Graduate school can be exciting and challenging. Why not increase how challenging and exciting it is by moving your graduate studies abroad? As the world becomes more and more connected, employers are looking for candidates with advanced and multi-cultural knowledge. Studying abroad will offer you the unique opportunity to learn new languages and to experience cultural differences, which could give you a huge advantage in the field you are interested in. However, graduate school can be expensive – graduate school abroad can be even more so. Yet, if you look at the risks versus the benefits you will see that it can be potentially well worth it.
Here is how to fund your graduate studies abroad:
Your first step is to look for grants and scholarships. You typically don’t want to take a loan out, because you might be paying it off for a long time. No matter what field you are interested in – from medicine to law – there are a number of programs that are both privately and government funded that can provide partial and full scholarships. With a grant or a scholarship you won’t even have to pay it back. Grants and scholarships are a little bit like free money, but you want to make sure there are no serious strings attached before you apply.
Another way to fund your graduate school studies abroad is to find a position or an internship in the city where you want to study. This can be a great way to help fund part of your tuition, but it can also possibly help pay for your travel and living arrangements. Many of these internship programs might also be helpful in giving you real world experience in the field that you want to find a career in. For instance, if you are interested in science, you could get a position at a laboratory in another country. If you went to the University of Cincinnati it might be hard to get used to a city like Antwerp, but you will undoubtedly learn valuable life lessons.
One of the biggest challenges to studying abroad is being able to pay for plane travel and other moving expenses. If this is the case you might want to save money while you are in undergraduate school. This means sticking to a strict budget, perhaps getting a part time job and holding off from those unnecessary shopping binges. If you still can’t afford it, there is a big chance that your folks or one of your family members will help you take care of some of the costs.
Lastly, why not work on campus while attending overseas graduate school? Chances are that there are a number of positions available to you that can most likely help pay for your tuition and take care of room and board. This is a very bootstrap way of being able to afford your graduate school abroad, but when all is said and done with, you will have an amazing story to tell.
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Many graduate programs abroad are much less expensive by North American standards. Foreign education is often free to foreigners in foreign countries. As a result, many public and private schools have tuition structures that are equivalent to half the price that North Americans are use to paying; often with no residency requirements. Many foreign schools also are approved for US federal financial aid as well.
While the primary focus of your graduate school search should be on the benefits of the specific graduate degree to your career and educational goals, there are benefits to getting your degree abroad which might influence your ultimate decision on where to go.