The US State Department funds a lot of travel programs to foster harmony amongst foreigners with Americans and what not, and most scholarships at first glance seem to be targeting foreigners. There, is, however, one really valuable scholarship that I just found. It includes full travel, board, education, etc. for those willing to study ‘critical languages’ intensively during the summer months.  Again, I said free travel, not to mention the free career development and skills. 

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RateYourStudyAbroad.com is a new site making some waves.  It’s a third party site that allows students to rank their respective programs.  Really, I don’t see how this niche hasn’t been satisfied before considering how confusing and diverse 3rd party study abroad programs can be like CIEE, AFS, and the other thousand acronym’d non profit study abraod programs out there.

Where I see Rate Your Study Abroad succeeding is with students from universities that do not have comprehensive study abroad centers.  So if you have to go out and find your own program, reviews, credit info, RYSA could evolve into the place to go.

The site is young so it’s not too packed with ratings yet, but they are putting out some good content and links. Most notably is their interview of ME! I recently answered a few questions in one of their interviews that they’ve been giving to a few other travel bloggers.

But no, just kidding. My favorite article so far is their recent post on 10 Budget Friendly Study Aborad programs, where they feature a Polish program for $1600/semester and a similarily cheap Madrid program. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Stay tuned for some more study abroad coverage. I’ll be highlighting a study abroad scholarships and financing guide amongst a few other future posts. In the meantime, follow Budget Globetrotting on twitter.