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Voices of ACES Blog

An Adventure with ACE

ACE students discussing policy.

Study Abroad! This is the best advice that I can give to prospective and current students. Luckily for me I am an ACE student, so it was very easy for me to find a program and work classes into my schedule. I think this was one of the biggest advantageous that being and ACE student has afforded me. Both my freshman and sophomore years I was dead set against studying abroad. I thought I came to U of I for a reason; I want to stay here and soak up everything that it has to offer. Then my friends started going abroad, and I got to see all of their photos and talk to them about their experiences. This changed my mind. So when I got to campus junior year, I knew that I had to move quickly if I wanted to go the second semester. This is where all of the benefits of ACE come in. The day I saw my advisor about studying abroad we had found I program that I loved and got the ball rolling on my application. This was essential for me, and it could not have been easier to talk to my advisor. The next step was to find scholarships and get accepted by the program. Again, ACE does an amazing job with this step. I was able to find a scholarship and work with someone every step of the application process. I will not lie to you; it is a little scary to try and fill out all of the official paperwork in another language but when you are in ACE someone is there to help you. The final step was actually going abroad! And again ACE was there to help. One of my biggest concerns was finding people to hang out with and travel with abroad. ACE made sure that we meet all of the people in our program before we left so that we didn’t feel alone. And once I got over there I could not have had a better experience. I learned so much about the world and myself that would just be possible to learn on campus. And I cannot thank the ACE department enough for making that happen. GO ABROAD!