Finishing undergrad abroad

[bwest91]

I'm an undergraduate at the University of Oregon studying Political Science and French. I'm currently a sophomore, and I'm planning to spend my entire junior year abroad in Paris. Ultimately, I hope to go on to graduate school for foreign service (So Georgetown, SAIS, SIPA, etc.) or get a degree in conference interpretation (I currently know French fluently, am studying Arabic, and will probably be starting Serbo-Croatian this summer at ASU). My question is, would it be a good idea to finish up my degree abroad? I feel constrained by my opportunities here but don't know if it would reflect poorly on me that I transferred to a university in a foreign country when I was more than capable of getting a degree here.

Any advice would be helpful, and if there's already a topic on this please direct me to it. I couldn't find any through the search.

[vautrin]

what do you mean by "Finish up my degree abroad"? Are you going to be done after Junior year and still get a degree from your US university or are you planning on transferring to a French university for your last two years of school? (either way, I don't really have a clue how that will effect your chances but curious to hear what people have to say as I did something similar) The main thing that would occur to me is that transferring anywhere for the last two years of school could make it harder to form the sorts of strong bonds you want to make with professors who will write your LORs - and forging those sorts of relationships could be harder in a foreign country in the first place if your language abilities aren't perfect yet and you're still trying to figure out how to navigate a new and confusing academic system - don't know about France but I'm in Germany and have been really surprised how different the academic culture is here.

[annieca]

I am doing that - finishing my undergrad abroad. I've done two years here in Wisconsin and I'll do my third, and final year at Aberystwyth. The biggest I think you need to think about it, if you go that route, is transcripts and those costs. Simmons, for example, requires separate transcripts from the study abroad program even though it is an exchange with my home university. Depending on the French school, that could get expensive because you'd have to have them translated and sent to the US.