PROGRAMS
What makes an exchange student different?
When someone leaves the familiar behind and plunges into the unknown, he or she is showing a commitment to understanding other people, to learning about the world in a way that textbooks and school assignments never reveal. A year spent abroad is a year that will redefine your world.
You’ll discover that every moment, every conversation and experience, challenges the way you look at the world. You’ll see differences as well as similarities in people and their actions, in their beliefs and values. You’ll experience the intricately structured social code of the Japanese, or the egalitarian beliefs of the Scandinavians, considered the most socially progressive Europeans. Suddenly you’ll realize what it means to belong to a certain country and culture. You’ll learn about yourself as you learn about others.
Becoming an exchange student gives you more than knowledge about another country and its language and culture. A year abroad teaches you about building friendships, taking responsibility for yourself, respecting differences and tolerating the beliefs of others. Exchange students develop leadership skills, self-confidence and a greater understanding of the complexities of the world around them. This is why the best universities, as well as corporations and professionals, look favourably
on students who have spent a school year abroad. They know that former international exchange students bring a higher level of maturity and a global frame of reference to their university studies and activities.
If you become an ASSE exchange student abroad, you will experience life in another culture and make close friends in your host country. Sit in the small cafés, play sports, shop in the same outdoor markets; these are things tourists miss, and this is where you really discover the way of life in another country, with all its subtleties.
