I'm a college student from the UK studying abroad in the US. I have a lot more homework here, but it's easier to pass.

• I'm a college student at a university in Scotland who's studying abroad in California right now.
• I was surprised to learn that in the US, there's a lot more homework but it's easier to pass.

Because I've lived in three countries throughout my life, I have a unique educational background. I grew up in Poland, which is where I went to school for most of my life. When it came time for college, I moved to the UK to attend the University of Stirling in Scotland.

When I found out it offered study-abroad programs in the US, I immediately wanted to go. Since January, I have been studying at San Diego State University in California, and I'll remain here until June.

After taking college courses in the US and the UK, I've found five main differences between their college-education systems.

There is so much more homework in the US — and it all counts toward your final grade

I was slightly taken aback by the difference in the weekly workload.

In the UK, I had only three classes a semester, and homework for each of them took no more than a couple of hours to complete each week. Usually, I had to watch video lectures, do the readings, and post something on a discussion board. While most of that was technically mandatory, it never counted toward my grade.

It's very different in the US. Firstly, I have to take at least four classes each semester. Secondly, the professors give us much more homework than I ever got back in the UK. There's about three times as much reading to do on a weekly basis as in Scotland. Additionally, there are quizzes for all lecture videos, more discussion-board posts to write, and exams almost every week.

While in the UK, I spent about two hours weekly doing homework. In the US, it takes me two hours for each class. And the worst part is the homework counts toward my final grade.

Failing a class because I didn't do the reading is something I never had to worry about at my home university.

Writing an essay in the US is much easier

In the UK, my grade for each class was solely based on two essays — each counting for 50% of my final grade. The 2,000-word essays required at least six academic sources and a bibliography. It took many hours to do research for these essays — not counting the hours it took to actually write them.

In the US, I have more papers to write — 10 in one semester — but the requirements are less strict. For instance, only one of them required a bibliography, and the sources could've been news articles, which are much easier to find and read than academic sources. This greatly shortened the number of hours it took me to write a paper. In the states, I finish all my papers in half the time, as I don't need to read hundreds of pages I barely understand.

While British professors require you to apply academic sources to prove your arguments, American professors encourage more creative thinking and allow analysis not supported by references.

As for grading, it's much more difficult to get a high score in the UK

When I was a student in the UK, my grades hovered in the 60% to 70% range — and that's considered very good. For instance, I once wrote an essay that the professor described as "excellent," and they couldn't point out a single flaw; the professor gave me an 80%, and I was ecstatic.

You can imagine my horror when I got to the US and learned 60% was considered failing.

When I first learned about the difference in grading, I was quite worried my entire exchange would be spent in the library studying and trying not to fail. Fortunately, it turns out my professors in the US aren't half as harsh while grading papers as mine were back home.

Resources like textbooks in the UK are all available online and for free

In the UK, almost all my required readings were free to read online in the library. The university took care to make sure students had all the resources they might need. I'd had to buy only one textbook since my first year, and I spent $31 on it.

But in the US, I have spent almost $300 on textbooks — just for this one semester. I access most of them online, so it feels strange to pay for something I usually get for free back home.

Some professors in the US ban laptops in the classroom

At my Scottish university, almost all the resources I needed were available online, so we accessed them on our laptops in class.

I was surprised to learn that some professors in the US ban laptops in class. My textbooks are still online, so I've struggled to access the reading several times.