Study Abroad Tips & Resources for International Students

Studying abroad is a life-changing experience that will expand your personal horizons and add a valuable edge to your academic and professional career development.

If you want to learn more about the unique lifetime benefits an international education has to offer, join our community now and receive tips, participate in discussions and access resources that will help you better plan your education away from home.

At Expat Scholar you can begin exploring your study abroad options, find useful information that will help you better prepare for your life abroad, as well as exchange opinions about schools, housing, academic programs, study abroad scholarships, student exchange opportunities, and much more with others like you. Need the latest students-abroad scoop on your destination country?

Join our international student community now to receive tips and advice from our friendly expatscholar.com student ambassadors, and start making friends overseas even before you jump on the plane!

While the academic, cultural and personal benefits that study abroad programs offer remain as the key incentives for students to venture away, the opportunity to expand one's network of friends should also be recognized as an important benefit for those seeking an international education.

Today more than ever, the ability to build a rich and diverse social circle is fundamental in one's personal and professional development.

At a personal level, the opportunity to befriend people from different cultures and backgrounds is by itself an extraordinary way to gaining a richer and more complex perspective on the world. Upon their return home, students who truly made an effort to integrate with their foreign surroundings and effectively broadened their friendships experiment a decisive paradigm shift: foreign nationals are no longer seen so remote or different, and the borders between "them" and "us" are essentially dissolved. Along with education and travel, these are the basic ingredients for an open-minded and tolerant citizen of the 21st century.

Of course, it would be false to say that only those who study abroad are able to develop such a global perspective of the world and grow to be open-minded and tolerant individuals. However, it is true that the intense international exposure that is gained by studying abroad arms students with a tremendous advantage in this regard.

In terms of the long-term professional benefits networking while studying abroad may provide, there is a synergy of forces at work in favor of the international student that is quite unique: networking as a student is easy, natural, fast, and, most importantly, relationships amongst students are harvested without any material interests attached.

If we understand the concept of networking for professional purposes as the act of selectively cultivating interest-based relationships to further one's career or business, clearly, a student who broadens his or her relationships in social and academic settings will have an easier time tapping into those relationships for professional gain later in life.

It is easier to be buddies with Jacques, our friend and Art History classmate in Paris, than with Jacques, the Museum Director whom we never befriended before.

Networking cannot be viewed as an automatic study-abroad benefit, however, as it is more of an opportunity that requires effort on the part of the student. One of the biggest mistakes international students abroad make is to solely socialize with kids from their home country. This not only limits their capacity to learn foreign languages and blend themselves with the local culture, but it also adds restrictions to their networking potential.

Similarly, networking is not just about meeting people, but it is also about keeping in touch with people. Fortunately, the advent of Internet social networking technologies makes nourishing those relationships made abroad not only easy, but also fun.

The international contacts that a student brings back home are in fact yet another tremendous asset gained abroad, and it should be taken seriously. It is a subtle bonus, but, in the long run, study-abroad networking could prove to be a career-changing asset.

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Resources:

-Join Expat Scholar's study-abroad community and start meeting new friends abroad before jumping on the plane!

-Would you like start working on your own professional profile online? Visit VITAEVISION, the new professional networking platform.