Small dorm rooms. Large amounts of homework.

Those are just two differences between US colleges and life in other countries, according to international students at Rider University.

Van Pham told the Rider News, a student newspaper in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, that US college dorms are the same size as her room at home in Vietnam … except at Rider she has to share that room.

Benoît Courtin, from France, noted that an American college education consists of 12 to 20 hours of classes each week. Students in France might be in class twice as many hours.

“Nevertheless, we have less homework than you have here,” he said in the article, published earlier this month. “We have more presentations and case studies.”

There’s no doubt that US colleges are different from institutions of higher education in other countries.

We asked students to describe these differences during our Spring 2008 scholarship essay competition. Students from around the world seemed to find no shortage of differences, whether it was the classes, their classmates, the homework or something else altogether.

These differences might not be easy to live with at first.

The key? Remember that this is a learning experience. What you find strange at US colleges at first may become common (even agreeable!) with time.