<p>Where would be a good place to go for study abroad and the like?</p>
<p>out of curiousity, which school is the largest in terms of majors? land? population?</p>
<p>it doesnt matter how many study abroad options a college has, its making sure that the college has the study abroad program that youre interested in. </p>
<p>its like saying a college has 6 million volumes of books, and although thats nice, you'd probably only care about the books that you'll need for research on your own topics.</p>
<p>Studying abroad is one of those things which you can make work for you at almost any college you attend. There are hundreds of programs available to students from any college and it is really just working out the logistics. Now if you need to get grades (all programs give college credits) or need to take a certain load of courses (say an engineering major who has to take certain requirements every semester) then study abroad programs associated with your specific college are necessary.</p>
<p>You need to be careful, though. Yale discourages study abroad, and makes it very difficult to do, and well under 5% of students actually do it. They have no programs of their own. Harvard has only one program (in Chile), and very few students do it. At Princeton, they charge you an extra fee for the privilege. The logistics are difficult.</p>
<p>There are other colleges where international study is required for graduation (Kalamazoo), where well over 50% of the student body go abroad (St. Olaf's, Macalester), or which have very well-known programs of their own (Earlham, Smith). But you need to check the college in advance for the area of the world in which you hope to study, and, if on financial aid, whether the aid will travel with you.</p>
<p>I agree with Mini. There are also big differences in how colleges make study abroad available. Some only offer study abroad through other programs - with these, financial aid and merit grants often do not apply, making it difficult for some students to afford to go. The best study abroad options, in my opinion, are the ones run by individual schools themselves - this way you have a guarantee that academic quality will be good, that credits will apply to graduation, and that your financial aid and merit money can be applied. And, at some schools, these types of programs also allow people who are majoring in subjects that don't typically lend themselves to studying abroad to participate.</p>
<p>That said, "The International 50" are a group of colleges that are acknowledged to have the most extensive college-run study abroad programs in the country with the highest percentages of students studying abroad. All of these schools have outstanding study abroad options and often also have a real international focus on campus and in their curriculum. Here's a link:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.beloit.edu/%7Ei50/%5B/url%5D">http://www.beloit.edu/~i50/</a></p>
<p>By the way, while you are at the site, check out the article "What works in international education" - it can help you evaluate study abroad options at other schools.</p>
<p>Check out Arcadia U. in suburban Phila. they have very extensive study abroad options.</p>
<p>The University of California runs a fantastic education abroad program, with options in almost 30 countries.</p>
<p>The 2004 US News Best Colleges had an unranked list of "substantial" study abroad programs:
Arcadia, Bates, Beloit, Butler, Carleton, Central, Dartmouth, Dickinson, Duke, Earlham, Georgetown, Goshen,
Grinnel, Indiana Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Macalester, Mich St, Middlebury, NYU, Pitzer, St Olaf, Syracuse,
Minnesota Twin Cities, U Penn, U Wisc Madison</p>
<p>I thought it would be more convenient since I want to study world cultures and languages as a collective, perhaps there are schools that focus on world/global/international cultures and languages together?</p>
<p>The UCs are great for study abroad. Relatively cheap too. I most likely will be going abroad through the UC Education Abroad Program, eventually.</p>
<p>Would one pick a college for its study abroad programs? Many of these programs are open to students from other colleges. Is there a significant advantage to being a student at a school that runs 30 or more study abroad programs?</p>
<p>any schools with world/global/international cultures and languages together as a discipline?</p>
<p>I would also add Bucknell to that list... I've heard they have an amazing SA program</p>
<p>yackityyack/....did u do LEAD last summer....and if so, r u trevor haha</p>
<p>The UC program is only open to UC students, which may be why it is not on the list colleghelp mentioned. Besides the numbers of countries available, what I like about it is that it is not a program that transplants students and faculty to some American bubble overseas. For the price of UC tuition, the students are enrolled in foreign institutions. Though there are study centers that give orientation, guidance, and classes in some places, the students are encouraged to live with and like the students of the country they are in.</p>
<p>"Would one pick a college for its study abroad programs? Many of these programs are open to students from other colleges. Is there a significant advantage to being a student at a school that runs 30 or more study abroad programs?"</p>
<p>I don't know ANY college that runs 30 or more study abroad programs. And the best programs are filled or close to filled up by students from the sponsoring college. Smith's 80-year-old programs in Paris and Florence usually take no more than 1 or 2 a year from other colleges, and the competition is fierce. All students live with families, take classes at the University of Florence or the Sorbonne, and have to sign a written pledge not to use English as part of the program. (They also have stiffer language requirements than most of the rest.) I don't know that Earlham's programs are even open to folks from other colleges, and they are usually oversubscribed. St. Olaf's are rather unique "traveling" programs, which I think have required prep before and after, hence rendering them impossible for other students.</p>
<p>"any schools with world/global/international cultures and languages together as a discipline?"</p>
<p>Check out Kalamazoo and Macalester.</p>
<p>But Mini there are many study abroad programs in Florence and Paris, and many of those require students to take courses in the host country's language and live with host families. Does the Smith program offer something so much better that it would make a prospective applicant choose Smith over another college?</p>
