links Dropbox for your assignments will be there and you can explore around them before your term starts.

Another thing is that if you want to open in a student account in the UK, you can request the required letter from Middlesex through your UniHaul portal. And yeah, I already mentioned the textbooks and you can see your financial status.

That is every payment that you have made for your accommodation and tuition. And yeah, that's pretty much it. I hope you have a great experience as I did. That's bro. Thanks very much, Masha. And then up next, I think a few slides from Nicole, so I'll hand over to you to talk through your bit. Hi everyone, thank you Maxia and David for the information. I think I'll be repeating a few points but then I'll try to say it in a very easy way so that everyone understands the process of enroling.

So I'm actually from Russia and currently I'm getting my master's in law but previously I've been studying at Middlesex University for like five years now because I started with foundation program in the bar branch, then I did my bachelor's degree in law also in the bar branch and last year I moved to London and now I started my master's degree and unfortunately last year everything was online but hopefully this year for you guys they said it's going to be more mixed schedule so you get so hopefully your sessions the lectures will probably you'll still be online but Seminars, they might be on campus so you get to actually interact with each other.

Next slide please. So I made a small short checklist, a few points have been mentioned by Marcia and David, and also wanted to thank David for saying about the Movido starter pack, it seems very useful because when I arrived to the United Kingdom.

I didn't have much support regarding the airport pickup about SIM cards, I had no idea where to get my SIM card from. So even house in searching support this is very great because I also struggled a bit with finding a suitable apartment, because I arrived to the United Kingdom with my mother, so we were not able to stay in the middle of sex accommodation we had to search for a house which would be suitable for two of us.

So I guess middle sex handles this as well now. So my small checklist is always check your emails. This is just my tip for throughout the year, because before the university starts during the university year, all the time you get important emails about everything so you shouldn't miss anything so just check it all the time.

That's just a very important tip from me. Second, as it has already been mentioned, get enroled. This is a very simple process, it actually takes about five minutes, all you have to do is just log in, check your details which states your name, your current address, your address in your home country, maybe a few other questions about yourself so basically takes five minutes just to get enroled, so nothing to worry about, it's a very, very simple process.

So once you get enroled, you get to explore the UniHAB page. It's very interesting because you actually get to see your schedule for the first time, you get to see your modules, the ones you enroled for, you get to see some of the books, you can you can scroll through your books because they might be already online you can see the program you'll be studying throughout the year.

You get to explore the library online so it's very fun process especially if you're new to Middlesex University and you're excited about everything so this is a fun time to explore Middlesex page. Then you get to switch from your personal from your personal email account to Middlesex account so all your future emails regarding university will always be sent to the Middlesex University email so whenever you are participating in any Middlesex events or if you are emailing your professors always use your Middlesex email account.

You can forget about your previous one the previous your old one your personal one stays for your personal for your personal stuff. Then my fifth point is ID. check. It's also a very simple process. Once you get your visa or once you get your British cards, the residence permission, you can just upload it to Middlesex and your photos.

So it takes a few minutes as well. Paying your fees. So usually always I used to pay with my credit card or I used to pay with my debit card. This was always the simplest process for me because I'm used to paying with my credit card.

So you enter the details. It's very simple. And we all know how to pay with your credit cards online. This is a simple process. But a few months ago I had some issues with paying with my debit card. I don't know why.

It wasn't displaying properly. And I tried the second option, which Middlesex offers. You can pay by phone. So you have to dial the phone number, which is given on Middlesex page. And then on the phone call, you answer a few questions about your debit card.

You tell your name. You tell the sum that you're supposed to, the sum that you want to pay. And it worked for me much better and even faster than entering everything online. So just export the page. It's very simple.

So if you have some issues, maybe paying online, try paying by phone. It works as well. Attend the induction day. Well, some of you have been asking whether it is actually necessary to attend the induction day.

But yes, I recommend doing it because it's actually fun. That's the day when you get to meet everyone. That's the day when you get to see the university, I believe. Or that's the day when you get to get to know more about the university.

It's just a very fun day. It's very interesting day because we're all excited about our new step in life. So why not just do it? It's very fun. Yeah. Eight is registering for your optional modules. Not all of you have it, but or maybe Maybe you get it in the second term, but maybe you get it in the first term, sometimes you get a choice between a few modules and you have to register the one you prefer more.

