pinniped

Oh, and another thing...since I didn't mention it earlier. A study abroad will have a totally different feel to it than any kind of summer vacation, even if the duration is similar. (In theory, a short semester and a long backpacking adventure could be similar in duration.)

Doing the study abroad became a catalyst for an interest in later travel, including one big backpacking adventure and several smaller ones, but I would be totally different today if I'd never done the original year abroad.

As for doing grad school abroad, that's a detailed question that gets into the quality of the schools involved, how that foreign degree translates in your field, whether that school gives you better or worse career/alumni connections, and probably 100 other factors I'm not even thinking of.

The nice thing about a single undergrad year abroad is that most schools have the academic side of things fairly well ironed out. I set it up so my year abroad would be a comparatively "light" year from a classwork perspective, but I knew in advance exactly how the credits and grades would translate and that my original degree progress wouldn't be changed. The academic reputation of the school abroad never factored into my decision of where to go as long as it met some basic requirements (e.g., it had the classes I needed and was on the master list of schools that my U.S. school had an arrangement with). In fact, the uni abroad turned out to be kind of a party school, or as one of my buddies back then put it "It's kind of like Mizzou with more sheep." And looking back, I'm glad it was.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

The OP is posting utter rubbish. Simple example each year thousands of high school students travel to foreign countries as part of exchanges many through local Rotary Clubs.

pinniped

And most of them actually return alive, uneaten by dingoes.

Redhead

I was an exchange student three times and also did the 5 week post grad school Europe trip. I was 15 when I lived with a Spanish family for a summer, 17 when I lived with a Costa Rican family, and then I spent my junior year of college in Switzerland. The year abroad was very unsupervised. My post grad school trip was when i was 25. I spent 5 weeks travelling alone and visiting friends from my previous time in Europe.

I will encourage my daughter to be an exchange student and also hope to host a foreign student when she is older. I believe that all experiences helped me tremendously. My career has been very influenced and improved by my international experiences.

rjque

"Most?" Just how many foreign students are eaten by dingoes each year?

emma69

On the first point, I travelled extensively on several continents by the time I was 21 - some with school, some with family, some alone. Of course those under 21 can appreciate and ejoy travel

On the second, semesters / year's abroad are rarely supervised in my experience. The school may assist with finding accommodation etc. but other than that, the student is on their own. I had several friends who did a year abroad as part of their course (often for language related courses, but not limited to that) and they certainly weren't supervised!

As to exchanges - one that I did was absolutely hideous. I ended up staying with the weirdest family one could imagine. 3 generations in a tiny apartment, and the whole family sat around in their underwear and encouraged me to do the same (clothes were only for outside the house) and the place stank of BO, the bathroom door was a slatted swinging saloon style door, it really was somewhere that you wondered whether they would ever find your body (heck, had the movie Hostel existed before I went, I would probably have run away the first night and hitched my way back home!)

My mother accused me of being a drama queen in not so many words, and then she met the freakshow when he came to stay. She stole his clothes while he slept to wash them, she threw the sheets out when he left, and she made up some traditional English custom in order to make him take a shower (and I still suspect soap was not a factor in that shower).

I much prefer the 'travel and hotel' option after that nightmare!

tentseller

Emma69:

BUT you have to agree that all international experience are educational, in and out of the classroom and in one way or another? 8)

17jwblue17

A lot of vitriol in this thread.

Did not expect that.

CubsFanJohn

I spent a month over the summer of 2010 studying abroad in Holland. It was one of the best experiences for me personally. I learned so much from the experience more than I ever would in a classroom. I got the opportunity to travel around Europe and meet a lot of great people.

pinniped

Only the tasty ones.

emma69

Educational, to a point. The trip did teach me that a brand of hotel at CDG left condoms on your pillow instead of chocolates (much to the hysterical reaction of the two teenage girls sharing the double bed that night!) In terms of culture, history, experiences etc. staying with a family taught me no more than I would have learned staying in a hotel. It didn't give me any sort of richness of experience that exchanges were purported to give. I guess it taught me I never wanted to be in that situation again, and why when the idea of a home stay in Cuba was mentioned as an option my terror was visible!

Entirely the right thing to expose a young teenage girl to, debatable. Had I been in the same situation at 18 (credit card, bit more gumption about me) I'd have left and checked into a hotel.

Character building, absolutely, and I can look back at it now and laugh, even if I did cry a fair bit at the time (and I was a pretty tough kid). But not everything that is character building is good for you.

Would I put my own daughter through that - nope. I genuinely don't believe I learned any more about the country and the people on the whole that I would have done staying in a hotel. The family were freaks, they were not representative of other lovely people I met during my trip, and who I would have met regardless of lodging.

It actually seems a bit odd looking back - that parents (and I don't blame my parents, it was 'normal' at the time) would send their child to stay with a family they have never met, never spoken to, and in this instance, didn't even know the name, address or telephone number of (my family did have a phone, not all of the families did), with minimal ways for their own child to contact them (no internet, cell phones etc. back then) and speaking only basics of the language of the country they were in. The travel part (flights, hotel on stopover) were chaperoned, by a very sweet teacher who clearly had less international travel experience than her charges did, and was nearly an hour's drive from the homes we stayed at (and had no phone where she was staying, with another teacher). I just can't ever see me being comfortable sending a child away like that, tbh.

Recreation

My daughter is leaving for a semester abroad in South Korea in a few months. Exposure to a different culture is a good thing, IMO, with just a few exceptions.

Oh, and a semester abroad is probably the only time you'll be able to convince your parents to foot the bill!

tentseller

Emma69:

I am counting my blessings that my two exchange experience were not anything close to yours but the way the school/teacher handle it was similar. Looking back at the way that these trips were planned and executed by today's standard it would be disasters waiting to happen.

Definitely agree with you about the character building and using it to deal with difficult situations later in life. BUT some character building negative experience has the potential to leave permanent damages.

DanishFlyer

In Denmark, traditionally many young people travel between high school and college - take a year out, work for 6 moths, then do around the world i 6 months trip or spend maybe 3 months on some region (SE Asia, Africa, South America, typically).

I spent that year as an Au-pair in England, then 3rd year of college in Wales. Later, did a PhD in Scotland, followed by a further 7 years abroad before moving back to DK a few years ago.

My gap-year travel + year abroad during college has seriously paved the road that I later took. Sure, it might be hard to pick safer places/travel-modes from what I did, but it still posed life-changing challenges for me. And I have to say that when I do a 2.5 K roadtrip at Christmas in the US on my own, even at 40 y.o. just about everybody I know here think that is incredibly adventurous. One of the joys of travel is to be challenged (preferably within what one can cope with!) and grow. Finances can be an issue, obviously, but often spending a semester/year abroad as a student it is possible to get help with that, and in most places a student lifestyle might be less expensive (because students everywhere seem to not have that much money), and so for some people doing that might be more easily doable than taking a good while out to travel after college.

I agree with those who said that people at different stages of life might experience the same things differently, and of course that doesn't mean they don't appreciate it just as much (except as you mature there might be things that you decide you just don't care about - personally, I intend to never have another beach vacation, except if sailing the Keys count!).

I do think that there is maybe a bigger chance that travel done while younger will have a bigger long time effect on life choices, just because you haven't yet made as many of them.

DanishFlyer - who is getting braver on the solo travel every year...

sbm12

I don't think either of these observations is at all true. Certainly not completely across the board.