Hey everyone,
Have been a long time reader but finally created an account here 
Due to high costs of college in the US, my husband and I are considering study abroad options for our teenager kids.
Everyone talks about the UK, Canada, but beyond those, what would people personally recommend?
Any resources or consultancies that could help? Personal experiences definitely welcome!
Thank you all in advance
Do your kids speak a foreign language fluently and if so, which one. That would help direct this discussion a bit.
@MYOS1634 your thoughts?
Studying abroad and spending 3 or 4 years in another country for one’s studies are 2 different propositions.
There are various possibilities depending on your answers, ranging from Malta to American U in Paris to Bocconi in Italy and Medicine in Romania… Details would thus help us help you 
Depending on what schools you are looking at, and the cost of your in-state flagship, getting a degree abroad may or may not be cheaper - especially when you factor in flights to and from Europe. Round trips are running about $1200 these days, so at a minimum you are looking at $2400 per year added to the cost of tuition/room/board. Also, the college experience abroad is not like it is here - kids will be expected to be much more independent, often are restricted to a pre-selected course of study and will not have much (if any) of the services that are typical for American schools. For the right kid, it can be great but it is not without its challenges. For what it is worth, my kids have a friend who will be starting university in Belgium next year and it is definitely much, much cheaper than here. Their friend has European family (but raised in the US), however, and is a fluent German speaker so he is accustomed to life there.
We looked into this option, but ultimately decided against it. I did read the book “Beyond the States” and also read the blog by the same name, but decided against buying the consulting package from the writer of the book/blog. The writer has since sold the blog and consulting service I believe.
I do think there is a lot that is attractive about attending university abroad, but total cost of college here ended up being not much more expensive after merit was factored in for our kid. There are a handful of students from our kid’s high school class who are attending university abroad, and I have heard they are doing well.
With regard to Canada, the cost of attendance for an international student will vary quite a bit depending upon where you go (this is in contrast with the cost of attendance for Canadians, which varies but by less). The most famous universities (Toronto, McGill, UBC, Waterloo) seem to cost more for international students, probably because they can – people are willing to pay it.
If you are looking in Canada, and if price matters, then you probably should also look at less famous schools. Simon Fraser, the University of Victoria, Concordia, Dalhousie, and Memorial University of Newfoundland are very good and worth considering. U.Alberta and U.Calgary are also very good. I am not sure what they cost for an international student (presumably the province of Alberta has oil money right now which might help). When we looked a few years back universities in Ontario seemed to cost a bit more for international students, but you might nonetheless want to check the prices at Queen’s, McMaster, Western, Ottawa, Carleton, or some other schools in Ontario. If you are interested in a smaller school, then Acadia, Bishop’s, Mount Allison, and St Francis Xavier are very good. U.PEI and UNB are also probably worth considering. I have heard good things about U.Lethbridge and UNBC, but I do not have any personal experience with them and we did not consider them due to distance. The last time that I checked the price for a Massachusetts resident at U.Mass Amherst and the price for an international student at Acadia, Bishop’s, or Mount Allison were just about the same. You should keep the exchange rate in mind when looking at prices.
Also, Canada is really, really big. If you live anywhere in the northern parts of the USA (as we do), some parts of Canada might be close by (minimizing travel costs) and some parts will be quite far away.
One daughter attended university in Canada, got a great education, and did pretty well finding a job in the US after graduation. She did need to say “I am a US Citizen” several times during job interviews when asked about her status in the US. Due to several factors including dual citizenship this ended up costing us quite a bit less than our in-state public university.
When we looked in the UK prices did not seem much different compared to the US. Australia has some very good universities but is a long, long way away and flights would be expensive (particularly if you do not want to be stuck in coach for 12 hours straight – which might matter for any large traveler including me).
Anything else that we thought of would either require speaking a foreign language or attending a university that might be less well known in the US. One daughter does speak Spanish well enough that attending a university in Spanish would have been feasible, but she did not seriously consider any Spanish language universities.
The other thing that I noticed is that our daughter who attended university in Canada had relatively more classes in her major and fewer required classes in other unrelated subjects compared to students in the US. She had very good research opportunities, and ended up very well prepared for the job that she took in the US. I think that she also will be very well prepared for graduate school but she has not yet gotten to the point of applying to graduate programs. She did change her major at the end of her freshman year of university and this was not an issue at all for her (good grades freshman year might have helped).
I have a friend whose daughter is attending university in Norway. She attended a year long immersion program first and then started school. I believe it’s tuition free.