Have any of you applied for an American school while living overseas?

[Kate in Arabia]

We're Americans living overseas. We still have a ways to go for college, my oldest is starting 7th in the fall, but I'm starting to think about (i.e. worry about) college and whether we would be better off living in the States for at least part of the highschool years. I guess I'm not sure how easy or hard it will be to go through the process from over here, and specifically regarding financial aid. I mean, I know if we were living in the States we'd have a broad range of options, including community college and a range of scholarship possibilities, let alone in-state tuition possibility. I'm feeling like living overseas could be putting us at a disadvantage on that score.

We've talked about having the kids attend college here, there are branches of various schools open now in Dubai and more opening ever year, it seems. But I think the financial aid situation is even bleaker here. Plus, things start to get tricky about visas and all, once children (specifically boys) reach college age here they have to worry about getting their own residency permits either as students or employees.

Any thoughts/advice from someone who may have already gone through this kind of thing?

tia!

[Laura Corin]

No advice from the US end, really. The Americans that I knew overseas were making sure that their children got a lot of exams (SAT, SAT subject tests, APs) to validate what they were doing.

As for finances, that's definitely worth looking into. For the UK, in order to get local fees, we had to be in the UK for three years before starting university. This made tens of thousands of pounds of difference to the fees. Why don't you contact a few universities and talk to them about whether scholarships etc., are only available to US residents, or whether any US citizen can apply?

Not much use. Treat this as a bump!

Laura

[transientChris]

We were living in Belgium when my oldest applied for college. He didn't do anything differently in applying than he would have done in the US except that it was more expensive for us with express delivery and such. We didn't get a good deal from FAFSA since they don;t care where you live or how much the cost of living, travel, etc, is. He started off by going to a college that gave him a half tuition scholarship plus work study. The only tests he took were the SAT and the ACT. He was accepted to most colleges to which he applied.

[Kate in Arabia]

Thanks for your comments. I'm optimistically confident that ds could get into a good college, I'm less optimistic as to how we'll pay for it, lol. Dh and I really like living overseas, but I don't want to put the kids at a disadvantage on this issue due to our own personal preferences, kwim?

Thanks again.

[Cathy in TX]

After living over-seas for almost six years, we moved back to the States and my dh went back to school. Because we had lived in Texas before we moved, we were still considered Texas residents and didn't have to pay out-of-state tuition. You might want to check and see if that is true in your kids' cases, too.

Cathy