Junior year, it is very common for Bryn Mawr students to spend a semester abroad. As a current sophomore, this is the time when we start planning and applying for our study abroad semester. I have always wanted to study abroad, and my major and minor advisor both encouraged me to do it. My major advisor even told me that because I am from Villanova, PA and am now going to school ten minutes away here at Bryn Mawr, that I “have to get out of Pennsylvania.” I am planning on studying abroad in the Fall of 2022, and here is what I had to do in order to complete this process.
The first step in applying is actually to declare your major and fulfill all your school wide requirements. This is so when choosing a study abroad program, students can pick one that has programs that best suit their area of study. I declared my major in Growth and Structure of Cities with a minor in Italian last fall, and after this semester will have completed all my school wide requirements, so on that front I was ready for the next step.
Next I had to choose a program to apply to. I obviously knew I wanted to go to Italy because of my minor, and fortunately for me, my cities major advisor told me that pretty much every program in Italy would work well for my major. This made things easier because I had practically every approved Italian program to choose from. I ended up narrowing it down to two: Temple Rome and the Bologna Consortial Studies Program. These two programs could not be more different. Temple Rome has a great city planning and architecture program, however it was all taught in English, and as an Italian minor my Italian language skills are above the level required for that program. The Bologna Consortial Studies Program, or BCSP, is a full immersion Italian program where students take classes at University of Bologna and even live with other Italian students. BCSP does not have a specific cities program, but it does have many history and political science classes that are very similar to cities classes here at Bryn Mawr.
I eventually came to the conclusion that the reason I wanted to study abroad was to get the full experience of living and studying in another country, specifically Italy. So while Temple Rome has great classes and is in the heart of Rome, I decided that BCSP would be the best choice for me to perfect my Italian skills and get the full study abroad experience.
The next step is getting approved by Bryn Mawr to apply to a study abroad program. BCSP is an early application program, which means the application was due in December, while most others are not due until mid February. The application is on the Bryn Mawr Student Portal, Bionic, and is relatively simple. You fill out some basic information, say which program you are applying to and for which semester, and write three short essay questions. I filled out the application, and then a few weeks later got an email saying I had been approved! Once approved through Bryn Mawr, students have to apply to the program itself.
BCSP is different from most programs when it comes to the application. With most others, students apply directly through the program, but for BCSP I had to apply through Bryn Mawr. What this meant for me is that the study abroad office sent the application I filled out in December for approval to the BCSP office. BCSP is through Indiana University, so when the study abroad office sent my application, I got an email from Indiana University saying I was approved by them and to send in the rest of my application materials. All I had to send was a copy of my transcript and fill out a form regarding my passport and citizenship information to send to University of Bologna to obtain my student visa.
I sent in all the information last week, and now I am eagerly awaiting a response for the next steps of this process. Words cannot describe how excited and grateful I am for this opportunity. I have always dreamed of studying abroad, and now I am in disbelief that it will be happening this fall!
