<p>How is there not enough interest? Study abroad sets students head and shoulders above students who do not and is often very cheap in comparison to a year at a US school- especially since scholarship money often carries with you to programs abroad. </p>
<p>If there's a subforum on computers and summer programs, there should be a subforum on study abroad. Tips for study abroad vary vastly from program to program, schools, countries, and even different cities in a country. You cannot put that all in one thread and have it be effective.</p>
<p>Creating a subforum is warranted only when numerous threads on that particular topic start to overtake other topics. That is not the case on College Life.</p>
<p>I will discuss it with the rest of the Mod Team and the site administrator, but in the meantime you should share your study abroad information in this forum.</p>
<p>Snoopy, thanks for suggesting the idea. I think it's a great one, too.</p>
<p>It ought to be good for CC, too -- just as so many of us discovered CC by googling when searching for info about the National Merit Scholar program, I'll bet a lot more folks will find this forum by googling "study abroad programs".</p>
<p>My son is heading to NYC this morning, with his dad, to apply for his visa to study in France next year. He'll be a high school sophomore. I could have used advice from this board about the visa process -- and will be happy to share. </p>
<p>He will be living with a French family in a little walled village in Provence, joining the local rowing club, and attending school in Orange. With our other son away at college, we will be empty nesters. ACK!</p>
<p>My D is going to the University of Limerick in Ireland this September. My husband and I have just returned from a pleasure trip to Scandanavia. As I see it, the real issues are paying tuition in fees in Euros, getting her spending money on a regular basis, arranging for cell phones, and international calls. If she were in the US, she could use ATMs and shop for groceries with credit and debit cards that were issued by our regular banks. In Europe there are surcharges for withdrawing funds from US banks, surcharges for using credit cards in restaurants. The US dollar is in the toilet. Also, her pricey laptop - will that run ok with a converter? Can she lease one there?</p>
<p>The saving grace of all this is that going abroad to a public university is much cheaper than Spending the semester at Mount Holyoke. However, they get 750 dollars as a "study abroad fee" and they haven't been all that helpful, says my daughter.</p>
<p>We're in the last stages of preparing for my D's study abroad trip to the Uk in the fall. In doing our preparation, it looks like her bank (B of A) has arrangements with some local UK banks so that she can use her B of A card to withdraw money from her account without a fee.</p>
<p>As far as credit cards are concerned, many are charging a fee for converting foreign currency to US dollars. A few are not. You can google them and try to get them before she leaves. We may end up doing that. I believe one of the card issuers is Capital One.</p>
<p>My D also has a laptop. They should work overseas since most of them have a switch that allows them to work with 220 voltage overseas. You will need an adaptor so that the US plug will work with a UK/European plug. Radioshack and other places sell them.</p>
<p>how do you find out about the switch that allows you to use the 220 voltage? My son has a macbook and will be studying in Wales next year and we were just wondering what he needed to do. he has a plug adaptor -- it was the conversion that is the issue.</p>
<p>Also - we are buying him a new digital camera (he has his eyes on the new subcompact canon). would he also need a voltage converter in order to charge the rechargeable batteries? I can't think of any other electrica applicances he would be taking. He is buying a cell phone there -- so that will already be set up correctly.</p>
<p>The older AC adaptors (that big brick) have a switch that toggles between 110 and 220. The newer ones are smart enough to detect it for you. Look at the label on the "brick". The one in my office is labled 100-240V.</p>
<p>We'll also be renting a cell phone for her while she is abroad. We'll also be using Skype. We have a friend who used it to communicate with their D when she was in Australia for a semester. It's free if you use it for PC-to-PC calls.</p>
<p>Study abroad is the best experience any student can have during their whole college time. In fact, I believe it is also one of the defining events of your life. You'll learn more about the world, about yourself, and your values by living and studying abroad. </p>