<p>Hey all, I'm a sophomore this year and I want to spend my junior year in France. My school has a program with the Rotary Club and ESSEX (Eastern States Student Exchange), so it's really safe, I get credit for it, and it's a lot cheaper than going by myself or through study abroad in college.</p>
<p>My question is: will colleges like me spending a year abroad? Is this a good thing for my transcript and/or application essay?</p>
<p>It’s nothing special these days, many kids do it. The biggest issue is that in most of these programs you can not take a rigorous course load. School Year Abroad is the only program I’ve seen that offers at least a few APs. So if you’re applying to highly selective colleges, it can be a negative.</p>
<p>I’ll also warn that in my experience Rotary is hit or miss. Some kids I’ve known ended up in good families and decent high schools, but many others did not and one I know left after 2 weeks this year. He was placed in a school that had never had a student from abroad, the local advisor was new and spoke no English, and no one knew what to do with him.</p>
<p>Look into SYA: [School</a> Year Abroad - Community Home](<a href=“http://sya.org%5DSchool”>http://sya.org)</p>
<p>woww…thanks guys…is there any way I could look at the school Rotary decides to send me to before I commit to it? Because I feel like asking my parents to pay 41K for SYA wouldn’t go over too well…But that program looks amazing.</p>
<p>Talk to the people who have gone on this particular Rotary exchange in past years, and students who are currently doing it. They are the ones who can best advise you about the experience.</p>
<p>Studying abroad is a good thing in and of itself. Don’t do it because you think it will somehow magically get you into a “better” college or university. Do it because you want the opportunity to live in a different culture, and to master a second language. Those experiences are invaluable. They also are very challenging. You will grow in ways that you could not have imagined.</p>
<p>Two other reputable exchange programs are [AFS</a> Intercultural Programs](<a href=“http://www.afs.org%5DAFS”>http://www.afs.org) and [Youth</a> For Understanding](<a href=“http://www.yfu.org%5DYouth”>http://www.yfu.org) They are also worth investigating.</p>
<p>For more ideas, you may want to visit the Study Abroad Forum. You can reach it by clicking on “Discussion Home” in the upper left of this screen and then scrolling down. Here is a quick link for you:
[Study</a> Abroad - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/study-abroad/]Study”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/study-abroad/)</p>