Study Abroad: Picking Your Place & Program
Hello collegiates,
In todays post I am going to be sharing with you how to pick your perfect program. Your program will oftentimes determine where you study, so rather than spend time looking at the where you need to look at the what. Make sense?
In my experience, I knew I wanted to study political science and that I wanted to go to Asia. Easy, right?
Often times there are many hidden tricks and traps when looking into study abroad programs. For instance, many of the programs at my school are language intensive. One country I looked into, France, required you take French and live with a French family. Personally, this seemed very irrelevant to my studies and would not help me given what my goals are. I think it's awesome many of these programs are language intensive, or language required, but I don't agree with the lack of options when it comes to this process. Given that I am familiar with Chinese and *some* Korean, I feel almost excluded from the other countries because of the language. I don't see myself using French in the future, but if I want to go to Paris than is it fair to say I would be wasting my time learning the language if I'm only going to use it while in France?
One of the biggest stressors in this search process is cost. In my experience, the European schools are extremely overpriced and expensive. Obviously they are the more popular choices with American students, but I recommend looking into the cheaper programs, too! Do not rule out a place on the cost alone, but do rule it out based on the programs.
At the University of Hawaii at Manoa, there are many schools for students interested in going to Europe, but if you're interested in Asia you're going to have a much harder time finding a program. This is where many hidden requirements are enforced, and unfortunately the Asian programs are not often explicitly talked about. I will explain this a bit later on.
Once you know your program (architecture, history, art, biology, etc) you can easily narrow down your options. Programs that are more popular majors, such as art or biology, will have more options for places of study, but programs like architecture or even nursing, limit your options greatly. For me, I was left with about five places of study after determining my major! With 18 places you can pick from, to only be left with five places was a big deterrent to me. NOTE: Manoa will often advertise that a program is "fit" for your major, but many of their programs were not, in fact, advertised as being suitable for the aforementioned major. In my case, Manoa said there were ten programs for political science and then, when you look into it, only about five are actually suited for political science students.
Lets take it a step back now and look at some of the hidden parts of programs. Financial aid is a big one, and many times no one will want to talk to you about the aid until you've been accepted and paid down your first deposit. I disagree with this and believe that the money matters and can impact your ability to go, so why be so quiet?!
One of the biggest aggravators came from financial aid, and while you shouldn't rule a program out on cost alone, you should be very knowledgable of where your money is going. Be sure to ask many questions and, if possible, try and request an example of a cost-breakdown for that program.
Yay! Now you know your major and have narrowed down your options. This is where the fun begins. Explore some of the classes offered and how many credits you could take. Think about the location of the campus, is it in the countryside or the city? And try and find the school on social media and see what current students think about it. Look them up on instagram and youtube, for all you know there may be a couple helpful videos on that school on either platform.
Lets talk a minute about what this process was like for me. As we know, I'm going to Shanghai this fall. Shanghai is language intensive and language required, meaning there is absolutely no way I can get out of taking Chinese (Mandarin) classes. This isn't too big of a problem for me as I've been learning Mandarin for upwards of seven years. However, what the university doesn't tell you is that when programs are language intensive it also means you probably won't have any room to take a class not language related.
Let me explain.
The Shanghai program is advertised as being suitable for political science students (among others). But once you apply and pay your deposit you could very well learn that this isn't the case. Once we had our first pre-departure meeting, those of us going to China found out that we would be taking Chinese language classes and would likely not have the room in our schedule to take anything else. This alone is extremely problematic because the program is advertised as being a good choice for those interested in political classes, but only after you pay do you learn of the reality of what you're going to be studying. In my case, I will be taking 16 credits of Chinese language classes and cannot add an elective due to the demands my classes may have.
Contrary to what the website says, this program does not allow you to choose from a variety of courses and you will most likely be left with little room to add a class. I do want to add a quick disclaimer and say that your school could be different but this is my experience with the department at my school.
Obviously a situation like this could very well be a problem for other students, and it should be, but because Chinese language is my minor I am not too upset about this situation. I 100% understand the frustration of students whose programs are not Chinese language and who wanted to study here say, for planning studies or communication.
Take everything that I've said above into consideration when researching this important time in your academic career. Of course, studying abroad isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean you should not put in as much time as you can into the research!
Have you studied abroad before? Where did you go? Let me know in the comments below.
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