But actually, I guess this usually comes in the second term of the year. Yeah, creating a subgroup with your program mates, with your classmates. This comes after you have met them, of course, after you have met your mentor, and you start interacting with each other.

And through WhatsApp, we actually get the most updated news about your classmates, about your program, about everything. So do make sure that your program, your class starts. Can you guys hear me because it's written that my connection is unstable?

We can. So good, Nicole. Yeah, my 10th point is to become a student voice leader. I was a student voice leader of my class. I still am the voice leader of my class. It's actually fun and you get to collect your classmates' opinions about university, about what they expect from their studies, what they actually want to change, what they want to achieve.

And you get to tell and you get to take this information and send it to university leaders so that they can make the university better, so that they can also improve your studies or they can improve or they would listen to your opinions and they would make a change to something that you don't like and they will make it better.

So you become a student voice leader in a few first weeks. Your class manager is going to ask whether you want to be a student voice leader. There's nothing to worry about. It's very easy. It's very fun.

You actually get to interact with people. And if you want to become more confident, if you want to become more extroverted, you can just try doing it because you get to interact with more people. And then apply for an Oyster card and other discounts.

So as David said, there's a mobile that I guess helps you applying for Oyster card or something like that. But so Oyster card is a card which you use in London or in the United Kingdom to on bus or on the tube.

Well, to be honest, student Oyster card didn't help me much because actually it's it takes the same amount as a normal Oyster card. So I didn't see the difference much between the student Oyster card and the normal Oyster card.

So basically all you have to do is either apply for the student cards online or you can just buy a normal Oyster card, I believe, in the tube. So there's not much, no big difference. But I guess it helps with you with those basic things, you don't have to worry about those things anymore.

And next slide please. Just a few things to explore at MDX. So once you get started once you enroled once university starts, please join me the middle sex sports teams because they're very fun and there's so many of them so there's a cricket team football team there's tennis team there's so much Chats.

If you're not that sporty there's everything, everything you can think of middle sex actually has it. To be honest, I'm not sure about this year, but is there. But I guess there will be sports this year because for me, I was a bit unlucky there wasn't sports teams that much last year.

But let's see how it goes. Secondly, you can volunteer and work for a middle sex university, for example, like we are doing now because we are students as well. And we are just helping out here. We are giving tips to future students.

We are participating in different events and this is also a fun thing to do and also a thing to develop your inner confidence. And there was other curricular courses like maybe you could join languages courses because this year we had Spanish.

We had Italian classes, so it's not only sports, it's lots of other varieties, things you could do with Middlesex, their dance team or for example, public speaking team. So it's not only about sports, it's about any interest that you have.

Middlesex just supports everything you can do and so you get to explore lots of things. Especially in the first days when I joined Middlesex, I saw the list of things you could do. I wanted to join everything I can.

I didn't know, I just signed up for everything I could. And try to attend networking events, for example, like this one. Well, there's lots of other events, for example, there's icebreaking activities that David mentioned, where if you get actually to meet each other, you get to meet other students, you get to meet everything.

You can because you have a small speed meeting sessions, where we meet in small groups, even online, and we meet each other and we talk to each other. It's very fun. So try to participate in everything you can because making friends, making connections is especially important while you can.

Okay, thank you guys. This was one of my small tips for today. And your questions, we'll be answering them now. Let's use the chat box and we will try to reply to everything we can. Brilliant. Thanks so much for all of those, Nicole.

I'm going to stop sharing my screen from the PowerPoint presentation. I've seen lots more questions coming in the chat, which is fantastic. What I'm going to do just to give kind of Masha and Nicole some time to answer some of those questions in the chat. I'm going to share my screen again and I'm going to show you what the student website UniHub looks like and just navigate around to a few of the pages that we referenced.

So if you just bear with me for one second whilst I share my screen again and this time I'll be able to show you the UniHub website so that you can kind of see how it all looks. So I think that can be seen by people again now I've shared this you can see kind of the student website and so this is what UniHub looks like.

It's very easy to remember URL it's just unihub .mdx .ac .uk and as I said this works like that all the core information that you'll need as part of your studies at the university. So right here at the top here you can search for anything you want to look for and there's also a button right here which can take you to the welcome checklist that we talked about.

