Studying abroad

People choose to study abroad for quite a wide variety of reasons.

• The quality of education in another country may be better than in their home country, courses that are not available at home may be offered, or cost-of-living or educational costs may be lower.
• Qualifications gained abroad may be more prestigious, which can be useful when seeking work in the home country.
• Foreign qualifications may also be more useful for immigration, even to a third country; for example an Indian doctor who hopes to practice in Canada will have an easier time with licensing if he or she has a British medical degree.
• Studying abroad is also an opportunity for language learning. For example, someone who has graduated from a university in Paris is almost certain to speak excellent French, and to have no trouble convincing potential employers of that.
• Studying abroad is one of the ways in which a traveller can live in a particular place for an extended period. Studying is more interesting for some travellers than working abroad, volunteering or just being a tourist, and in some places a student visa may be easier to get than other types.
• Studying abroad will give you a different set of contacts than you would get at home. For example, an American who wants to work in foreign trade might make more useful contacts in Beijing or Buenos Aires than at Berkeley.

At the graduate studies level, other issues become important:

• A student may want to work with a particular person or at a certain institute. Can you get a Nobel Laureate as your research supervisor? Or work in a department with three of them?
• Equipment can also be an issue. An astronomy student might want to be near the big telescopes in Hawaii, a nuclear physicist might want to work with the accelerators at CERN in Geneva, and so on. Although this is becoming less critical with network access, you may find the experts on using that equipment at those places.
• Being close to your subject matter may also be important. For example, if you are from Iceland and want to study Indian history, you might go to India or to a well-known Institute of Oriental Studies such as those at Oxford or UChicago. On the other hand, a student of volcanoes or glaciers might come to Iceland to be near examples of those.
• Sometimes just being in a particular location is desirable. There are several reasons a student of computer science might choose Stanford; one is that it is right on the edge of Silicon Valley and contacts there might be valuable both for research and for employment later.

Often, studying abroad will expose you to a different culture in a way that would not be possible in your home country, or even by travelling to that country as a tourist.