Most seniors’ summers will consist of shopping around Pier One for throw pillows and comforters to put in their dorms. But this senior, Utsa Ramaswami, will be scouting out restaurants in Reims, France for her first two years in college across the Atlantic.
After high school, Ramaswami will be a part of an up-and-coming Dual Bachelor (BA) Program between New York City’s Columbia University and Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, also known as Sciences Po. According to Ramaswami, the program is the best of both worlds. She’ll get to study abroad for two years and attend Columbia University for another two.
“Besides from just studying in Reims, there will be a lots of excursions with the school around Europe,” Ramaswami said. “I love to travel and this program gives me the unique opportunity to have a really immersed experience in a different culture, while at the same time I also get to have the typical American college experience at Columbia.”
The Dual BA program has students from around the world voyaging to France in August of 2014 to begin the next two years of their lives there. With no dorms, sororities or fraternities, students live in subsidized apartment singles throughout the city which forces them to take in the language and culture independently.
Although Ramaswami is currently in French 6 and knows the national language well, her classes will be taught in English to enable a better understanding. She will be working to get a full degree in political science and international relations and then return to the Big Apple where she will earn another degree in either sustainable development or urban studies.
Ramaswami and the other participants applied to the program with two 500-word essays in an application that took three to four days for Ramaswami to complete. In total, Ramaswami completed 13 applications for different colleges in order to expand her choices.
“Obviously programs like this are a shot in the dark,” Utsa said. “So I didn’t really know and decided I should probably have other options. I counted it up and I had around 20 essays…my winter break was terrible.”
Columbia was her top choice, but she was also debating being a part of the environmental policy program at Berkeley in California. Despite all of her options, the opportunities presented with the Dual BA program overrode them all.
“I was really excited about some of the other options for that that I had, but in the end I just really couldn’t pass up on a program with the kind of travel opportunities this one has.” Ramaswami said.
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