What ever happened to the concept of getting what you pay for? When it comes to my study abroad experience at Goldsmiths, University of London, I couldn’t tell you. By the time we returned to the United States, each of us were left wondering, “What exactly did Northeastern do with all my money?”

I studied at Goldsmiths during the spring semester, and was charged the typical study abroad fee for all programs.

However, there were some catches: our flight from the United States to London wasn’t as long as the one through the Australia program, our stay wasn’t as long as the students who studied in Rome, but the real kicker was the lack of mini trips when compared with other programs.

When some of us visited the students who were in Rome, they told us about the mini-trips Northeastern had organized for them and had been paid for by the tuition – the same amount of tuition we paid at Goldsmiths. What about our trips? They didn’t exist. Every other university who had sent students to Goldsmiths had arranged outings for them, whether they were dinners, trips to the theatre or weekend home stays.

Our group quickly became known as the Northeastern kids who were dropped off and left in “London.” Except we didn’t stay in the picturesque vision of London we expected. We stayed in a London borough called New Cross, apparently known as the “stabbing capital” of the city. Who even knew London had an area like this?

My best friend’s father, who was born in London and lived there until his 30s, didn’t want to scare me when he heard where I was going, but he did make sure to warn me to never walk around the area alone. That was a reassuring thought.

When my mother called the study abroad office to ask some questions, they mentioned that we had all been warned that New Cross was a bit of a hike from downtown London, and that the Tube (the British version of the T) was closed in New Cross due to work being done for the upcoming Olympics. However, I never received any such warning.

I wonder if Northeastern even looks into where they send students. The truth is that Goldsmiths is not nearly worth the amount of tuition we spend at Northeastern. Even the professors from Goldsmiths joked to us on the first day of classes that the photos on the school’s website must have left us wondering where all those pretty sites actually were. I agree that the school’s website was more than a little misleading.

The fact was that the English students were paying about the equivalent of $3,000 (as they pointed out to us, after hearing how much we were paying) to go to school there, and we were paying more than six times that amount for one, 12-week semester.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved London. But I think that if Northeastern paid a little more attention to the well-being of students and their experiences, and a little less on playing us for all we’re worth, the university could have easily found a more suitable school in a safer area, like so many students from other American universities were attending. (And yes, we met these other students, so we know these schools exist.)

When my parents came to visit for a week, I stayed with them in their hotel, which overlooked London’s Hyde Park. This became the only week I actually felt like I was staying in London, and I hate that the less-than-pleasant memories of New Cross are what I remember when I think about my semester abroad.

– Rachel Pope is a junior journalism major.