<p>Not sure how it’s gouging when it’s cheaper to do study abroad than to study at the home university. :)</p>
<p>I like mathmom’s suggestion about spending a gap year abroad in language immersion…but that’s not always a cheap option, because you have to pay for the gap year in addition to college. Some students are able to finish their undergrad within three years after returning home, depending on the university/AP or IB credits/major and so forth. On the other hand, some students are going to treat that gap year like a vacation. You’d have to know your kid to see if they’re going to get language immersion or a pub crawl (both together is fine IMO :)).</p>
<p>oldfort, sure, there can be horrid host family situations, it just wasn’t a huge worry for us or her. D1 spent the 3 months before her study abroad travelling with a small group of friends in a developing nation, and then working an internship in yet another developing nation. We expended all of our worrying during those trips; western Europe seemed like a piece of cake by comparison. :)</p>
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Not sure how it’s gouging when it’s cheaper to do study abroad than to study at the home university.
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<p>Granted. But given the amounts charged for summer “faculty led” tours, accusations of gouging may not be too far off the mark.</p>
<p>There’s been a fair amount of recent discussion about why employers aren’t impressed by study abroad. It’s often marketed as a resume builder, but employers simply don’t seem not to care.</p>
<p>Keepit. NO ONE…repeat NO ONE is required to do any kind of study abroad, be it for a term, a year, a summer. These are OPTIONAL. </p>
<p>You are making it sound like colleges require these study abroad terms. That is not true.</p>
<p>And no one but YOU on this thread has mentioned resume building via study abroad. </p>
<p>We toured many colleges and virtually all mentioned study abroad. We viewed this as a means for our kids to go to school, and learn in a different country…not as a resume builder for a job. </p>
<p>As noted upstream, if the OP starts eliminating colleges that promote study abroad, she will be eliminating many very fine colleges.</p>
<p>But the OP seems to have left the room, and maybe that is what she WANTS to do…eliminate colleges from her daughter’s list.</p>
<p>Our experience was similar to several other posters. S spent this past semester at the University of Edinburgh where he did have a university flat but no meal plan. His home school covered all of the tuition and fees. Since he avoided a couple of fees at his home college and his FA was more than his tuition, the school actually refunded us enough to cover his flat rent and most of his airline ticket. The difference in what we paid would have been for a meal plan at home so we funded his household allowance fund instead. </p>
<p>He worked hard the prior summer and saved up for his travels in Europe. He found some very inexpensive flights and train tickets and was able to meet up with friends from home in Munich, Rome and Luxemburg. He was able to spend a weekend with one of his flatmates and visited Liverpool to see the Beatles original venues and a soccer game as well as other parts of northern England and Glasgow, Scotland. He also got to see London on us as we met him there over our Thanksgiving break. (Thank goodness for hotel and airline miles! :D)</p>
<p>He said he missed his home school and his girlfriend but realized that he might never again get to travel this much and have the flexibility that he did this past fall. He said he would do it again if he had the chance for a do-over. </p>
<p>He took three courses which the university considered a full time load. One was a major course, one a general ed, and the third course was in one of his minors. All were graded but didn’t count for GPA, just graduation and major/minor credit. In summary, we think he got just as much education from the experience as he did the classes. :)</p>
Maybe OP is a bit embarrassed that his/her comments were so vehement yet so far off the mark? It can’t be pleasant to be told you’re wrong 60 plus times! In any event, I hope OP has reconsidered his/her position and OP’s kid will get a shot at study abroad.</p>
<p>Let them make a big deal out of this, as long as you cannot afford it you cannot send your child abroad, period. Explain this to her and I’m sure a grown up kid would understand. The thing is that these programs are meant to expose you to different cultures so that a student can develop a more wholesome personality. But that can be done later in life as well. She can graduate from college, work for an international firm or something and see the world, right. I am sure these foreign exchange programs aren’t mandatory, so forget them if you can’t afford them.</p>
<p>Studying abroad is not a vacation. It involves spending a semester or two studying at another institution.</p>
<p>If you cross of schools that offer study abroad, you might also consider crossing those off that have climbing walls, or football teams. Just because the school offers study abroad doesn’t mean your child has to do it.</p>
<p>One of things that most appealed to me as a prospective student was study abroad. When it came time to apply for the program, I was so deeply enmeshed in student government and other extracurricular activities that I didn’t want to leave my college. Of course, as an adult I consider not having taken that chance to spend a semester or year abroad a BIG mistake!</p>
<p>Just one more thing there are very few colleges where most students study abroad. Even though it seems like everyone at Tufts does, the actual number is 40 to 45%. American University ranks fifth with 60%, so there are still a substantial number that aren’t going abroad.</p>
<p>It’s a way for smaller colleges to compete with the big boys. You can have an endowment 1/100th that of Cornell or Stanford, so you’re not building a new Nanotechnology facility anytime soon, but you can affiliate yourself with a couple of pre-existing programs around the world for very little money, and encourage your students to participate.</p>
<p>I find the comment about gouging to be obnoxious- it’s gouging when my state replaces our old driver’s license which cost $50 with a “new and improved” license which costs $100 (since if you want to drive legally, you need an up to date license). There’s no coercion in study abroad- go if you want to; find a program which you can afford or don’t go. What’s gouging about that?</p>
<p>My study abroad was certainly no vacation! It was less expensive than my home college because it is a lot cheaper to live in the developing world than it is in a major East Coast, U.S.A. city - even after the air fare.</p>
<p>If the student is studying abroad in an English speaking country, or if the student’s language skills are solid, then direct enrollment at the foreign institution can indeed save a lot of money. But correctly assessing language skills–especially for an academic environment–is tricky. D1 had two years of German, the minimum for her program. In retrospect, she said that she could’ve done direct enrollment, struggled a bit more, but had access to more courses. There’s no way she could’ve known that in advance. </p>
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<p>Even so, there certainly are study abroad programs that are more vacation than studying. We the parents were looking at the non-language-immersive version of D1’s study abroad–a long itinerary of trips throughout Europe. As D1 said, why not just do that same trip the summer after graduation? Less oversight, and cheaper.</p>
<p>Actually, some colleges do require study abroad (someone mentioned Goucher, above) and some majors require study abroad - at my university, language majors and students in our internationally focused programs, are required to spend at least one semester abroad which is appropriate to their studies. BUT, students know this going in and if they don’t want to study abroad, or can’t afford to do so, they can choose many other majors.</p>
<p>There are many ways to do study abroad. I have students who do research abroad or have paid interships abroad. We also have funding to help students to partake in these kinds of programs - in addition to the fact that their financial aid helps cover these expenses.</p>
<p>Study Abroad is a marketing tool - we are often asked about it when talking to prospective students and we include it in our promotional materials - but like much else that my university offers, some students take advantage of it and some ignore it. I wouldn’t cross a school off my list just because it touts Study Abroad to prospective students.</p>
<p>I can only report my own experience about how common study abroad is amongst some groups. As someone with what sounds like a foreign accent in the US, if I meet a white girl from a relatively wealthy background who is studying the humanities or social sciences, it’s only a matter of time before she tells me that she “lived in Bologna for a few months”.</p>