<p>I read a blurb online about this--instead of enrolling through your university or through an outside agency, you directly enroll in the college abroad, and transfer the credits back to your home university. This makes so much sense to me since many study abroad programs have a prohibitive cost, but were I to make the same arrangements independently, I could save several thousand dollars. However, I don't know anyone who has tried this tactic, so I want to know if it is feasible--do colleges in America typically allow you to take a semester off, enroll in a college abroad, and then transfer the credits back? Is the cost significantly cheaper than doing it through a formal program as it appears to be? Is anything lost with not going through a study abroad program and doing it on your own?</p>
<p>Here is my experience with it (D just came back from a semester as a “visiting student” at University of Helsinki for fall term, not through a formal study abroad program). Note that some colleges may treat this differently, but this is what we learned from visiting several study abroad offices during D’s college search & from her experience:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>If the college you attend in the US has a study abroad program or a partner program where you want to study, they are not likely to approve this or accept the transfer credits. As D’s college did not have such a program, and she had a compelling reason to want to study in Finland (past language training, wanted to continue it), her college approved allowing her to study there on her own. However… they did ask her to look for other programs through other US colleges first. She pursued a few, but all wanted her enrolled at their institutions, which she was not going to do because she would have had to withdraw from her US college.</p></li>
<li><p>She had to document for her US college why she wanted to study at this particular place, and have it approved by her college. They also wanted her to provide a list of classes she would be taking, and did not guarantee that all credits would be accepted. She has kept in close contact with the study abroad dept and her major departments while gone on her course selections to improve the chances of them accepting the credits.</p></li>
<li><p>Some of the colleges she visited (at least 2) said she would have to withdraw from the US college, then reapply upon return to the US. We did not consider this a very good idea in terms of hassle and some small risk that she would not be re-accepted, and also that they may not accept the credits.</p></li>
<li><p>The biggest hassle BY FAR in all this was finding housing. Visiting students at U of Helsinki are the bottom of the barrel as far as housing goes. The University provides them with absolutely no help in finding housing, and trying to find furnished housing on the open market from abroad is hugely difficult (and what you find is expensive). For this reason alone, we would probably not repeat this experience. It was so stressful and expensive, and she ended up with housing that was not with other students (Finnish or foreign). I will readily pay more for D2 to study abroad through a program where housing is arranged if she wants to study overseas. Not doing that housing thing again.</p></li>
<li><p>Class registration was very difficult in the University system. Take a lousy computer system with poor English translation, and a system of credits and class descriptions that are very different from the US system, and you will have a very tough time finding and registering for classes. It would have been great to have the support of a formal program as a go-between for that process. It took a LOT of hours to sort through, and without a ton of persistence she would not even have had a language class (what she went for, the class she ended up with was not even in the University registration system).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So the bottom line is that it was cheaper… but in the end I personally would have rather paid more and gotten the formal program support. I think it would have been a better experience for her.</p>