Wanted to start a thread to share questions or concerns for those going through the U.S. college admissions process abroad!
health insurance has been a big challenge for my child, who has “preexisting conditions.” If anyone else is having these issues, feel free to PM me. And check out Square Mouth online.
Do you have a specific question?
We did that with my older daughter…we were living in Germany at the time. She was attending an International School where the instruction was in English. She did the IB diploma. To me it appeared that the school was half British half American style. The Brits were forever wanting uniforms but the Americans said no way. Also British Universities mostly only care how you do on the final tests. So basically the final IB tests. However, American Universities are more interested in GPA/SAT. So cases where a British teacher would give her a “3” (out of seven) for a quarters grade and say things like “well she can’t get a 7 because she hasn’t learned everything yet”…but other teachers did not use the same philosophy. The Guidance counselor was American so she had some clue. Junior year we flew back over spring break and toured colleges. The one interview she had was with Princeton and they happened to have an alumni in Germany that she met with. She could take the SAT at her high school, but for the ACT we had to go to the American Army Base School. Well, she did, we couldn’t go on base, so we amused ourselves in Rotenburg ob d. Tober for a few hours. No going to admitted students day. The college she picked, SUNY Binghamton, was generous with IB credits. With a couple of summer courses she was able to graduate a year and a half early (although we told her don’t rush). Another small obstacle was GPA…She had gone to a public magnet school with a 0-100 grading scale and then went to IB grading scale for the last 2 years (1-7)…never knew what her GPA was on a 4.0 scale. The only time that was really a problem was at our state school…she should have qualified for a scholarship, but since we didn’t enter the GPA the system didn’t autoqualify her. An email cleared that up and she was given a scholarship.
Re: health insurance. We use the university health insurance for S who is still in Uni in the States. And D who just graduated got an “Obamacare” plan (basically regular health insurance with a subsidy). Since the Affordable Care Act passed, I don’t think there should be a problem with pre-existing conditions. I thought the new law made it illegal to discriminate due to pre-existing conditions.
My child was planning on attending a school in Europe for grad school. It was not a semester abroad while attending a US school. Yes, she has health insurance in the US through the Affordable Care Act, but that does not help her get medical care in the European country. She can fly back every 3 months to get meds and see specialists, which is very expensive and possibly not even doable with her school schedule. We were only able to get one company’s travel insurance policies for emergencies and “unexpected” or urgent care, that could be related to her preexisting conditions but could not be ongoing or preventative care. All the other companies I contacted denied her on the spot. She needs to be able to see an MD on a regular basis.
@compmom - What country is she going to? Many EU countries provide free healthcare for all students with a visa. If not, often doctor visits are not that expensive (not like in the US), so you can just pay out of pocket. Prescriptions are also less expensive.
My son is getting his BA in Scotland. (3-year program.) The Tier 4 student visa application itself was quite a challenge (and expensive!), but we really weren’t worried about him getting it, as he was fully approved by his Scottish school and his “background” is clean. You just have to make sure you give yourself about 8 weeks time to get it back before travelling abroad. Re: Health Insurance, as a full-time student in the UK, the health care system is available to him, same as a citizen. He signed-up with a local GP during orientation/registration week at school. (doctor visits and prescriptions are free.)
@compmom, If your daughter is actually enrolled as a regular student in a European university, she should be able to get the same sort of health plan local students have. You may want additional insurance that would cover her in the US–in case of something really serious, she’d probably want to return home and the normal European plan probably wouldn’t cover treatment in the US. You’d have to check into whether that would best be a separate US policy or a supplement to whatever she gets in Europe. When we lived in Switzerland, we purchased extra coverage on our Swiss policy that covered medical care worldwide. It would have been cheaper for coverage only in Switzerland, or cheaper still in just the canton where we lived.
Sorry if I was not clear. I was not really asking for help but was trying to raise the point for anyone else whose kid might have preexisting conditions. And it would have saved me a lot of trouble and many hours of despair if I had known about Square Mouth earlier. It is an umbrella agency that handles, as I remember, 32 other agencies and can apply a filter to get a plan that fits your needs.
We had already done all the residency permit arrangements and had rented an apartment and were deep into the reality of her going to the NL. She had a US plan in place for meds and specialists. I made umpteen phone calls and did umpteen applications online for policies to cover her in the NL while at school. She was denied by all of them. I finally called Square Mouth, and they found her a John Hancock travel insurance policy that would cover her, as I said, for emergencies and unexpected occurrences. Any Dutch plans, including the student group plan at her school, also denied her.
In the NL if you are over 30 or employed at all, you are obliged to purchase Dutch health insurance. However, since she did not have a job and is in her 20’s, she could not access the national health system, which has changed quite a bit in recent years and is now privatized. We asked the school about working, but they said employers would not want to do the paperwork required.
It was pretty darn scary thinking about sending her without ongoing care. We were going to take the risk however.
It is a good point that if costs are low, it might be possible to pay out of pocket. But here her multiple meds and devices and supplies are extremely costly and cannot be shipped to her. We could get an override for a 3 month supply but she would have had to fly back to get them after 3 months.
By the way, the insurance for Fulbright is inadequate for anyone like my daughter. This is an area of invisible discrimination that needs to be addressed.