Your mention of competitive college-sponsored study abroad programs makes me think of the stereotypical high school service trip to do unskilled labor in impoverished Latin America. This inevitably leads to the essay with the theme of: “I never knew how lucky and privileged I was until I saw true poverty in Latin America. Even though it was only a ten day trip (five of which were spent touring the city where the plane landed), it changed my entire perspective on life and now I want to go into a life of service to the poor. Your college will give me the skills I need to do that!” Never mind that the 4K that the parents spent to send Buffy alone (let alone the other 19 US teens on the trip) to dig latrines in an impoverished rural village could probably have bought the materials to build a village school, with the villagers’ own labor, and paid one local carpenter to direct them. College admissions officers saw so many of these essays that they became inured to them, discounted them. They did more harm than help to applications.
The reality is that study abroad programs sponsored by US colleges are usually at rack tuition rate, the same cost as a semester at the US college. This can be a very good deal for the student on enormous fin aid, since their fin aid will be applied to the abroad semester’s cost, and may be the only way for them to have an abroad experience during college, but it’s often not a good deal for the self-pay student, since the actual cost of tuition and housing in the foreign country is usually a small fraction of even US public college tuition, let alone private. The other issue is that the students are usually grouped together, especially when going to a non-English speaking country, and wind up not becoming fluent in the language and culture of the country.
An alternative arrangement for a person who really wants to become fluent in the language and culture of the target country is to study the country’s language while in college, and then design one’s own year abroad during college as a gap year, living in the dorms of the college abroad with that country’s students, taking classes with them, and hopefully paying the much, much lower tuition for that country, even as a foreign student. This isn’t feasible for every part of the world, but it is feasible for many areas. One of my kids did this “sideways” route to study abroad. It was far, far cheaper, and the kid wound up acquiring a much higher level of skill than that obtained by the typical junior year abroad program student, because no time was spent with other Americans, or even English-speakers.
The same principle applies to other competitive admission clubs that students join in order to enhance grad school applications. Which means more? That the student made it into the school’s competitive admission medical service club for premeds, or that the student worked a summer job in a medical clinic for migrant workers in agricultural areas? Obviously, it’s possible for students to seek out and even create opportunities for themselves that are far more valuable than those found in a competitive admissions club, in any field. Can’t get into the engineering project club? Get together a few colleagues, approach a prof, get sponsored, and start your own project group. But I agree, it’s definitely worth considering whether the school has an atmosphere of tiered selection for career-related groups, vs an inclusive, open-admissions policy for career-related groups.
As for highly exclusive social groups, that’s just life. There always are going to be clubs like that, anywhere one goes, whether overtly or subtly. The skills learned by founding a new club, or doing an end-run around the club in order to achieve the same, or more likely a better, outcome will serve the person well throughout life.