So I was wondering if there are any universities in the UK, that have exchange programs with Russia. Preferably in the engeneering/maths/physics field.
Chances are if a university has exchange options then they're through Erasmus, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. Or just go to whichever uni you want for now and then get into postgrad, there's a lot more opportunities for travel there.
Your best bet would be to sign on somewhere reasonably outward-looking and then move early to find a Russian university which has a curriculum which matches one year of the course; if you can demonstrate well in advance that a year abroad would be feasible I think most places would in principle be open to it.
Alternatively, study on the continent. The French, for example, have dozens of such programmes.
I'm living in Moscow currently as an expat, and have been looking at their uni's for the past few months with an idea of resuming my PhD studies. I'll share my experiences, but they may not be fully informed for engineering/physics/maths. Everything I say is also assuming you don't speak Russian - just ignore my post if you can.
HE here is really fractured into a ton of small institutes and academies. They are all trash or government sponsored. I can speak for Moscow (where anything of value is), but there may be options at St Petersburg too. I really wouldn't advise going to any other city - educational prospects there will be completely mickey mouse.
Of the legitimate or prestigious institutions there are only two universities in Moscow that teach in English at all - I could go into a lot more detail as to why I believe it is so, but it may be irrelevant. Anyway, they are The Highest School of Economics (don't let the name fool you, they cover humanities, engineering and social sciences too) and Skolkova Tech (mostly business/computing but maybe do engineering and hard science).
MSU (lomonov) has a faculty for foreigners but it is mostly for teaching them Russian language/culture - it certainly doesnt cover the subjects you mention. There is a major re-shuffle in Mathematics and Hard Sciences (I hate this term, but for want of a better word...) teaching going on at the moment. I'm not really in the know about it, but it's some major restructuring of everything - you could search around I guess. Anyway, I believe only private research organisations have any formal teaching in English - none of the publicly funded institutes do.
As >>5165 says, you may need to forge your own exchange. I don't think any of these will have exchange programmes at all, HSE and Skolkova are brand spanking new and are only just kicking off their English-language based programmes at all, I doubt they have the ties.
I'd also point out that anything other that these 2 are a complete waste of time academically. I haven't checked any league tables (which are worthless anyway), but general levels of HE here are pretty tragically bad. There is a lot of current investment, but it won't kick in for a generation or so.
>>5167 What you've written would be really helpful and I greatly appreciate your work, but as I' ve mentioned in >>5164 I am from Russia, not the UK. Still very interesting info.
