fbpx

Sending Your Children to Study Abroad

By: Levi Santiago
study abroad

The benefits of studying abroad are worth considering. Not only will you be able to potentially send your child to receive a level of education that is better than what is available in your region, your child will be able to gain a significant amount of valuable experience of learning how to immerse into other cultures and learn foreign languages. Thus, if you are a parent who is considering to send their child abroad to study far away from your subdivision in Cavite, then this blog may help you.

Hunting for schools

When parents consider the opportunity of having their children travel around the world to take education in a foreign country, they plan for such things with great priority on the benefits of studying abroad. These benefits include equipping their children with education that is globally competitive and likely to secure a stable job for the benefit of their future. Therefore, something that parents ensure their child can receive in the opportunity of studying abroad is to be able to study in a good school.

If you are looking for foreign schools to send your child to, then you can strive towards making informed decisions by viewing world rankings of foreign schools. One reputable world ranking portfolio is the QS World University Rankings that is managed by the Quacquarelli Symonds, an analytics firm that specializes in ranking universities around the world. Examples of universities ranked highly on their list is the United States’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Standford University, Singapore’s National University of Singapore (NUS), Canada’s University of Toronto, and Australia’s University of Melbourne.

Gauging your expectations accordingly

It is relevant to note as well to gauge your expectations accordingly for the kind of school that you and your child are targeting to enroll in. To be specific, assess first if your child is on the highest percentiles of your region or country to have more realistic expectations of targeting universities that are highly selective for their admissions, such as the United States’ Ivy League schools. It should be noted that it is not only the selective universities that offer high quality education. By doing research on university rankings and which universities are more “academically accessible,” you will find that there are many universities that fit in the middle ground of providing high quality, globally competitive education and having a better acceptance rate for your child.

Expenses and logistics

Investing in foreign property

A crucial priority that has to be considered when sending your child to study abroad is finding a proper place for them to live while they pursue their studies. Consequently, this opens up the decision to be made regarding whether you should rent a unit or buy a property for your child to live in. If you decide to buy the property, then that would mean that you would be investing in foreign property; and this means that you will have to take care of foreign taxes. It is said by some sources, however, that if you invest in the property, and in the case that you are able to fully rent out the whole property when it’s not being used by your child, the debt may be less expensive along with possible tax deductions.

Your child’s allowance

The average pricing differs among countries, where some countries, especially first world countries, have more expensive prices for the cost of living. As a parent, you will have to anticipate the cost of living of your child studying in a foreign country for necessities such as house bills, food, clothing, and the like. You must anticipate that the cost of living in foreign countries will be much different than that in your subdivision in Cavite. Of course, you will have to take into account the cost of tuition for the education your child will be receiving. One source states that an allowance of 150,000 to 200,000 USD yearly can be flexible.

Language barriers if your child will study abroad

If studying abroad is something you have planned for your child, then you must anticipate that the opportunity to study abroad comes with your child inevitably dealing with language barriers in the country that they will have their education in. You will have to organize your study-abroad-plan for your child around this challenge among other things; and in doing so, your child may reap one of the benefits of studying abroad which is to develop their skill of foreign languages, specifically the native language of the country where studying abroad is taking place for your child.

A possible solution to this challenge is to plan sending your child to study abroad a lot earlier than the degree of education you have intended for them. For example, if you find it ideal to send your child to study abroad in tertiary education (i.e., college or university), then it may be a good idea for your child to take the opportunity to study abroad for secondary education (i.e., high school). This will give your child time to get a better feel of the native language of the country they have travelled to study abroad in; and this will benefit their performance when it comes to the language proficiency test of the entrance exams in colleges or universities.

Your child’s encounters with enculturation

To study abroad means that you will have to stay in a foreign country for a significant amount of time in order to finish the study abroad program or education that you have enrolled in. By travelling the world to stay in a foreign country for education, your child will inevitably encounter the culture that is native or local to the country you have sent them to in your study-abroad-plan for them. It may be an advantage for your child if you will send them to study abroad in a country where a language they are familiar with is being spoken; examples of this are the languages that a large percentage of the global population speaks like Mandarin and English.

It will likely help if you brief or explain to your child before you send them around the world to take the opportunity to study abroad that it will be a normal occurrence to be unfamiliar with the norms, traditions, and culture of the foreign country you will be sending them to. It will help your child greatly if you prepare them with a mindset that studying abroad is a learning experience at the holistic level; and this means that they will not only be learning just from formal education, but from their experiences with the foreign country’s communities, natives, and even other foreign students.

Conclusion

Studying abroad comes with many benefits such as learning foreign languages, learning how to adapt to other cultures, and receiving high quality education. In pursuing such an endeavor, however, parents must the following for their child: a school with great education, the costs of living, the property of where their child will live in, and the child’s allowance. If you are planning to send your child to study abroad far away from your subdivision in Cavite, then a lot of planning is necessary.

Category:
Related Blog