BootsnAll Travel Community

Hello
Im wondering about studying abroad. I have read a lot about this on the site, and am wondering, how does one go about signing up, and do you have to be a certain age? I just graduated high school this past June.
Thanks
-Jeff

you mean for college? you can either apply to a uni in another college as an international student, or get into a local uni and look into their study abroad program.

Hi KelownaKid,

Like xoom said, there are a few options. If you're enrolling at a college/university for 2005-2006, you can go through your school to do a study abroad. It's too late to go abroad for fall, but even as a freshman you aren't too late for spring programs abroad, if you just want to do a semester/term. Actually, even if you aren't enrolled, often you can go through a college or university's program, just paying them some tuition substitute. The advantages of going through a school you attend are that it's generally easier to get credit for the courses you take abroad, the school takes care of a lot of the process (usually), and it's often advantageous as far as tuition goes.

If you aren't attending a college or university currently, you have a couple of options. The most straightforward would be to just sign up for a foreign university, tell them you're an international student, and see if you can get in. This is a good option in that you're really going to be the closest to having the same experience as locals, but it also means you aren't going to have some of the niceties that regular study abroad kids get and it means you have to take care of all of the goddam paperwork and bureaucracy yourself. I wouldn't ever encourage someone to not study abroad, but anecdotally I've heard this is a huge pain in the ass way to go, because it's basically you doing all the work at every step, and you have fewer guarantees the credits from the courses you take will transfer if you decide to do the rest of your college work somewhere else.

Another option is to go through a company/organization that can assist you in finding the right program and going through the application and preparation process. I found this site with a quick Google... I've never heard anything about it, but I did some test searches for programs and it looked quite useful. If you live near a college or university, I'd just go to the buildings that house foreign language classes and there are likely to be fliers for a lot of programs hanging on the walls; I know that's the case at my school. Another strategy might be to go to your local STA Travel office and they can probably suggest some study abroad organizers.

Okay, so that post is long as hell, but at least it's comprehensive, right? I've done study abroad twice and am a big proponent of it, so if you have any questions, just say the word.