Then once we arrived in Leicester we had the taxi dance; pretty much hopping from taxi to taxi so that we could get to where we wanted. Leicester is quite huge so going from the city center to, say, my accommodation at Mary Gee houses really is madness; it's about an 1 hour walk. Add the fact that we didn't know the city and that the GPS in the iPhone simply sucks balls when you are on foot, and we had but no other choice than to be driven around by some funny Indian men (one of which didn't even know where Ratcliffe Road was!).

By the end of the day I had one burst blister on my heel and we were all pretty tired. The hotel also felt kinda sleazy but the receptionists were all very friendly and we also got free breakfast which was pretty good.

On the next day, my parents had to leave, which translates as: "on the next day, it was weeping day". We were at Morrison's and they had to go to the city center, so that meant it was time to split. They were going to take a taxi and I was going to go back to my accommodation by foot. It was kinda sad but we all knew that this is for the best and that this will actually be great for me! I'll be Tiago Espinha, MSc in one year from now which is really exciting! Master Tiago... yeah, I like the sound of that

After that I've been having a blast. Hopping from event to event, meeting new people, English, French, Bulgarians, Swiss, etc and it's been quite great. The fun's about to end though (or to start, depending on your point of view) and my induction week starts on Monday, with departmental registration.

All in all I'm really looking forward for this experience and sometimes I come to myself and I can't still believe I'm in the U-friggin-K! But it is true, I'm here, with the cloudy and freezing weather included.

That's all for today, so cheers!

As some of my readers may know, I applied for a Master's degree in Advanced Software Engineering at the University of Leicester. As of a couple of months ago, I received a letter saying I had been accepted. The said letter was a conditional offer from the University, where the condition was obtaining my current degree (BSc in Computer Science) with an average grade no lower than 65%.

"Perfect." - I thought. 65% in a 20 point scale represents 13 points, which would be totally doable with my 14.2 points average.

Still, just to be sure, I decided to e-mail the Post-Graduate Admissions Office to assert how much would 65% be in my scale. For much of my surprise, I am told that 65% actually corresponds to 16 marks in my grading system. I was shocked. This meant that my goal simply could not be done...

I e-mailed the PGA office back, asking whether that hadn't in fact been a mistake. Some days passed. Since the last time I e-mailed the PGA office it took them some two weeks to come back at me, I thought I'd send in the artillery and decided to call them. The lady who picked up my call didn't know how to help me but checked with a colleague who told her that I would have to contact the UK NARIC if I wasn't happy with that grade comparison.

So I did. I e-mailed UK NARIC, only to realize that this is actually a paid service in the UK that provides people with comparison statements between systems in foreign countries and the UK system. Without being very helpful, their reply mentioned a £40 fee for requesting such a statement, without a warranty at all that I would get in at Leicester in the end.

In the same day (yesterday), I also decided to e-mail my course coordinator (Prof. Patrício Domingues) at ESTG; I thought that perhaps he could help me and he did in fact help me. He provided me with a link to the Portuguese Republic Diary (Diário da República) where it clearly states that the grade range of 60% through 69% in the UK corresponds to 16 marks in Portugal. Bummer. It was all going down the drain... but I wasn't just about to give up. There was one last option: having my entrance requirement lowered.

The last thing I did yesterday was e-mailing Ms. Stacey March, from the Department of Computer Science at Leicester. She'd been the one to announce that I had been accepted so I thought that she could help me in this situation. In my second e-mail, since the artillery had failed before - I had to send a nuke. And so I did. I factored it all in. I mentioned the fact that on the entry requirements it says that the applicant should have a good Second Class degree, and that Second Class is actually divided in the First and Second division (60 to 69% and 50 to 59% respectively). So technically I do have a Second Class degree with my 14 marks. Plus, I threw all that I have left at them: my work experience at Omerta, the one-month job I got in Leiria, the fact that I am currently engaged in the Google Summer of Code program, and that I still am a Microsoft Student Partner. That, on top of the fact of having scored much higher than what's required in the TOEFL exam.

An hour ago, I had a surprise. The PGA office was e-mailing me, notifying that they reviewed my transcripts and together with UK NARIC they agreed that I would be accepted with a minimum of 13 points in a 20-point based scale.

YAHOO!

Essentially I feel like I was accepted twice...

Till the next time

Alright people, this is really happening . Today, I got the final acceptance letter from Leicester's Postgraduate Department. They provided me with a conditional offer where the only condition is that I finish my degree with at least 65% of overall grade average. This is totally feasible since my grade average, last I checked, was of 14 marks in a 20-point scale, which rounds to roughly 70% in a loose conversion.

Cool, hey? Now let's just hope those money leechs at the bank will loan me the money I need!

Just on a little background, I'll be taking the Advanced Software Engineering (MSc) course at the University of Leicester, with a start date of September 28th 2009. When I'm done, I'll finally be a jack of all trades and a Master of Advanced Software Engineering