5 Ways Study Abroad Can Go Wrong
“I was pre–med and trying to study abroad in Tel Aviv. I couldn’t take any pre–med classes abroad because med schools don’t like it, so I needed three of my classes abroad to count for either my major or college requirements in order to graduate on time. Unfortunately, there’s no one place at Penn where you can go to figure out what classes will count. Penn abroad says ask your advisor, your advisor says go to an advisor in the college office, the college office says go to your major advisor, who says go back to the college office. So I ended up with no people capable of telling me what to do and some people giving me wrong advice. Only after getting accepted to the program, did people decide to tell me that a) my major would only give me one of the credits I needed b) if I didn’t get the credits then I would need an extra semester and c) I had to go abroad and come back to see how credits transferred. So after getting accepted, I was apparently supposed to go abroad with a low chance of getting the classes I need and not knowing what would happen until I got back. The only option was to not go.” —Samantha Klein, C’16