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Study Abroad
The Lowdown
Article by Jeff VanDam
So, you’re going to study abroad in London, Zagreb, or Quito. Excellent choices. But to complicate things, your school offers two options for your instruction: You can learn in an all-American environment, with top-notch professors and students from your college back home, or you can enroll in a local university with real live Zagrebians. What to do? Always here in a pinch, Student Traveler offers some insight.
GOING NATIVE: STRENGTHS
- The lack of other Americans means you won’t have to endure critical analyses of recent U.S. cultural issues, like which Hilton sister is a better actress or the last episode of “Friends.” (Note: For some, this may be a drawback.)
- Your new foreign pals will have slightly different customs (“Vassily, what are you wearing?”), but go with it—coolness is so subjective, anyway. You may come home with a fresh sense of style or a newfound taste for stewed offal. (It’s happened before.)
- Most schools will not only let you take classes, they’ll also permit you to join their teams, clubs, and organizations, another fantastic way to chill with local students. You may discover a new side of yourself—for example, that you excel at Pétanque, or, conversely, that your boogie-boarding skills are mere tiddlywinks compared to your Aussie buddies’.
GOING NATIVE: WEAKNESSES
- Language, language, language. We’re not just focusing on Monty Python accents and Cockney slang; at least in England it’s still English. But if you study abroad in a non-English-speaking country and want to attend a local university, be sure your language skills are up for the challenge. You’ll be shown no special favors generally, but of course, your fluency will improve exponentially.
- Most U.S. schools and study-abroad companies charge the equivalent of a full semester’s tuition at an American university to study at a foreign college. But native students at those schools are usually paying much less than you, sometimes by a matter of several degrees, meaning their spending habits will probably outpace yours, particularly at the pubs. Remember to take it easy.
- Each country has its own official, nonsensical way of dealing with paperwork and rules, and that extends to schools. (“Of course we don’t require advisers to inform students when they take abrupt, month long vacations”). American-run programs abroad tend to handle all the bureaucracy for you, which can be a huge benefit. This also applies to the level of academic rigor: you know what you’ll get with an American-run program, but the foreign classes can be crushingly hard or easier than taking the London Tube.
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