What do you think are the pros and cons of taking a term, semester, or a year abroad?
Here’s what I think. Hoping to hear more thoughts on this.
Pros
Language/culture immersion
Easy grading/ better gpa
Fun time
Interesting experience that may not happen again
Cons
Missing activities at school, particularly for athletes in team sports
Less time with friends
Some courses offered overseas not as rigorous
Additional $$$
Safety?
Is high school or college the better time to do it? I think college.
Your list is pretty random, things really depend on type of the school you are in and type of the school you are going to for study abroad. What programs are your considering and where?
Looking at your CONS:
There are other/new activities in the school you will be visiting
New friends and new exciting courses and seminars
Grading could be different and does not mean easy/inflated grades - my son studied CS at GaTech and spent a semester at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where grading curve was brutal! But his tuition was less than in-state in GA and it was an amazing experience overall.
My S is currently abroad. If safety is a concern, pick a safe country. In our case the cost is the same. One of the great things is he is making new friends and is no way feels he is missing out - he was very excited to get away from his college campus for this semester.
As far as rigor - everything depends on where you go. My kid has been nose to the grindstone for so long, he was beyond pleased with his lighter schedule. Won’t affect his graduating on time.
@RussianMom@Leigh22 thanks for sharing your kids’ experience. I posted this question mainly for parents with high school kids. There is a big difference between a 16 yo and a 20 yo, and what they are facing is different. As @Leigh22 said, light school work is no problem for a college student, but may be an issue for a high school student to plan for future course selection and this may affect college application eventually.
This varies from person to person. I just want to think through this and don’t want to make a decision only to regret later.
Without giving a ton of thought to this, we have told our children to take every opportunity they have to travel (abroad) over breaks during high school, and we fully support travel abroad during the school year in college. Unless a travel abroad experience is fully integrated into a boarding school (e.g. St George’s and Geronimo), I think it’s better to hold off on semester travel until college. Of the few friends I had at BS who did a semester abroad/away, it was very difficult for them to reacclimate. In college the transitions seemed much easier since a larger amount of students chose to study abroad.
One daughter took a semester abroad in high school. We also hosted two different international students at our house during high school (one of which was from the family that our daughter had stayed with). Your list of Pro’s and Con’s looks accurate to me. However, IMHO the pro’s have vastly exceeded the con’s in importance (at least in our experience). For us this was a very strongly positive experience.
Our daughter when she was abroad studied entirely in Spanish. She returned essentially bilingual. She gained a much better understanding of a different culture. She was on pass/fail while she was abroad, but the comments from the teachers abroad made it look like she would have had straight A’s if she had gotten grades (which would not have changed her overall GPA in any meaningful way). She had a very interesting experience. I think that she also returned home with a greater confidence in herself. I think that this confidence helped significantly when she went off to university a couple of years later.
The missed activities at her school was offset by more activities at the school she was attending abroad. She made more friends (and still occasionally communicates with her friends from abroad). The math and science overseas was probably not as rigorous, but she gained strength in her Spanish and in the history and geography of South America. She ended up as a science major in university and started university with great grades in her science classes, implying that she still was well prepared.
I do not think that the semester abroad had any meaningful impact on university admissions. If anything it might have helped a little bit, but I do not think that it changed any outcome.
For us the study abroad was arranged through her high school. The only additional expense was the airplane flight to get there and back. Yes this was an additional expense but IMHO was very much worth it. In both cases where we hosted students the parents of the students that stayed with us offered to reimburse us for any expenses that we might have needed to pay for. We refused largely on the basis that it was such a joy to host their child for a couple of months.
I think that it is worth doing in either high school or university or both.
However, this is IMHO not a good choice for every student. I do not actually know how to predict which students will enjoy and do well during a study abroad.
I know two kids who did a full year exchange. One from a BS. Wasn’t sorry to miss sports. Figured out that she didn’t love living in a city after a year in a foreign city. Now at Midd, and applied very intentionally and well qualified to pursue language study. For her, an excellent choice.
Another from a public school. Came back after a year completely out of sync academically, no testing done, and had a very tough application process. Didn’t get into state flagship (suggesting that year didn’t translate well on her transcript). She had few good options but one worked well for her.
This is sooo dependent on the kid. I agree that this can be an amazing gap year. There is no way to truly learn a language except immersion.
So true. Even within the same exchange program, results can widely vary.
My high school used the module system, so the exchange abroad was scheduled for only 1 mod, ~1 month, but it was the last mod of the year, so we all got to stay on until school let out for the summer. The school we were exchanged with was a whacky boarding school - no host families, 0 academic expectations of their foreign visitors, and very hands off dorm parents. I increased my language skills by auditing classes, and made friends. Some of my compatriots spent more time in bars than in class. Maybe they’re fluent when drunk.