My wife and I met in Taiwan many years ago now when I was living there for 3 years. Our daughter is now a High School Senior here in the States. She has expressed some interest in attending her first year of college in Taiwan. The problem is that the college I think is cool (Tunghai University) doesn’t have many credits that transfer to US Universities. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is there another college that transfers credits easily to the States or is it a non-thing. I think it would be great for her to do this and her language skills would skyrocket.
Have you looked in to dual degree programs?
If your child is a Taiwan citizen she will likely have to do the regular Taiwanese college entrance exam which will be hard to pass if she’s been at school in the US.
If your daughter isn’t a Taiwanese citizen, scholarships are available from the government that not only cover tuition but also living expenses (ok, it’s like 20k/month or something, but that’s better than anything a US school is giving you, which is lots of debt…). With that in mind, a gap year where credits may or may not transfer could be valuable from a language and culture standpoint.
US schools are money-making ass-holes, including and especially the “not-for profit” variety. My sister studied abroad in Germany when she was in college (where tuition is fully covered by the government, regardless of where you’re from) and she was still expected to pay her private university’s tuition costs if she wanted the credits to count. My school threatened to withhold financial aid when I tried to study at Middlebury’s program in China (where I’d have lived with a Chinese roommate and had classes with Chinese speakers) and told me the only approved program was in Beijing (where everyone but me was from a snobby East coast school and was also learning Chinese as a second language). So keep in mind the university not being able to squeeze every last (typically non-existant) buck out of you is a huge motivating factor for not accepting credits from overseas schools. But she might be able to play up her international-ness, as schools can’t enough of that.
That being said, depending on the school she plans to attend, not being there freshman year can have pretty bad consequences for one’s social life. There was a small group of people who transferred to my university from 2-year programs (save money) and there were a few in the military as well. They missed out on the events for freshman when they were actually freshman (because they weren’t there), but they didn’t really fit in with our freshman class because they’d already had a few years of college/real world experience before coming to the school. I don’t want to say they never really fit in, but it was clear they struggled to find their niche. And when you’re already struggling with all the other social (and academic) struggles that come from being a college student, that can be a lot for some people. (Edit to add: I went to a small university where social connections with peers and professors is valued as much as academic learning. A state school with 20k people in a graduating class might not have the social struggles that I just outlined)
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