Customer Reviews

Study Abroad For Dummies

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This is a very useful book. Even just some little tidbits of information can save you from wasted time, money, and a disastrous experience. For example, I am thinking about recommending my son to study abroad at Oxford, England during the fall of his junior year because Oxford is a world renowned school outside of U.S. Before reading this book, I didn't know that Oxford and most of the Great Britain and Irish schools are on a trimester system. My son's college is on a semester system. So, if he were to go to Oxford (assuming that he can get in), he would only be studying for nine weeks. The rest of his semester would be wasted.

Here is another example of a good tidbit of information: If a student were to study abroad during the spring semester, he or she should apply for financial aid (which is usually done during the spring semester) during the fall semester before going abroad.

One unique point about this book is that it also covers going to graduate school abroad. However, there were some shocking facts I didn't expect to see such as "Earning a PhD in the U.S. requires 6 to 8 years, while in other countries only 4 years are needed. One of the reasons is that students enter undergraduate universities at a higher level than Americans do. So, they are doing U.S. graduate level work by the end of their undergraduate degrees..." Wow, I used to think that our undergraduate system is at the top of the world. I didn't know that college seniors in some other countries are doing U.S. graduate level work.

I won't waste the space here and list the content or the chapters of this book. Suffice to say that this book covers all areas of studying abroad in great detail and in good logical order. There are many excellent advices in this book. They will give you a good study abroad experience as well as save you time and money! I highly recommend this book.

By the way, this book is much, much better than "Getting the Most from Study Abroad."

Wish I'd read this book before I studied in Konstanz, Germany for a semester! I'd have been a lot more prepared. Glad I got it in time for my grad school stint in Ireland!

Having studied for two years in a non-English speaking country, I found that this book was extremely weak in presenting issues of study abroad in very different countries. I thought the title of the chapter "Daring to be Different: The British University System" was particularly laughable. It would have been better to have a more well-rounded author, or let this author write a specialty book from her own narrow experience.

I read this book looking for some general information on study abroad and found it to be rather unhelpful. I think that students would be better served by going to someone in their school's study abroad office instead of buying this book.