The first few weeks of university can be traumatic.

Some students will be venturing beyond the city for the first time, others heading nervously away from beloved rural idylls. Rich will meet poor, North will meet South. A sheltered few will even be getting their first taste of mixed-sex education.

And that’s just the home students. Alongside them are thousands of young international students from Iran to Venezuela, China to the USA, who might be expected to find the transition far more baffling. But friendly locals and helpful media are attempting to soften the culture shock.

Nipan Maniar, a senior lecturer in the School of Creative Technologies at Portsmouth, found his arrival in the UK from India eight years ago so disorienting he has recently developed an online game to help new students at his university to adjust.

Called C-Shock, the game lets users walk a virtual student around a university campus, giving explanations of sights that could potentially surprise newcomers to the UK, such as public kissing, short-skirted women and alcohol consumption.

The site has received over 16,000 hits so far, but many foreign students today already have a pretty good idea of what they will find when they arrive here.

“I’m having a great time. I expected lots of drinking in London and that’s what I’m doing. I’m also meeting a very eclectic crowd,” says Ishaan Saxena, 22, from India and studying International Political Economy at the LSE, who sees no need for a computer game to help settle in.

He points out that even students who have never been to Britain before are likely to have had plenty of contact with it through films and books, and that we are generally more well-mannered towards foreigners than we think.

“I’m having no big problems – you chaps are quite friendly. I think the English are more receptive to aliens than in the US.”

Despite having been told off for standing on the left of the tube escalators and being scared by a hard-hitting police talk on personal safety, Jigar Mehta, 29, from India and studying Marketing Communication at King’s, is also coping well with the change. He cites London’s multicultural atmosphere as an important factor: “in London you get to meet people from all over the world, it’s not insular and I don’t feel alien.

“I see Indians and Asians everywhere. I went to Ikea on Sunday and I was talking to people from my state in my language.”

This atmosphere undoubtedly contributes to London’s appeal to foreign students, who continue to choose the UK in record numbers. But in the end, the strength and – critically – value of our brands in higher education is the decisive factor for most.

“The degree I’m getting here is going to be more valuable than in, say, Australia, where I was thinking of going”, says Jigar. Rafael, 22, (who did not wish to give his surname) is from New York and studying Terror and Security at King’s the cost differential between studying here and in the US made London a good bet, he says.

Far from cultural dislocation, the biggest challenge faced by most foreign students is mundanely familiar: finances. “It’s just painful to live here because it’s so expensive”, says Rafael, swiftly echoed by Jigar and Ishaan.

Some aspects of the student experience really are universal.

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