Have you noticed a trend of US kids applying to non-US schools? May not even be your own kid, but other kids in the school.
What non-US schools have they been applying/matriculating to? And did you ever consider encouraging your own kid to apply abroad?
If your kid is going abroad this fall, how are your feeling?
I haven’t noticed any trends at my kids’ high school. Every few years someone goes to McGill, and a few kids with dual citizenship with European countries have gone to school in the other country, but it’s rare. I never considered encouraging my kids to apply abroad. There are enough fine schools in this country that going out of the country never entered my mind.
^ Though for doughnut hole families, good unis abroad may make a lot of sense from a cost-effective perspective.
My younger daughter is going to university in Canada in September. I am thrilled! I might be more excited than she is (although she is also quite happy about it). The fact that she had a very good experience in a high school exchange program much further away gives me (and probably her) greater confidence with sending her this far away. Also, we have relatives close to where she will be studying. One of the universities that she very seriously considered however is less than a 4 hour drive from our house.
There are multiple reasons to go to university outside of the US:
One issue is that only a few foreign schools are well known in the US. My younger daughter wanted to go to a small university / college, sort of like the equivalent of a US LAC. Several small universities in eastern Canada are very good and very affordable, but not well known outside of Canada. There are some good ones out west also but they are too far away for us.
Probably the two main reasons to prefer Canada rather than other foreign countries is that it is nearby, and that Canada has a very strong and affordable university system. The fact that the Canadian system is very similar to the US system is also very helpful. We might have been more inclined to think of it because my daughters and I have dual citizenship, but in fact dual citizenship is only a very small advantage when going to school there. For example, if we had only US citizenship the small universities in eastern Canada would have cost us slightly less than our local in-state flagship in New England (where we live, after taking advantage of the tuition waiver for in-state students with strong academic stats). With dual citizenship, it costs perhaps 25% less again.
The admissions staff at one small university in Canada told us that their applications from the US had approximately doubled since last year. They were not willing to speculate how much of this was due to the recent US presidential election, and how much was a combination of the weak Canadian dollar plus the increasing price of university in the US. Admissions from a different Canadian small university agreed that “double over one year” was about right. Nonetheless, I see only a very few Americans who seem seriously interested in considering universities in Canada.
Working in high tech, almost all of the people that I work with were born outside of the US. Many of them would prefer to send their kids to university wherever they came from, but this varies depending upon which country they are from. In some cases the kids are reluctant.
The cost issue might hit us a bit harder since I was a rather old dad. We have savings that we intend to use for retirement. Perhaps this makes us a classic “doughnut hole” family.
There are pinned articles right now on CC about US kids going to Germany for free college. I just read an article yesterday about how Canadian colleges this cycle have seen a BIG uptick in apps from Americans. Apparently Austrialia has also seen increased interest. The Times educational supplement publishes a list each year of best universities in the world. Many are not in the US. Plenty of kids apply to British unis, apart from Oxbridge. LSE, Imperial College, and others have substantial numbers of American students. St. Andrews, Trinity (Dublin), and Uni of Edinburgh I believe accept the common App. So yes, there is significant interest from American students in being educated at foreign institutions. Their colleges are rigorous and kids will leave with good degrees. Of course, there are colleges like the Sorbonne and Karolinska Insitute too, but I believe students need to speak the native tongue. Not sure.
My husband is British and he believes the US system creates wishy washy students who are not focussed enough and do not have enough in depth knowledge of their chosen majors. Interestingly, his nephew, also British and a recent grad, said that whenever American kids came as exchange students for their major, they almost always had a really tough time keeping up with other students in their major. This is because in UK colleges for example, students pretty much exclusively study their chosen major for three years, as opposed to here, where they mostly study within their major for two years. People like my husband prefer to hire students from rigorous US colleges, or who have been educated abroad, because he believes the standards are higher.
Of course, we argue about this all the time. The benefit of the US system is that young, immature students are not forced to study something they may not actually care about as adults. We both know kids in the UK who had to stay in college for longer because they switched majors, or when faced with that prospect, simply dropped out. I personally tthink the US system is better becasue it is much easier to double major here, and it’s less stressful for young adults who may not know what their calling is. At any rate, I also believe that a student can get a quality education at most universities in the western world.
St. Andrews in Scotland is always popular with kids at our son’s HS and several also choose McGill. Because many international students attend U.S. boarding schools, they have already considered the globe for education and will do the same with college.
Our son considered St. Andrews, but chose the military instead. He will see the world that way.
About 10 percent of our school goes abroad for college. The usual places include the University of British Columbia, U. Of Toronto, Waterloo, Oxbridge, and a few on the European continent. Seems like a great deal financially and parents push it.
