IGNITE Program vs Year Abroad in Madrid

D received an email today inviting her to apply for the IGNITE program (Ignatian Global Network In Technology and Engineering). It looks like it’s a program where entering freshmen engineering majors spend their first semester at the Madrid campus. We were able to visit the Madrid campus this summer and D is definitely interested in spending an academic year studying abroad. However, we had not planned on her doing it during the fall of her Freshman year.

Can anyone who participated in this program (or anyone whose child participated in this program) provide some information on the experience? One thing that seems odd to me is that we would be paying the St. Louis tuition rate for the semester in Madrid even though it looks like the tuition for students spending a year abroad is about half that of St. Louis. She’s been accepted to a couple public universities that participate in the GE3 program (Global Engineering Education Exchange), and for these schools she would be able to pay in-state tuition during the semesters that she’s abroad.

If she doesn’t do IGNITE, she’ll probably spend her sophomore or junior year studying in Madrid (or another location).