<p>My son is the only child and as parents, we are concerned about his studying abroad. Can there be any method of knowing about the details of stay and travel that can help us decide?</p>
<p>Your son needs to go to the office that coordinates study abroad at his college and find out their procedures. This varies by school, and sometimes by program.</p>
<p>Most reputable study abroad programs awe very helpful. They don’t want students from their university in a strange land with no housing or supports. </p>
<p>Your son should be able to get ALL necessary information about the study abroad programs from his college.</p>
<p>My kid did a term abroad, and it was absolutely wonderful in every way.</p>
<p>Remember that it is not up to you to be planning this. It is your adult, college student who will be researching this and making decisions. You can ask him to let you know things and be there for him. Letting go of him is hard but essential.</p>
<p>btw- it does not matter if your son is an only child or one of many- nothing different about how you should treat him or value him. Ours is an only child and I learned long ago he needs to not be pressured because he is our only shot at being parent et al.</p>
<p>Do know that universities vet schools abroad. As for living arrangements, they can vary from dorms to staying with a family. My daughter did her semester abroad in Santiago, Chile, and stayed with a family. She was fortunate to have a nice family but she knew others whose homestays weren’t as hospitable. Now in grad school, she’s done work relating to her studies in Medellin, Colombia, and Mexico City - homestay in Medellin and rented casita in Mexico City. They were experiences that you would find if you lived/studied in any big city anywhere in the world, including the US.</p>
<p>Of course, as parents, we all worry about our kids because that’s our job! 
Still, it’s a great opportunity and a wonderful experience to spend a semester in a locale totally different from one’s hometown or college. Hope that helps!</p>
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<p>I hope you might see the slight contradiction in the above lines. </p>
<p>The universities might vet the programs but only to the parts that interest them! Their interest might range from the easy cash flow generated by many programs that are glorified academic tours to truly vetted programs at comparable schools. The beginning square should be one that includes NOT trusting the brochures of the university but trying very hard to talk to … returning students.</p>
<p>The family hosts will be a hit or miss at best. In general, the value of studying abroad is in a reverse proportion to the value of the school in the United States. </p>
<p>Very few programs are at a quality that could not achieved by a student without the involvement of the school. The experience gained from living and studying abroad does not have to part of an exchange program as most as simply developed as easy money makers by the schools on both sides. </p>
<p>xiggi - You may be right. At my D’s alma mater, only certain programs were offered to students and endorsed by the school. If a student wanted to step outside the program, s/he was responsible for making the arrangements, e.g., getting access to the institution abroad, having grades reported to the home institution, as well as sometimes locating accommodations. For D’s homestay, families providing accommodations were expected to be vetted by the institution abroad, but as we all know, human dynamics are often at play, e.g., students with specific dietary restrictions and hosts who aren’t familiar with ways to accommodate those restrictions.</p>
<p>I have never allowed my kids to stay with any families while studying abroad. They stayed at Uni’s dorms (not international dorms) like local students. Staying with host families is very much hit or miss. What would you do if your kid should hate the family for whatever reason? My kids went through their school’s study abroad office to find a program which was suited for them. I guess because I don’t even like to stay with people I know, I don’t expect my kids to stay with people they don’t know.</p>
<p>Look on study abroad site. The most risk free (but less immersive in culture) are ones run by school, with home college faculty. Your child won’t really interact with foreign students, but upside is that credits are issued from home institution and no question about what transfers. Usually home school makes all living arrangements. My oldest did this in Paris for a Maymester class and loved having her favorite professor as her teacher abroad. A lot of these are shorter terms stays (during winter terms, may terms or breaks) but could be a good first step since kind of outside normal school terms and that can help with some majors. If you do something like this as freshman or sophomore it might build confidence for longer summer or semester program.</p>
<p>My youngest didn’t want to do whole semester and found a program through school website for 5 weeks in summer. Again that helps with scheduling because it doesn’t matter as much if the classes count since during summer. Home school help with figuring out some logistics. Again, not entirely immersive. The US students were from all over and they all stayed together (England) but there were really not British students around in summer. She still had a great time. Lived on very old campus, ate in their cafeteria and had croquet and drinks on lawn every Monday night!</p>
<p>Travel worried me the most. D2 could have done group flight but we wanted to use our frequent flyers which saved us ton of money. She did it alone and was fine. Even though these weren’t as long or immersive, I still feel they gained a lot of independence and confidence about traveling abroad and just the experience they didn’t previously have of handling mass transit, currency exchange, etc.</p>
<p>I agree that he should make an appointment with study abroad office at his college. They can help him find some options.</p>