I know several kids who went overseas for college - two of them to Canada (McGill, UBC) two to Utrecht, one to Leeds, one to Trinity College, Dublin. Their reasons varied - adventure, lower costs (though often not dramatically), following in a family member’s footsteps. None of them regretted the experience, though it was different from their counterparts’ in the U.S.
I have dual citizenship and my own kids could have used that to get a EU passport, and study in the EU. Neither was the least bit interested, though both went to college out of state.
One advantage in Canada is that most programs are fully accredited by the relevant American accrediting body, not the case overseas. .
I have found that stusents should only attend college in a geographic location that they could see themselves in for the next 10-30 years of their lives. Students who consider attending a Uni abroad should carefully consider whether they’d be excited if their first job was in the general vicinity of that area.
@Studious99 I disagree. The economy is increasingly national and global.
But if you want to stay close to home you should just attend your local directional state school.
“Students who consider attending a Uni abroad should carefully consider whether they’d be excited if their first job was in the general vicinity of that area.”
Immigration / visa issues can vary quite a bit depending on country. One example is of course foreign students in the US who usually would find it quite difficult or impossible to get a visa to work in the US. Another rather different example is Canada, where a 4 year university degree entitles the recipient to get a 3 year work visa (a 2 year degree such as many Master’s degrees can be used to get a 2 year work visa). I have no idea what the rules are for Europe.
Of course in cases such as our where we have dual citizenship, the visa issue does not come up. My wild guess is that there is about a 50/50 chance regarding whether my daughter will return to the US after graduation. On the other hand, we have friends whose daughter is in university in California. If both kids settle where they go to school, coming from New England it is going to be a lot easier for us to visit a daughter in eastern Canada than it will be for our friends to visit their daughter in California.
@Studious99: Grad programs, including Master’s and professional degree programs, do exist.
Yes, all else being equal, studying at a comparable school abroad instead of an American one makes little sense for an American who wants to come back to America. I wouldn’t advocate that an American kid attend a foreign uni that is the equivalent of an average state flagship if costs are the same, for instance. But for some, certain foreign unis are attractive after you do a cost-benefit analysis and weigh positives and negatives.
What I’m curious about is why kids at the most expensive prep schools, such as Andover, Exeter, Middlesex, Hotchkiss, Deerfield etc.(and Choate ;)), apply abroad if cost is not the primary factor
^
“What I’m curious about is why kids at the most expensive prep schools, such as Andover, Exeter, Middlesex, Hotchkiss, Deerfield etc.(and Choate), apply abroad if cost is not the primary factor”
There are three reasons that I can think of (which I will admit are not completely independent reasons):
One is that they think of it. I recall when my daughter’s soccer team was playing against a very exclusive small private high school. The parents from that school talked about wanting to go to school abroad, and mentioned specific universities (mostly highly ranked ones). Talking to parents from other high schools, it was as if the world ends at the US border.
Another reason I think is the experience. You cannot experience the world from within one country. It is particularly hard (or impossible) to experience the world from inside the most powerful country in the world, because everything that we see and hear is from the perspective of the US. In a country with a much smaller population or smaller economy, it is easier to see what is going on in the rest of the world from a perspective that is not blinded by the power of the country that you are in.
Parents whose kids go to expensive prep schools are probably more likely to do business with people from other parts of the world. They learn that if you want to be involved in international business, it is a disadvantage to have spent your entire life in the US.
@DadTwoGirls summed it up nicely. The world does not end at the U.S. borders. Students at the schools mentioned have a very global outlook and in looking for fit and experience in further education will consider a very broad list of colleges. The CC offices at these schools are not parochial in their counseling either. They know that the U.S. does not have a lock on the best education for everyone, and they know their students and families well.
And cost can certainly come in to play as @PurpleTitan posted. It can be less expensive to attend college in other parts of the world and, in some cases, can take a year less to get that degree and get on with your life. Remember, not every student at these schools comes from a wealthy family.
@DadTwoGirls Kid, whose parent’s sent their kids abroad for education, can not get admission in ultra selective US Collegesl, therefore choose university like Oxford, Cambridge etc. If these kids gets into ivies, you will not see a single kid going outside of USA.
There are very good reasons a kid would choose Oxford over Harvard if accepted to both. Or any number of comparable comparisons.
My kid was an anomaly at her public CA high school. The GC says they had one girl go to Durham a few years back, but mine is the first out of country kid since then. Mine has been set on going out of the country for quite awhile and admissions standards had little to do with it.
For full payers college cost may be other reason to go out of the country; but in our daughter’s prep school student who choose Oxford or Cambridge belonged to very very rich families.