So this is the page that has all the information that can help new students. about kind of where to go to enrol, all of those details, etc. If I just go back, apologies, I just need to move from the screen a little bit so I can see the back tab thing.

And actually if I go to the next tab, I can go through just the main pages that you can access. So also within the welcome section, here's the international orientation page that I mentioned. So this has details about events and activities that are running for international students, details about kind of the user and stuff before you come to the UK.

And then down here at the bottom is the booking form so that you can book on for all of the different events that you want to attend. As I said, there's lots of different online ones mainly happening in that week of the 13th of September, and then events which are happening throughout the rest of the term, and kind of around the UK.

Some of these we might move around a little bit in terms of dates, just because we want to make sure that as many students as possible can come to them, etc. So that's the international orientation page, and that's just within the student life section.

And then if I go to the next tab, I've already got the welcome checklist. Here's the ready for anything page. Again, you can get to it from the main homepage of the website, and this is where you can book on for the activities that are taking place between now and the start of the term.

Really recommend you book onto those. It might be that if you're still in your home country, then you can't come to the on -campus events. That's fine. There's still lots more of those that will happen when the term starts, but there are lots of great online events that you can already start booking onto to meet other new students.

And again, you can just book onto them right from the start here using this form. Book on for as many as you want. And then the other thing I just want to show you is this is the Movido website we referenced.

So if you just go to the URL that we had in the presentation, it's go -movido, and then add in the MDX promo code, and that's how you can access that. So the other thing, apologies, I just need to go back to the UniHub page, and then if I go back to the home page, let's go to show you at the top here, this is the button for my UniHub.

If you click on that, that's how you get onto my UniHub to log in for anything that you might need. And then if I go back again, on the right -hand side of any page on the UniHub website, and actually if you go to support, here's how you can find UniHub.

So just under support and well -being and UniHub, that's where you can go to find and get in contact. You can do live chats, or submit a query, or you can phone them. Lots of different ways to get in touch that you can get support from the university.

So yeah, it's all here on the student website. As I said, it's a really easy place to find everything. And one, here's the button right on the home page about how to access the Ready for Anything program as well.

So yeah, hopefully you can all find it all there really easily. and yeah here's the little green chat with this button that I referenced just this one here it brings up chat so you can type in your question and that'll go to one of our advisors.

So just thought I'd spend a minute showing you what that looks like. I'll stop sharing my screen again and we'll start going to any questions which will come through on the chat that we haven't already covered.

So Masha or Nicole are there any that you've seen come through that we haven't responded to yet it would be good to answer. I sent some to you directly. Oh fantastic okay yeah so let me just go through the ones that you sent through to me and I'll answer them.

So let's see you sent through a question what time does enrolment open and so that opens on Wednesday the 1st of September so it's next Wednesday it'll open from any time in that day so if by that point you've been sent your login details you can go to the UniHub website and roll as we talked about there.

What day is the induction day so that will depend on your program of study so what you need to do is it'll usually be sometime in the week of the 20th of September for most programs that's the week it'll be in but what you need to do is need to log in to either my UniHub or MDX app with the login details that we've referenced already.

If you're having any issues logging in the fastest way to resolve it is just to message UniHub using the live chat function on the UniHub website and just say I can't log in I don't know my details and they'll be able to get them for you and kind of send them to you really quickly.

So once you've logged into my UniHub or MDX app in there you can see your full welcome schedule which tells you when your induction day or days because sometimes programs have the induction across multiple days so you can see the next year will be in the 20th of September a deadline or will we have extra days so most program inductions this year are going to take place online so even if you're not the UK yet by the 20th when your induction takes place, it's still really important that you attend wherever you are.

You will be able to get information from your program team if you miss your induction, but you'll miss out on the opportunity to kind of meet them properly face to face to be in the Zoom chat or whatever you kind of group online with other new students as well.

So we really recommend you attending your program induction. Let's see, just looking through for any other further questions that you tagged me in Mascha. Here we go. Regarding UniHub, there were recurring issues related to changing the password.

It kept showing an error or something. Could you elaborate on what we could do? And so if you're having any issues with regards to changing your password or logging in, it's a technical system. You know, unfortunately, sometimes there are IT issues, but luckily there is a whole team dedicated to solving any IT issues at the university.

