Lena prelomila - had to write this in Serbian, does justice to the weight of the decision. "Prelomiti" means literally to break something lengthy and stiff, as a branch over a knee; not literally, it means to make a hard decision and discard any second thoughts - no changing your mind later.
She will not study in Utrecht. The cost is nearly bearable, even though it initially looked the cheapest of the six universities she picked (the other five being in the UK - Bristol, Sussex, Liverpool et al). The UK had only one advantage, that they all speak English, but OTOH the number of insane laws and big brother style meddling of the state into every pore of life made it highly undesirable as a place where to play the merry years of academia.
The Dutches seemed more reasonable - with their lax policy on many matters, and the way I remember Amsterdam and the dutch part of the gang in the early seventies - but then they do have the ethics of hard work (and not necessarily the habit of taking some time to think it over and see whether it can be made easier) and fat colonial history, so... it looked like a reasonable choice. And the people at the university seemed to be very unbureaucratic, a breath of fresh air.
However, the kingdom is a different matter. The requirements for the visa are so arrogant, they make you feel very unwelcome. Just the bank statement, where you basically have to convince them that you won't have to be taken care of by the kingdom's social services, are so formal and so incompatible with what our credit union delivered, that it doesn't matter that we got about 50K$ at the moment - the form of the statement is plainly wrong. In American bank parlance, a statement is pretty much a simple overview of last month's transactions over all the accounts - and such statements for the last three months, simple scan and print copies, sufficed when I was getting the Belgian visa five years ago. Now the Dutches want a specific list of data to be included, will not accept anything I can print etc. I got the statement from the credit union, but it's the same statement I have already printed for myself, only (at my special request) it includes a stamp and signature of the teller. And the remark about the savings account mentions "6 free transfers per month", implying that the money on savings is freely transferrable, not bound to anything, but they require "no savings account or share portfolio".
Then, they want a minimum monthly allowance to land to her account (probably in some dutch bank), no less than 800€ - which raises the annual cost to 27000$ (when health insurance - "one day in hospital can cost up to 1300€" - and sojourn tax are included)... but that's not all. The whole amount should be available in advance (still can do, but why? - do they just want all that money to sit in one of their banks?). Then "please mind the actual costs of living are much higher".
The worst part, however, is visa terms and conditions. First, there's a list of countries where you better be born if you want to come in without a visa. Serbia, of course, is off that list, despite being whitelisted in Schengen since this year. Further, it says "when you go to consulate to pick your visa, you may be required to show extra paperwork, such as a 'declaration of good behaviour', to show that you have not been prosecuted or convicted". Yeah, right, that would mean we couldn't pick the visa in DC - that kind of a document is the FBI background check, and we've overstayed our visas. So that would have to be in Belgrade, when we get there.
Then, the timing: first you have to be accepted at the UCU - OK, done. Send the complete application at least three months before arriving - could do. Then wait for the UCU to tell you when you can apply for the visa. You can't be in the Netherlands while the visa is processed. Cost is 438€, payable once you get to the university.
The scary part is that they may, at will, delay the process if any of the data are suspicious or not up to their standards, which may easily exceed the two months we'd have between the move home, which we plan to do at the end of june, and the start of the academic year in late august.
Once more, we're the special case, just because we're born in the wrong country - first, we have to pretend we don't exist until we get to Serbia, to prevent any check that would reveal we overstayed here. Then, the fresh change of status of Serbia, from blacklisted to whitelisted, hasn't made it into all the corners of the bureaucracy, which can cause a delay, requests to interpret some obscure law etc etc.
So the plan, instead, is that she will study art. She already feels better doing that than doing chemistry. And with art comes a certain degree of independence (and lack of a sinecure, may not be an easy life), while with chemistry one's choices are to work in poison industry, or a lab - all meaning either corporate or governmental or academic institutions, with their hierarchies, point haired bosses etc, more possibly than not producing something that will hurt humanity more than it would help it, generally not satisfying.
To study art in Serbia isn't easy, at least the entrance isn't. The number of students accepted is in single digits per college, and there aren't many of those to start with. But there are other ways - we'll see about private lessons, we know several painters around town. Come to think of it, I know about half the known artists, at least those who graduated before the nineties.
And she deserves some time to just sit idle and think everything over.