Into the Forest

Thank you for the message! Sorry for the slight delay in answering; I haven’t had computer access for the past week.

I attend the University of New Mexico in the US, and I attended National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan on exchange. I initially applied to and got accepted to Waseda University in Tokyo, then learned that my acceptance was due to an error and I wasn’t actually eligible in the first place. (This means I’ve actually gone through the process twice.) My university had agreements with both schools, which meant that I could keep my scholarship and didn’t have to pay any third party office fees.

Before I could apply, I had to go to a “Study Abroad 101″ session. My college offered several a week, and they were short and helpful Q & A sessions. Only after attending one of those could I start the application.

The application process was pretty straightforward. There was an essay about why you want to go to the school I applied to and how studying abroad figured into your long term plans, a short answer on how you deal with stress, something about inter-cultural issues, and I think a few sections about what classes you planned to take. There were some yes-or-no answers about whether your medical insurance would cover you abroad.

After that there was a separate application to the foreign school. I honestly don’t remember much about it, but I don’t think it was difficult.

I had to wait for separate acceptance notifications from my school and from the school I wanted to do my exchange at. Whether or not you get in really depends on the schools you’re dealing with.

After I had all of that settled, I had a dorm application, and class registration, and then I applied for my visa. I was stressed to pieces about my visa because I had to get it last minute and (at least on paper) it seemed like a REALLY intense process, but it wasn’t that bad and I had no issues.

From there on out, everything was pretty specific to NTHU and to Taiwan. If you have questions about either of those places, you can absolutely drop me another question. While I was abroad I blogged at reneeinasia (the link will take you to school-related posts).