College inevitably comes with the expectation of going abroad right? Duh. The plan always is to go to some exotic country for a semester with all of your friends and just have the time of your life. Whether it be meeting foreign hotties, or eating unreal food going abroad is pretty much a must for most. However, what they don’t tell you is how hard the process actually is. I hate to burst your bubble that deciding where to go abroad is easy peezy lemon squeezy, but someone has to tell you the reality of things. To start off, choosing a location. I don’t know if you know this but deciding where you’re going to be living for 4-6 months really isn’t easy. The good news is, you can’t really go wrong but, the bad news is also you can’t really go wrong. Let me clarify: you could go somewhere in Europe and travel every weekend to a different country, or you could do Israel and travel for the first 6 weeks that you have no school, or you can go to Australia and not really be able to travel but at the same time go to Japan just to name a few places. Once you finally decide where in the world you want to live, then you have to decide what program to do. Although this doesn’t really seem like the biggest deal in the world (because let’s be real studying isn’t your top priority abroad) it’s actually more important than you think. The program you go on will indicate where you’ll be living, if your credits will actually transfer, and pretty much the people you will be surrounding yourself with. In other words, HUGE DEAL. Now, lets say you’re a much more decisive person than I am and was able to start the application in a timely fashion. Did you know the application is an actual college app?! Two essays, copy of your transcript, all that jazz. Plus, you cannot forget the fact that after you apply to your school you have to apply to the school you’ll be going to while you’re abroad too. So, I’m sure abroad will be the best time in my life but I just have one question. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME IT WAS THIS HARD?!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Tulane chapter.