I’m not entirely sure (yet – because my daughter will go abroad next year, and we haven’t worked out the details), but at Bates, where my daughter attends, we would have to pay a $3000 study-abroad fee to Bates (essentially to hold her place), but then all tuition and room-and-board costs will be equivalent to what the university abroad charges. Again, we don’t know yet where that will be, but it should be less expensive than a semester at Bates, even with the extra fee and travel expenses.
This is what she’s learned from older friends who have already gone abroad, and from the study-abroad office at her school. For the record, about 60% of students there spend at least a semester abroad.
There are all kinds of study abroad programs. They vary by time - short term (Jan Plan), summer, semester, year. They can vary in focus, from language acquisition to location specific content (reefs in Belize,etc.) Some schools allow students to do several of these throughout their 4 years. Perhaps before you get too far down this path, you can narrow it down to what your D would ideally like to achieve in her foreign study.
Many schools have extensive lists of programs student can choose from – most offered by a third party, sometimes another US college, sometimes a foreign institution. They may have limitations on how many credits (or which credits) count, perhaps to fulfill major requirements or in total. Some may require you to participate only in their programs.
As noted above, you typically pay the other institution tuition for the term if it’s not a program offered by your school. This is often a lot cheaper than “home” tuition. Since you don’t expect FA, there’s no need to explore its portability to other programs.
These all sound like details, but they’re the ones that can have an impact on affordability. The emphasis on Korea will likely narrow your options significantly-- not necessarily a bad thing!
Study Abroad was very important to S24 so I’ll follow up on a few ideas mentioned above that I think are worth adding into your calculus:
some schools allow you to apply their own financial aid (merit and need based) to terms spent abroad meaning your cost is stable regardless of where the student is studying. Several LACs we considered even had additional funding to help students with SA related expenses (immunizations, visas, flights, etc)
some campuses offer many programs and some have many students going abroad; those are not necessarily the same places! Ask what % of students study abroad and also the % who study away over breaks vs entire terms.
is direct enrollment important to her? or is she okay with a language intensive based in South Korea but without enrollment directly into a local university? I don’t think one is necessarily better, they are just different.
some universities treated all SA coursework as either language credit or elective credit. Others will apply towards gen ed requirements, majors or minors which can matter for kids wanting multiple terms abroad.
check on policies that require students to be on-campus. We found schools commonly require multiple consecutive terms for students on campus before graudation. For schools with their own campus abroad, studying at their own center may still count as being “on campus”
It isn’t necesarily easier to study abroad if your home institution is on a semester system. It largely depends on your planning and the curriculum for her intended major. A fall semester length SA takes up only 1 of 3 trimester terms on campus but can earn as much or more credit than a typical trimester. There’s also more ways to configure on and off campus study with a trimester or quarter system.
The University of Utah has a campus in South Korea and courses transfer from one to the other pretty seamlessly, with some majors explicitly allowing you to take a semester or full year of courses in South Korea. It’s also a cheap option, either through WUE or getting residency in Utah.
I have a couple friends with kids at Bates and they were shocked that other schools charge the full fee for all programs - lucky Bates families
I have one daughter that is an athlete at an ivy and can’t study abroad without losing out her position on the team. She did a study abroad program over the summer between freshman and sophomore summer (before the summer internship stress hit in the older years) and while we paid the approved independent program directly, her school charged us $1500 to accept the credits to show on her transcript. We paid it and now she doesn’t even need those credits to graduate and we should have waited and saved that ridiculous charge.
Not sure how many schools like Bates are out there and are not using study abroad programs as an revenue stream.
Hope your child has a great time - both of our kids loved their experiences and we loved visiting
Enrollments are hard to predict- and then when kids leave for a year or a semester, that’s typically a dorm room which stays empty and classes which don’t get attended.
So think through the downsides of kids leaving… it’s hard enough to hit your enrollment and yield targets if everyone stays for 8 consecutive semesters, now you’ve got another wrinkle. You can’t replace the revenue by plucking rando kids off the street and asking 'Don’t you want to be a junior physics major for a year until our actual junior physics major comes back?"
There are also costs associated with reentry… someone (an actual professor, department chair or dean) has to figure out whether the overseas course actually meets the university’s requirements. Not just for credit- but does the syllabus cover off what that course at the home university covers? Is it duplicative of a course the student already took and got credit for (this happens a LOT… kids randomly signing up for “Shakespeare’s tragedies” while they’re studying in London because hey, why not, but if the kid is a Lit major and already read five of the tragedies last semester …) you see where this goes if there isn’t a dedicated team at the home U maintaining some level of academic integrity.
