Study in the USA as a Freemover | Part 1
Let us be honest. Going abroad for an Exchange Semester is associated with months of preparation and annoying administrative tasks before it even started. Especially as a Freemover, you can quickly lose the overview and thus the motivation for a semester abroad. To make sure you will not miss the best time of your student life, I created this blog where I will provide you with key information that will help you organize your semester abroad as a Freemover. To give you the most important advice right at the start, I strongly recommend you to start your planning at least 4 months before departure, so you don’t have to stress if something doesn’t go as expected.
Since I went to the U.S., my advices will be specifically for german university students planning to go to the States, but I am sure there will be plenty of analogies to other countries.
What is a Freemover?
The first thing you should clarify for yourself is whether to go abroad with one of your home university’s exchange programs or going as a Freemover, who does all the organizational tasks alone without getting support from his or her home university. The advantages are very clear, since you are able to choose your preferred university and region in the U.S., instead of being restricted to your university’s partner programs. In contrast, the biggest disadvantage is that going as a Freemover usually is the more expensive alternative.
Where should I go to?
When I had to make this decision, there were two major factors influencing my decision: University and Location. There is no right or wrong which factor you should weight more in your decision, but you have to make sure that the academical standards of your university of choice meets your expectations just as the city or area you live in. Since most of you only have one exchange semester in the U.S., you don’t want to spend your time in the mountains, when you are more of a beach person, and vice versa.
Further, the type of university you prefer should mainly depend on four things: course offerings, affordability, reputation and campus life. Again, this is your individual decision and you should trust your gut feeling for which university you choose.
Nowadays, there are plenty of organizations that specialized in bringing students as Freemovers to universities all over the world. A big advantage of these organizations is that they take care of the entire application process at your exchange university, all at no cost! I chose an organization called College Contact. Looking back, I am very happy with that decision, as the entire application process went smoothly throughout and their communication was fantastic in case of any ambiguities. Also, they have over 30 partner universities in the U.S., some of them top notch elite-colleges.
Personally, I would strongly recommend you to make use of one of these organizations, as they save you lots of valuable time and research!
Note: In my next posts, I will talk about all things you need for a succesfull application and beyond!