So if you are having an issue changing your password or logging in, as I said, just get in contact with uni help. The fastest way to do that is through the live chat functionality on the website. Just tell them what you're struggling with and they'll either be able to sort it for you or reset the password.

And it will just happen much quicker than like submitting a ticket, which then goes away to them and they'll email you back. You can do that if you want, but we recommend live chat to get the fastest result.

The next one I've been tagged in, Italy doesn't allow major online payments. So is there a way to back bank transfer? I'm not sure about that one myself actually. So I'm not based on the finance side of things.

So maybe we can just take that question and we'll try and get another team member to provide an answer. And then we can include that when we send over the PowerPoint. So that's the question about how to do bank transfers if online payments are difficulty.

And I think that's all of the questions that I've been tagged in. We've got all the same just, oh, sorry. Do we have any more coming through, Mashira or Nicole? I guess there are two new questions at the end of the chat from Sunny and Ali.

Oh, yes. So Sunny asks, what about quarantine facilities? So for most situations now in the UK, if you do unfortunately test positive for coronavirus for COVID -19, we recommend that you just stay at home and you quarantine there.

And then if you're feeling really unwell, that's when you then contact the NHS, you can then advise you on emergency or A &E support for health. What the university does, it's really important if you do test positive to get in touch with the university and kind of let us know as soon as possible.

What I'm gonna just really quickly do is get from, at the top of every UniHub page, there is a little bar that says COVID -19 latest, frequently asked questions and information. So you can find that from any page on the website.

website. It's really important that you check that every now and again, just to see if there's been any updates or anything. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to just grab from that page, the email address that you should use, actually it's a form that you should complete if you do contract coronavirus.

So I'll just share a link to that overall page into the chat so that you can see it. And then within that page, there's a section of frequently asked questions, and there's one about what should I do if I develop COVID-19 symptoms, and there's one that gives you a link to a form you can for them to tell the university.

We'll then get in touch with support, etc, to help you in that circumstance. Ali's question, can you show how to access your email? We have access to it now. So you need to enrol before you get access to your student email.

So you can log in to my UniHub and MDX app now, which is fantastic. but you'll only actually get your university email itself once you've enrolled which as we said you can do from Wednesday the 1st of September that's next week.

So basically just try and enrol as quickly as you can as Masha and Nicole both wonderfully showed there are lots of benefits and advantages which you only get access to once you enrol so we just recommend that you do that as quickly as you can once it opens next Wednesday.

And then one last question which has come through from Rakesh. Are there any routes through the university to book the mandatory COVID tests during the self -isolation period for students coming from ambulance countries and isolating in halls of residence?

So what I'll do is I'll just find a link that we do have on the university website that has details about that. In fact you can see on that same link that I posted through just a second ago so on that link I said which is the UniHub link COVID -19 updates FAQ.

Near the very top of that page on the right hand side there's a whole section about PCR or hotel quarantine that you might need to do from some countries and how you can apply to get reimbursement for those.

So all the details are on that page and they'll be able to articulate it in more detail than I can right here so just click on that link and then check the details within that section on the right about PCR and hotel quarantine.

I did see one question earlier on about the university and whether we provide tests to you or whether you're expected to get them yourselves. So obviously there's the tests which you're expected to do based on which country you're coming to the UK from and before and after you travel but then as I was saying earlier in the presentation we generally ask students to complete a home test which is called a rapid lateral flow test which is really well you know it's one you can do at home you know kind of just yourselves and you can order packs of those from the NHS website basically as soon as you've arrived in the UK or when you've got your new address that you're going to be moving to.

once you arrive in the UK. If you just search on Google for NHS home test kit or rapid lateral flow test, it will pull up a link for how you can order them for yourself completely free. You can get a pack of seven of those and then you can just use them every few days or so before you come to campus to check yourself and know that you're kind of okay.

Just seeing the last question in there from Muzamil about CAS letter, that very much depends on the admissions team. So I can't answer that one just because I'm not an expert in that area. But if you do get in touch with admissions about your own situation, that's probably the best way to work out how long kind of the CAS letter will take for you.

