Background
In the coming Spring 2019 semester, I will be participating in an exchange program to study abroad at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). I’ve been planning to study abroad this semester for some time now.
In this post, I’ll share my reasons to study abroad, and how I planned ahead to make this happen.
Why study abroad?
In the following points, I’ll give my major reasons for why I decided to study abroad. This is my perspective, which might not necessarily be everyone else’s.
- Burning out in school
Coming into college, everyone is full of energy. We study for tests a week early, do the homework diligently, and study the material conclusively. However, as the years pass, we start burning out from school, and by the amount of work we have. I thought by around Junior year I would have lost motivation and could use a semester abroad to relax and recharge. I hope to come back recharged and ready to finish strong.
- Seeing the world
I’ve lived most of my life in Houston, traveling to other places but never truly living in another place for an extended period of time. Going halfway across the world to see a different place I’m hoping will broaden my perspective.
- Independence and capability
I’ve lived with or close to my family for my entire life. I’ve loved the help and the convenience, but I think living independently far from home will help me prepare for “adult life”.
I’m also hoping I’ll feel more capable after traveling abroad. Maybe after living far away and traveling on my own, I won’t be afraid to make certain decisions or “go for it” when it comes to any future travels or doing anything I’m uncomfortable with in general.
- Pass / Fail
Most programs I think are on a Pass/Fail basis. This means that all the classes I take abroad will come back as a Pass/Fail grade when taken into account for my GPA. This allows students to take courses abroad and learn from them, but not have as much stress as feeling the need to excel in the class to get a good GPA.
- Finances
I originally was scared about the costs. However, in an exchange program like the one that I’m doing, I have to pay my tuition to Rice and pay room and board to HKUST. This means that all the financial aid that I currently have are still applied to tuition.
And it turns out room and board at HKUST is actually cheaper than it is here at Rice. The food is also cheaper there. On top of this, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship from the study abroad office.
All in all, I’m expecting overall to save money while being abroad, and use that money for traveling as much as I can.
The only small downside is that I’m not allowed to take any type of job in Hong Kong under a student Visa. So I won’t be able to take any small part-time job to get a little extra cash.
- Classes
There are some courses offered in the spring that I want to take here at Rice but I won’t be able to. However, HKUST has some cool classes that aren’t offered at my current university. This means I’ll be able to broaden my electrical engineering knowledge while abroad. For example, I’ve always been interested by circuits and power electronics. Rice teaches no class in that topic, but there are some taught at HKUST.
Planning ahead
I’ve started to plan to study abroad since freshman year. This doesn’t mean I actively thought about it every second of every day, but rather that I’ve kept this idea in the back of my mind for some time and laid out the classes I need to take. As the time got closer I started looking more closely at different programs and narrowed my choices.
I’m an Electrical Engineering major, which is supposedly one of the hardest majors to study abroad with. However, I can say that under my circumstances (came in with a moderate amount of AP credit, decided on ELEC as a freshman), it was relatively easy to plan ahead to study abroad. I never had to take a crazy amount of hours, or frantically plead professors to take their class. I just had to take 1 class a year ahead of time (Junior Design Lab).
Even if you decided on your major sophomore year, are in engineering, or came in with no AP credit, there are still ways to study abroad. The classes I’m taking at HKUST will transfer back as elective credits, which means I’ll still be making progress in my major, on a pass/fail basis. Most departments are open and encouraging for people to study abroad.
Be wary of anyone that tells you “it’s impossible for your major to study abroad”, and do your own research and planning to check the feasibility.
I think the hardest part of studying abroad was just deciding to do it. It’s a big choice to make for anyone. Once you decide to it and seriously want to pursue it, the actual process of the application is pretty straightforward.
The downsides
- Program dates
Many schools have school calendars that might not line up with the one at your current school. In my case, I’ll be starting and ending pretty late. This means I’ll have a 6-week long winter break, and my summer will be short. If I take any sort of internship in the summer, I’m expecting to start as soon as I end my semester at HKUST, and not have a summer break to travel or relax.
Because of this, I’m planning to travel before I begin my semester. I’ll be taking a month before I begin my semester to travel around Southeast Asia. I plan on writing more about that here as well.
- Missing people
The biggest downside I see so far is missing my friends and family here in my home. Furthermore, because my semester runs really late, I’ll also miss graduation, and by the time I get back most people will have returned home or gone to their internship for the summer. I might not get to see any of the seniors here at Rice again.
However, I think there might be some good things with spending time away from those I’m close to. I can challenge myself to meet new people, and put myself in new situations. Also, I’ll learn to not let my relationships hold me back from doing anything that I might want to do in life.
Conclusion
Study abroad! Take that leap of faith and just decide to do it. I don’t see any clear downsides to it and I think anyone only has something to gain from doing something like this.
The process of deciding to travel abroad and actually working up to it has gone pretty smoothly so far and I’m confident it was a good decision to do this. I’m excited to write more blogs about how my thoughts might change on this matter, and on my overall experience while I’m away from Rice. I’ll try to write more regularly while travelling.