How to become an exchange student in the USA
Becoming an exchange student in the USA when you are French is particularly complicated, there are a lot of rules, exams, procedures and general skills to have. This is why I will detail them for you below.
To be an exchange student in the USA you will need to have a minimum general average of 16/20. You will also need impeccable behavior and flawless ability to work, because a year of exchange in the USA is considered a year of rest by the French system, so your year does not count in your career. When you leave, you also leave your school specialties, for my part my three specialties are maths, economic and social sciences, history – geography – geopolitics – political sciences. These three specialties for me will define my type of study and my future, failing in your specialties prevents you from continuing your academic career at university.
To succeed in leaving you will also need a suitable command of English, to do this you will have an English test with a written, oral, written and mathematical part in English. To succeed you need a minimum score of 125/140, and you only have one attempt. You will also have psychological tests proving that you are mature enough to go to the other side of the world alone for a year. You also have online courses to follow, you need to count on average 400 to 500 hours of work and study on these documents. You will then have a 2-hour interview in English where you are supposed to be able to answer all the questions you are asked. You must have a score above 500/550 to be admitted.
Once you have passed all these tests and all this preparation, your profile is placed on an online platform with all your information, your presentation video and everything a host family needs to know if you will be the lucky one who will live with them. The average wait is very varied, it all depends on your profile and the number of connections on the site, it takes on average 3 to 4 months to be placed with a host family. Once your placement is confirmed, you will be given school work to take with you so as not to lose academic level during your immersion in the USA.
The goal is to let go and not resist the adaptation which may be hard and complicated because you miss your life and the people you know but the truth is that you just have to enjoy and live completely differently from what you are used to. Now all that remains is you and your future experience in this new family, new house, new city, new country, new continent, in short your new life for 1 year.
HOCO photo- with Janine