<p>Perhaps. First of all, the advance prep. At Smith (just for an example), they require two full years of language study in advance, plus a course in lit/stylistics. Their language programs are reputed to be stellar (and I know some, including my alma mater Williams, where language study was at best mediocre.) The result is that students (at least in the Florence and Geneva programs) are qualified for internships as soon as they arrive, and they have decades of experience in doing internship placements - in Geneva, with financial institutions and NGOS, in Florence, with Regilio Emilia schools. Secondly, again because of the long history, they have the most experience in working with the family placements (some have been doing in for 30 years). So expectations might be clearer, and they have more experience in dealing with difficult situations/conflicts. I imagine the academics are the same - except the majority of programs I've looked at only require one year of language, and courses are conducted in English (which, to me, seems to defeat part of the purpose - it would still seem worth doing, but the benefits wouldn't be quite as great.)</p>
<p>So much better? Don't know. (Kind of like asking Cornell vs. UChicago, or Harvard vs. Stanford, dontcha think?) But I do know that we visited some places (Yale was the best example) where foreign study was clearly discouraged and few students did it, and others where the on-campus language programs were fair to middlin' (as above), and some where they had none of their own programs, quality of advising was haphazard, and getting into a program was catch-as-catch can.</p>
<p>If it is a low priority, then, no, it doesn't make much difference. But if you are looking at 10 institutions of relatively similar academic strength, and you really want to go abroad and have a good idea where (and in what language), I would think it could be a dealmaker/breaker. And, if you require significant financial aid, and will need that aid to study abroad, it could make a HUGE difference, like all the difference (as in, you couldn't go otherwise.)</p>
<p>"Would one pick a college for its study abroad programs? Many of these programs are open to students from other colleges. Is there a significant advantage to being a student at a school that runs 30 or more study abroad programs?"</p>
<p>Since globalism has become a buzz word in the past ten years I would feel comfortable saying that ALL colleges have increased their focus on and opportunities for students to spend some time in another country, but the options and quality are as diverse as the colleges themselves. Since JYA is important to many kids most colleges have responded by setting up active and accessible information centers with the express purpose of answering questions of students and parents. They start early with information sessions group and individual to counsel kids on the best choices. </p>
<p>Most colleges have one or two programs that they administer. Smith has Paris and Florence. Trinity has Rome. Williams has Oxford. Hamilton has Antarctica! There are many, many others. The European programs are the oldest. Third world programs in Asia, Africa and South America are becoming more and more popular. </p>
<p>Some programs accept students from other colleges; some are inclusive for their own students. There are also organization like SIT and CIEE that administer programs worldwide that are open to all.</p>
<p>There are lots of different types of study abroad ranging from a whole year to a semester to a month. Some colleges now have what they call study away in which a professor from the college takes a group to a foreign country. Some kids choose their programs because they want to gain fluency in a foreign language; some choose England or Australia because they want to avoid language. There are even English programs in non-English speaking countries. There are also specialized programs like art, community service, ecology. Some are tied into foreign colleges, so you live in dorms; some offer homestays with local families. Believe me there is a whole lot of choice out there!</p>
<p>If you go to the Study Abroad webpage of any college that youre interested in you will most likely see a list of programs that the college approves. This usually (and again there are exceptions) that the classes that you take will be credited toward graduation and your financial aid will travel with you. If you are 100% positive that you want to study in a particular country or city then it makes sense that you would choose a college based on that program. If like most high school students, Junior year of college is light-years away, Id choose the colleges first then spend some time looking at their Study Abroad websites. They often have FAQ pages. Just for example, heres a link to Williams study away page. Again, just about every college has similar information on-line. <a href="http://www.williams.edu/dean/sa.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.williams.edu/dean/sa.html</a></p>
<p>Mini, I think you make a number of good points about the potential relative merits of one school over another when it comes to study abroad programs, but i wonder if these merits might be limited to Western Europe. To many study abroad programs in Asia and Eastern Europe, it has become clear that it will be almost impossible to develop a level of language proficiency in Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian, etc. in two years of language instruction at the college level in order for students to take academic courses in the host countries' langauge. Students who have prior exposure and fluency in these languages might be able to pull this off, but for the typical undergrad, trying to learn enough Chinese to function in the classroom (not to mention reading the characters), they will find regualr college coursework extremely difficult and the programs will have to make the academic offerings less rigorous to compensate for the language problems. Students who have taken 4-8 years of French, Spanish or Italian are in much better position to attend programs that are totally conducted in the native langauge, but I would bet that those who are learning these langauges for the first time in college will struggle if they go abroad to this type of program.
It seems to me that we need to rethink some of our tried and true notions regarding study abroad programs particularly as they apply to study in non-European countries and for students who could benefit from study abroad but do not have the fluency necessary to have a good academic experience. This is particularly so if educational globilism is to become more of a reality.</p>