I think we've answered all the questions that have come through. So I'll say a big, big thank you. Thank you. Yeah, sorry Victoria, I'm just going to go on there. So, for any questions about CAS or VISA etc, it's best you get in touch with the admissions team that kind of already handling your own personal situation with regards to the application.

I'm afraid I can't answer anything because I'm not sure from from my team's perspective. We only look after supporting students kind of from the enrolment process onwards. Yeah, I've been in contact with them but I've been struggling a little bit.

But yeah, yeah, may I, may I say something. So, when I was applying for middle sex last year, I was struggling with my cash letter as well. And because it was the very, it was the time when the COVID was the most spreading.

It took me, I don't know why but it actually took me two months to get my cash letter. But I guess this year it's a bit more calm and I guess they will issue them much faster. But what I did and what I would recommend is just keep emailing them every 10 days reminding of yourself that you're waiting for this cash letter.

So, so maybe you feel calmer when they say yes. So when they apply you saying yes, we will issue it in, in a week or in 10 days you at least you will know that they don't forget about you and that you're getting your cash letter soon.

Okay, personally I have my cash letter today I was working on my online application but I've encountered a few problems I mean, on the website is described in a certain way and then when I went on the UK government.

It's not called tier four anymore it's just student visa they asked me different questions, and I'm not getting a clear reply so like I was looking for someone with a bit of experience to talk to, you know, also because I'm Italian is for me is just weird now to apply for a visa to the UK because I never needed one.

So, yeah, that makes sense Victoria, maybe if you. If you privately share just if I'm not sure if we're able to if you're probably able to message us to email. address then we can kind of like check with the team to get kind of back to you who can support you on it.

Yeah I've emailed every team possible and accessed the chat and the what's up number like everything. I'm just waiting for a clear reply from somebody that knows something. I'm not sure if you have the functionality to privately message us your email address but then we can kind of just.

Oh yeah I can absolutely. Brilliant yeah if you do that then that means there we go yeah I finally just said if you can message your email then we can put you straight in touch with a relevant team member who can hopefully get back to you faster than the kind of way you've been contacted so far.

Thank you for asking that and hopefully we can get that sorted. Thank you. No worries at all. Thank you very much everyone else for all of your wonderful questions and joining us today. We're going to pop a quick poll in a minute, which would be really great if you could take a minute to answer that.

And if we missed anything, then please do get in touch with us.

Hi everyone, my name is Ashna. I am a first-year student doing my undergraduate degree in international business. I come from Nepal and I am also an international student ambassador for Middlesex. So today I'm going to be showing you what you need to be packing if you're coming to the UK for your further studies.

So without any further delay, let's get started with the video. So firstly, I'm going to be showing you what you need to pack in your carry -on. So it contains all of your essential items like your electronics, your charger, and also the most important thing you'll have here are your documents.

So make sure you keep them safe in a file. Make sure you keep your university offer letter, gas letter, your passport tickets, and all other financial and health reports that are required from your country while you enter the UK.

Also packing my educational transcripts. Don't forget to carry some cash and coin because it always comes in handy and make sure it's according to the limit of the airport. Then you can pack your travel size essential items which is usually under 100ml for most flights. 

And your carry-on is all set to go. Now it's time for the check -in luggage. So make sure you pack a lot of cardigans, sweaters, and warm clothes because UK can get pretty chilly. So I'm packing some of my sweaters, cardigans, and also a good quality windproof jacket.

I am also packing some formals and then a scarf, a cap, and some earmuffs to keep myself warm. Also pack good quality trousers and jeans. And then you also need some loungewear. Also pack some small handbags and tote bags.

Here's my makeup and all other essential toiletries. It is essential that you don't overpack because most of the items you can buy when you get here. Also pack a good quality umbrella and some travel at home. And extra cables if you need them.

You will also be needing good quality shoes if you're coming to the UK because you will be walking around quite a bit so make sure you pack some comfortable trainers, rain boots and all other shoes which are of good quality.

Packing warm buffer jackets is always a good idea and make sure you don't bring a lot of utensils with you because you can get them here for very cheap. We hope the video was informative and if you'd like to see more helpful videos from us make sure you leave the ideas in the comment box below and we are looking forward to welcoming all of you here at Middlesex University.

Bye!