I don’t think there’s any evidence that colleges are making money off the overseas kids. Some college’s charge to help compensate for the lost revenue-- but that’s hardly a money maker…
American University has the Sakura Scholars Program, where you spend half of your time at American and half at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. You graduate with degrees from both schools and the one from AU is in Global International Relations.
I’m not sure how much of a hit colleges take by losing room and board fees due to students who go abroad. If the colleges can reasonably predict how many students go in a given semester, they can absorb the loss. Seems reasonable that some students will occupy those rooms in the fall, and others in the spring (because of course students who go abroad are not assigned their rooms for the whole year, leaving them empty). And if a consistent percentage of students study abroad every year, then you don’t reserve 25% of dorm rooms (or however many would be appropriate) for that class. So that might amount to a few empty rooms, but not as many as you might think. This calculus probably contributed to some small colleges’ housing crunches right after Covid, when students were returning to campus but not yet going abroad. There are administrative costs, not worth a semester’s tuition. And if the percentage of students going abroad is more or less consistent from year to year, you take that into account when you predict how many seats to provide in on-campus classes.
University of Denver has an amazing study abroad program- it has about 80% of the students study abroad and as long as you have over a 3.0- it costs the same as normal tuition. The credits transfer back to the school.
For many schools studying abroad can be prohibitively costly. You have pay full tuition to the home school, all costs of the study abroad program, and then stay in school longer to make up the credits. When I studied abroad (from University of Pennsylvania) I was amazed at how many of the students couldn’t transfer the credits earned back.
Wyoming has already been mentioned. A good friend of my daughter did a year in Russia and a semester in Prague from Wyoming. She spent more time abroad than on campus.
My daughter wanted good study abroad options and applied to Centre, Knox, Clark, Trinity (TX), univ of Puget Sound, Lewis and Clark— all LAC’s where a high percentage of students study abroad. She attended Southwestern U (TX) and studied abroad for a summer and a semester.
The most important thing after choosing a school, especially if cost is a concern, is to begin planning the study abroad first semester of freshman year. Visit the study abroad office, speak to an advisor, research available programs to figure out what works with the major, the budget, how to get credit for the coursework, and when is a good semester to go. Plan early, and she should have good options from many schools.
On the Miami of Ohio idea they have their own campus in Luxembourg so they have a lot of great programs through that. Miami In Luxembourg | Miami University. Miami is much cheaper than GWU and as @tsbna44 notes it will also be cheaper than W&M. And they offer lots of OOS merit money. However MIami is about 2.5 times as big as W&M.
Hi Shelby, Yes that’s right. Bates charges the small fee and then study abroad is much less than regular Bates tuition. The program our kid in Europe did was about $20,000 for the semester.
Colby didn’t charge us at all, but I think the OP is looking for schools with merit or lower tuition – they’ve in that spot between not qualifying for FA and able to be FP.
Thank you all! She’s added a few schools to her list to look at.
Adding university of Hawaii at Mānoa although it’s a VERY long distance from Maine. She loves it, at least virtually. If it stays on the list, I’ll have to plan a trip to tour. Oh shoot. That’ll be such a bummer haha
Also adding NYU. I didn’t think it was financially possible but the net cost calculator was eye opening. They seem to give good aid. And d26 is obsessed with nyc (Columbia is on her short list but is a reach)
Colgate probably has one of the best study program. They run most of those programs themselves, with their own professors and curriculum. Each program is fairly small and the students stay together. It’s something they are very proud of.
My kids went to Cornell. One went to Sydney and another to London for their programs. Cornell didn’t do anything other than charged me for a fee to study abroad and I paid for each Uni’s tuitions. My kids were pretty much on their own for getting their own room and board, and signing up for their courses. To me, it was just studying at a different Uni for a semester and they had an excuse to travel around.
Pepperdine study abroad is unique because Pepperdine owns properties in the countries, and professors travel and live with the students. Over 80% of students are abroad Year 2. The cost is the same as the US campus; all scholarships are applied. There are always week-long trips that are included at no cost. All merit aid and even work-study pay carry over. Many summer programs and fin aid pays for those as well. The properties are cool houses in places like Hyde Park in London, Chateau on Lake Geneva, etc.
