Wel­com­ing for­eign stu­dents has always been part of the UTC’s DNA and the links with Asia have always been strong, since the first twelve Chi­nese stu­dents were wel­comed here in Feb­ru­ary 1979, through the cre­ation of UTSEUS in 2006. Today, about 20% of UTC’s matric­u­lat­ed stu­dents are for­eign­ers, of which a sig­nif­i­cant part comes from the Asian con­ti­nent. Stu­dents with impres­sive aca­d­e­m­ic back­grounds, such as Dhivenya Rajarathi­nam, a Malaysian stu­dent who is cur­rent­ly fin­ish­ing her stud­ies, major­ing in Mechan­i­cal engineering!

Behind every appli­ca­tion to UTC, we find an excel­lent aca­d­e­m­ic record. Dhivenya is no excep­tion to the rule, as her bril­liant record offered her the oppor­tu­ni­ty, after her Malaysian bac­calau­re­ate, to study engi­neer­ing abroad. “I had the choice between Ger­many, France, Japan and Korea,» she explains. “As I want­ed to go to Europe and I pre­ferred the French lan­guage and cul­ture, I didn’t hes­i­tate long between these destinations!»

So Dhivenya flew to France in 2017, more pre­cise­ly to the city of Tours. There, she took inten­sive French cours­es for a year (to reach the B2 EU lan­guage skill lev­el), as well as a refresh­er course, to acquire the same basics as the French sci­en­tif­ic bac­calau­re­ates. In 2018, a change of scenery, she moved to Le Havre to obtain a DUT (Uni­ver­si­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Diplo­ma), at the IUT of Le Havre. “It went very well for me, the teach­ers were very atten­tive, and as I worked hard I fin­ished sec­ond in my class!”

Excel­lent results which pushed the direc­tor of her IUT to talk about UTC, at the begin­ning of his sec­ond year. «The direc­tor of my IUT spoke to me about the UTC and encour­aged me to apply after my first semes­ter results. It was not an option I had con­sid­ered before. So I looked at the pro­grammes offered by UTC, and the stu­dent life, and I was convinced!

Oth­er Malaysian stu­dents who also joined UTC were also very encour­ag­ing”. More moti­vat­ed than ever, Dhivenya is work­ing hard: «I did my best to get a good rank­ing in the third semes­ter. To do this, I took up a sports activ­i­ty and start­ed to learn a third for­eign lan­guage, as this added bonus points to my over­all aver­age.” With her excel­lent results and impec­ca­ble French, admis­sion to UTC is only a for­mal­i­ty. And the third move in 2020 for Dhivenya, who this time set­tles in Com­piègne. She enters UTC in Mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, with already in mind the idea to fol­low the elec­tive spe­cial­ty course on Indus­tri­al Design Engi­neer­ing. But there is no ques­tion of her giv­ing up her hec­tic lifestyle: she reg­u­lar­ly posts videos about her stu­dent life and advice for oth­er stu­dents on her YouTube chan­nel, and also makes videos for the UTC. In 2022, she did her first intern­ship, for the brand La Roche-Posay, at L’Oréal:

«I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do my intern­ship in the indus­tri­al devel­op­ment team,» she adds. “This reward­ing intern­ship gave me my first glimpse into the field of prod­uct devel­op­ment, in which I flourished.»

Dhivenya is now fin­ish­ing her stud­ies at UTC, and is look­ing for a final year intern­ship in the field of prod­uct devel­op­ment. No doubt she will find it quickly ! 

LINKS BETWEEN UTC AND MALAYSIA

Gaëlle Dac­qmine, deputy direc­tor of the Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions Depart­ment, UTC

The Malaysian stu­dents we wel­come at UTC come with­in the frame­work of spe­cif­ic pro­grammes, man­aged by a French organ­i­sa­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Malaysian Gov­ern­ment. This is the case of Dhivenya, a stu­dent of the SFERE (Société Française d’Exportation des Ressources Educa­tives) Malaysia pro­gramme. Since 2016, we have been receiv­ing a few Malaysian stu­dents (usu­al­ly 2 — 3) from SFERE every year. These stu­dents choose a major at UTC after two years of stud­ies in France (gen­er­al­ly for a DUT or at a IUT). They have a very good gen­er­al lev­el and an excel­lent lev­el of French and inte­grate the insti­tu­tion fol­low­ing the same admis­sion pro­ce­dure as all UTC stu­dent-can­di­dates. They then fol­low their engi­neer­ing cur­ricu­lum at UTC until grad­u­a­tion. The sec­ond spe­cif­ic pro­gramme, in Malaysia, is man­aged by Cam­pus France. It works in the same way and has also exist­ed since 2016.

«WELCOME TO FRANCE», THE LABEL WHICH REWARDS THE WELCOME OF THE UTC

UTC has been award­ed the label «Bien­v­enue en France» 2 star lev­el for the qual­i­ty of its wel­come of inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, for the peri­od 2020–2024. This label dis­tin­guish­es French High­er Edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions that have devel­oped and imple­ment­ed recep­tion facil­i­ties for these non-French stu­dents. The indi­ca­tors par­tic­u­lar­ly recog­nised for UTC are those of the qual­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty of infor­ma­tion, the qual­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty of recep­tion facil­i­ties, the qual­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty of the train­ing pack­age offers and teach­ing sup­port, accom­mo­da­tion, and the qual­i­ty of life on cam­pus, and the qual­i­ty of post­grad­u­a­tion fol­low-up for inter­na­tion­al students.