About the Authors

John Wallis is in his last year at Cambridge, and has crisscrossed both the US and Europe to update and expand Uni in the USA…And Beyond.

Alice Fishburn was a British student in her final year at Harvard when she wrote the original Uni in the USA and is now Deputy Director of the Financial Times Weekend magazine.

Anthony Nemecek was Director of the Educational Advisory Service of the US-UK Fulbright Commission based in London and now runs the AJNemecek Educational Consultancy.

The foreword of Uni in the USA…And Beyond was written by Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, and Matt Oakman, 6th Form Head of Wellington College.

Alice writes:

"I have a confession to make. I owned a pair of Harvard pyjamas as a child. There are pictures of me looking charming in them and reading Beatrix Potter. My indoctrination in the merits of an American education may well have started at this point, although I am certain that I held out for a good many years. But finally, having spent the better part of my teenage years ignoring parental suggestions, I ploughed my way through my SATS as well as my A Levels, submitted my applications and found myself on a plane to Boston. Now, in my final year at Harvard, I am the recipient of an education that has been considerably harder than Peter Rabbit but just as rewarding. And as the deadly date of graduation creeps ever nearer, I find myself thinking back over the decisions that got me here.

"Try as I might, I don’t think I can blame the pyjamas. Even the skilled psychological tactics of my parents were not the deciding factor. Instead I realised that I simply couldn’t get what I wanted from England. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and the thought that, aged eighteen, I would be limited to one academic subject for the next three years gave me claustrophobia. America, on the other hand, refused to let me confine myself. I had to take a variety of courses –in three years here I have studied physics, Chinese politics and musical theory while majoring in history and literature. I was given the freedom to choose what I wanted to do and the flexibility to go back and correct any initial mistakes (did I really think I wanted a degree in classics?) The American education offered me the chance both to explore and to specialise – an option that many undecided students in the UK are simply not aware of."