<p>My D13 is living with some friends of my husband’s family in Germany. Whether or not it helps her chances of being admitted to a prestigious college i know not. However, her emotion maturity has greatly benefited. I know she will handle the separation from home andthe accompanying independence with ease. It has also opened up the possibility of studying her undergraduate degree abroad, something that none of us was thinking about a year ago.</p>
<p>An international experience could be great. But hs experiences home could be great too. Don’t underestimate how much you would miss the kiddo and worry about him. With kids now in college, I look back and cherish those years home. (They were not always easy, but I’m glad they were home.) </p>
<p>Three hs friend did AFS exchange in the summer. That worked well for them.</p>
<p>Your son is in 7th grade?
If the school he is going to is good, and if it offers worthwhile opportunities, I don’t think he needs to do study abroad while in high school.
This is my reasoning.
Oftentimes, students need to comeback and complete their diploma because the study abroad is enrichment, not a substitute for their jr or senior year.
Don’t look for things for him to pile onto a college application. It won’t mean as much unless his interests drive his choices.
However, taking a gap year after high school has proved to be beneficial for both of my kids & many colleges suggest it to their accepted students.
You don’t take a gap year so you can “be admitted to a fancy name”, you take a gap year so you can get more out of it when you do go.</p>
<p>CuriousJane- all of your questions seem predicated upon an assumption that there is one key thing that adcoms look for. They want to see X number of volunteer hours. Study abroad either helps, or hurts. There’s some algorithm and if you just fill in the right things, boom you’re in.</p>
<p>This isn’t a situation in which colleges are looking for just one thing. They want some well-rounded kids, and some kids who are angular (CC-speak for super-focused on one thing). They want some artists and some musicians and some physicists. They want some kids whose extracurricular activities involve leading and motivating others, and other kids whose extracurricular activities involve a lot of solo work and pondering the mysteries of the universe. They want some kids who have been prepped since birth at exclusive prep schools and they want some kids for whom college was never on the family horizon. You just can’t think about it as “they want this or they don’t want this.” They want some of this, but they don’t want too much of this.</p>
<p>Agree with Pizzagirl on this, have noticed the same trend in the OP’s posts. Chill… help your kid pursue the things HE is most interested in over the next few years and encourage good grades. Don’t even start sweating the college admissions process/visiting/etc. til just before his Junior year (and even then you can’t really pin much down without test scores in hand). He will do fine in the college admissions process.</p>
<p>I do think my D’s summer homestay program helped her college admissions (she did not take any time off high school to do it). But she spent a whole summer with a family in a country not many others travel to. The colleges liked that she had done something unusual, but it still didn’t interfere with her high school schedule. And she wrote a funny essay about using her skills in the country’s language to communicate with her host family’s elderly relatives and the family dog; the essay ended up in a brochure for a summer language program she had also attended that was showing students how they could use their experiences in their college essays. But this country was something she had shown genuine interest in for years (started summer camp in that language at age 8 because her neighborhood friends were going… ended up attending the camp for 8 more years, then going to the country). So the lesson isn’t actually “study abroad is good for admissions”, the lesson is “show a true passion for something over time”.</p>
<p>“Don’t even start sweating the college admissions process/visiting/etc. til just before his Junior year” - That’s good advise.</p>
<p>The only thing families may want to check into earlier is the hs ranking scheme. (For optimum ranking, study hall may be better than a non-weighted elective). That will prevent any surprises down the road. </p>
<p>In our case, we purposely opted to not “play the ranking game”. DS had 10 semesters of unweighted music classes, and significantly lowered his rank. Maybe that that affected his admission & scholarships… maybe not (he had terrific, heartfelt essays about music). It doesn’t matter - music makes him tick and dramatically enriched his 4 years of hs. This is my example of letting passions, not admission criteria, lead the way. </p>
<p>(In retrospect, if we had known more we might have pushed back on the freshman Business class. DS was put there due to lack of space in study hall. He got an easy A, but he didn’t enjoy it.)</p>