Program option: AFS-USA

Program Options: AFS-USA

The majority of our family’s experience has been with RotaryYouth Exchange, NSLI-Y, and Youth For Understanding (YFU). A few other organizations dominate the high school exchange programming in America. Two of these programs are the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and AFS-USA. Since I don’t have personal experience as a mom with these organizations, I interviewed a mother whose daughter is in Austria through AFS-USA. She graciously answered my questions about her daughter’s experience with AFS-USA.

The Basics

AFS-USA is a non-profit organization formerly known as the American Field Service. They have been exchanging students internationally for over 70 years and offer programs in over 40 countries.

Program duration varies from 2 weeks to one year, including summer, one-semester, and one-year options.

The cost varies depending on the destination, but one year (2017-2018) is about $15,000, which includes airfare, placement with a host family, secondary medical insurance, and pre-departure orientation.

Airfare is from assigned “departure cities,” and families will need to cover the cost of transportation to that departure city.

Students live with a host family in most of the programs.

The Application Process

The application process differs greatly depending on if your child is applying for a scholarship or not. AFS-USA administers many generous scholarships, including the fully paid year in Germany through the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) in some regions of the USA. Application deadlines will be much earlier if your child is applying for these scholarships. Additionally, AFS-USA places students on a first-come, first-served basis. The earlier your child applies, the more likely he/she is to get his/her first choice destination.

According to the AFS-USA website, the application can take 2-3 weeks to fill out, but they also say your child could “plow through” in as little as 48 hours if super-motivated. The mother I spoke with recalled that her daughter had to provide her high school transcripts, write several essays, submit pictures, request two teacher recommendations, have a dental and physical exam (which included mental health screening), and complete an interview at home that included a home visit in which one parent must be present. They had to provide a secondary physical “sign-off” from her doctor a few weeks before leaving that stated there had been no changes to her physical or mental health.

Their Overall Impression

AFS-USA has a central office staffed professionally and local chapters staffed by volunteers. This mother found the program to be very organized and efficient. She felt they received helpful information in a timely manner. Compared to my daughter’s orientation with YFU, I was astounded at the amount of information they were given and how standardized the experience would be across all regional chapters of the organization. AFS-USA participants do not seem to be nearly as dependent on the quality of volunteers as we were with YFU. 

AFS-USA sent a pdf of the orientation booklet for both parents and participants. The staff used this booklet during their pre-departure orientation as a workbook and resource. During the pre-departure orientation, several presentations were made to families, and then parents and students divided for separate activities. Parents were given adequate time to ask questions, and they received quality, helpful information. Additionally, the daughter had to complete several online “Culture Trek training modules” before her departure date. Finally, she participated in a day and a half orientation in New York before flying to Austria.

This family has been less impressed with the level of support their daughter has received in Austria. There was some tension with the host family, and the daughter did not feel she could confide in the assigned liaison. Whereas we were not impressed by our local YFU organization, my daughter’s liaison in Germany has been supportive. This situation illustrates what I suspected before; you can’t predict your child’s experience based on the quality of your program’s local organization.