My daughter and I walk from SJPDP to Santiago this year. Now she is looking into a study abroad program from her University for the Spring of 2017. There are two programs she is interested in. One in Bilbao and one in San Sebastian. They are basically the same program. She loved northern Spain, but we have not been to either city. Any opinions, plus/minus to either one?
Hi, Dave,
They are both lovely cities, but I vote for Bilbao. San Sebastián is beautiful, no doubt about it, but IMO Bilbao has more of a "real world" atmosphere -- less wealth (though Bilbao is plenty wealthy), fewer Michelin starred restaurants, and more affordable.
My son studied a year in Spain, so I'll just throw in some unsolicited information. His university had study abroad programs in Sevilla, Barcelona, and Madrid. I thought he would do better in a city with fewer tourists and fewer American students. So we researched around and found programs for foreign students in Oviedo, Santander, and Leon that looked rigorous, in places with fewer Americans, and they were all run by the Spanish universities. And the price of these two-semester programs was about 1500 euros. The price charged by his university for similar programs in Sevilla, Barcelona, and Madrid, was the US tuition price, which was, as you can imagine, WAY higher than 1500 euros. Though price was not our original motivator, it became clear that we would save many tens of thousands of dollars if he enrolled as an individual in one of these programs, so long as he could get transfer credit for it. So, before he left, he had a session with a University administrator who told him how the university evaluates transfer credit applications. The foreign university has to be on some list of approved international universities, and the student needs to bring as much information as possible back with him. So my son kept every sliver of paper, every course description, every notebook, every test, etc etc, and when he came home, he got a full year's credit for courses taken at the University of Oviedo.
What I learned through all of this is that American universities make a lot of money off of their study abroad students. My son's course in Oviedo was attended by students from a number of US universities (the University of Oregon and Canesius (?) in NY are two I remember). These students were paying US tuition and taking the identical courses my son was taking. I am sure there is some value added by the US universities for their students, but not much. And nothing at all when it comes to the educational content, since the students are all in the same classes.
I am sure that no one at her university will encourage your daughter to contemplate this alternative route, since they will be losing a big chunk of change, and they will probably issue all kinds of warnings about how there is no guarantee that transfer credit will be granted. But if you are not too risk averse, and if you have a plausible reason why it makes sense for her to study in a university in Spain other than the ones where her school has programs, there can be a huge savings and absolutely no loss in educational quality. Buen camino, Laurie
