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I am thinking about Spanish. Is there a place where I can see what colleges operate their own programs or what percentage of students participate?
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For many years, study abroad was concentrated in Europe. What tended to happen is that many of the top colleges put together a program in a particular country. For example, Smith has a great program in Paris. Swarthmore has one in Grenoble. And, so on and so forth. Often, colleges cooperate with each other. One of the top programs in Spain is operated by Hamilton College in conjunction with Swarthmore and Williams:
http://www.hamilton.edu/academics/hcays/
This has all the attributes of a top language immersion program. All teaching is conducted in Spanish. Students live with Spanish homestay families, etc. Less rigorous programs (in a place like Spain or Italy) conduct classes in English...which kind of defeats the purpose for that kind of a study abroad program.
The other popular option are programs put together by an outside study abroad organization. Examples include the programs offered by SIT (
http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/index.html) and IHP (
http://www.ihp.edu/). These programs are often thematic. An environmental program in Chile. A health care program in Bolivia, etc. My daughter just got back from one of the IHP programs. There were students from Swarthmore, Williams, Vassar, Wellesley, UPenn, BU, Harvard, Berkeley, Bard, Barnard, and Hunter on her trip which took her for five weeks each in Argentina, China, and India, living with homestay families in each country. There are some fantastic programs that are on the approved lists at most good colleges.
In general, you will have more options at a college that has a long approval list of programs -- their own, other college programs, and independent programs. Colleges that limit students to their own programs tend to have fewer options, particularly if you are looking outside of the standard Europe, Australia, New Zealand locations.
Also, there are several different ways of handling the money and financial aid aspects of financial aid. Some schools have you just continue to pay the college (minus financial aid). Others have you pay the study abroad program directly (and provide financial aid assistance). This can impact the type of program you choose as there is quite a range of program costs.
Here's an example of a college foreign study office that lists a ton of approved programs:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/ofs/...tedbyswat.html
On the links at the left side of the page, you can choose "Swarthmore operated programs" or "Program with Special Arrangements" (like the Hamilton Madrid) or complete lists of programs in English-speaking and non English-speaking countries.
These are pretty comprehensive lists of top programs. It's a decent starting point to see what's out there.
This list is pretty easy to navigate, too:
http://www.williams.edu/dean/saguide.html#Programs
The percentages vary quite a bit. If you are talking just full semester or year programs, study abroad by 30% to 50% of students is not unusual at top colleges. Higher for women, lower for men. If you include summer programs or January-term programs, the percentages can be much higher.
My advice would be to focus on the colleges first. Then, as you narrow your list, double-check the study abroad options to make sure they offer programs that fit your needs. The only way to find out what colleges really offer is to dig around on their study abroad websites.
One more point: Some of the colleges that operate a lot of their own programs may not be the most desireable options. For example, Ga Tech, Dartmouth, and others operate most of their own programs. However, the programs involve picking up 30 kids from the college and moving them to a university overseas. These programs can be a lot of fun (especially if you like to go bar-hopping with your homeboy buddies), but they kind of miss the point of study abroad in some ways. I'm actually not that impressed with many of these programs. I'm partial to programs that push a little harder, through language and/or cultural immersion. I mean, lets face it. Packing up 30 American kids and plopping them down in Scotland is not all that culturally challenging in this day and age.
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