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Study abroad
Intercultural competences and international academic experience are key skills for an area studies program such as North American studies. It is therefore mandatory that students enrolled in the Monobachelor in North American Studies spend at least one semester at a university outside of Germany; exceptions are however possible. Students can spend a maximum of two semesters studying abroad and usually leave Germany in their 5th semester.
The JFKI and the Freie Universität will both support you with planning your stay abroad, offering counseling and extensive information on the available programs. Both the university and the institute maintain contact with many universities in the U.S. and Canada to which you can apply, in addition to a number of American Studies programs at other European universities.
You can find more information about Erasmus partner universities as well as a map of our North American partner universities on the following page.
Experience report, University of California Santa Barbara 2017/18
The direct exchange office provides a large set of experience reports of previous exchange students with tips and recommendations for each individual host university. Read the below excerpt for a look into what it's like to study abroad at the University of California Santa Barbara:
"UCSB is truly a one of a kind university. It ranks high internationally for a wide range of disciplines and even tops national charts for their programs such as Sociology and History. For any major, you will find a multitude of courses pertaining to your subject and even courses you never imagined would exist. The year I was there they even offered a course on memes, which turned out to be a rather difficult class for my friends who took it. For myself, I took courses in Sociology, Global Studies, Marketing, Spanish, Political Science, and more. Due to the quarter system, I was able to take more courses in a year than I would have been able to on a semester system. However the quarter system is not necessarily easier, in fact, I find it more difficult. Midterms, papers, and finals came around much quicker and you were learning information to the day before the final due to the short amount of weeks in a quarter. Everything was fast paced and you had to work to keep up. Yet again, it is manageable and there are so many great study spots on campus."