Oh, I see you clicked fast on this one! You read it right. I did travel to 10 countries throughout my student life, all fully funded. I was living in France, then the UK and visited Australia, France, Italy, New-Zealand, Norway, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, and the US.
OK, full disclosure: I spent years at university. I have one undergrad degree and two post-grad degrees. So it’s not like I was travelling every other month. Actually, on one of those trips, I visited 4 countries. I can’t expect that everybody will be able to do exactly the same, but I would like to share that there are ways to go on sponsored trips while a student.
I’ve come to find that universities have budgets for everything. Your task is to help them spend their budget wisely… on you!
Universities, colleges, trade schools all receive funding in addition to student fees. Funds are typically received from government authorities (local, federal, national), businesses (local, national, international), student alumni groups, or private donors. These funding are usually be made available under the convete of educational advancement, teaching, PR/branding, people training for future employment, special exchanges.
I can’t claim that grants are as available for undergraduate programs as they are for post-graduate programs but there are ways to find what opportunities are available in your chosen educational path.
When reviewing and selecting a university, college, or school to attend, look for the ones that have industrial or government partnerships. They will always mention it on their websites. Or call their Administration Offices, and ask what kind of partnerships they have with other universities or businesses.
So here’s where I went and what I did to get there.
The UK
I visited the UK during my undergrad as I did a 3-month program exchange between my university and France and a partner university in the UK. This is something that I asked my professors about, as I didn’t want to do my placement in France. I wanted to do it in another country. Finally one of my professors contacted an old friend in the UK and I spoke with our university placement department regarding funding. And off I went to the UK for 3 months! Fully paid for (flights, accommodation, plus some subsistence money). Later on I stayed in the UK, and my next travels were done during my post-grad.
France / Italy / Norway / Spain / the US
Each time, I had presented a poster of my research to conferences and got accepted. There were grants available for travel (flights/hotel) and expenses. Half of those were suggested by my professors at the time to apply, the other half I found and decided to apply myself after approval from professor and confirmation that a grant was available for these trips.
Puerto-Rico
I presented and poster and had a speaking slot at the conference, representing my department. There was funding for 2 people in my research group to attend and I was one of them.
Australia / Thailand
One of my fellow students applied to speak at a conference in Sydney. As I learned of it, I tagged along and also submitted for a poster which got accepted. Since Australia was a good 24h flight from the UK with an obligatory stop-over usually somewhere in Asia, we decided to stop-over in Thailand on the way over there. In order to justify staying a few days in Thailand, fully funded, we needed to find a reason to be there academically. So we contacted one of the Universities in the North of Thailand – which we knew our Department had collaborations with – and we offered to do lectures on our research topic to the students there. This was accepted. That’s how we visited Bangkok and Chiang Mai, on our way to the conference in Sydney.
Singapore / New-Zealand
At the time of my trip to Australian there were flight tickets that allowed to do several stop overs to go to Australia. So we managed to book a ticket with 2 stop-overs on the way there. One stop in Thailand, and one stop in New-Zealand, before landing in Sydney. So in New-Zealand we did pay for our own accommodation but our flights were part of the whole trip.
On the way back from the Sydney conference, we stopped over in Singapore for 1.5 day. We had planned to do one of those hop-on/hop-off bus tours. But luckily, we had made a new friend at the conference a couple of weeks before and she became our local guide to visit Singapore in one day which was fantastic!
What can you do?
Represent your university for branding/collaborative purposes
Offer your help for organising conferences, meetings abroad
Guest speaking opportunities
Academic conference where you present a talk or poster
Who can help?
Student administration office
Professors
Fellow students
University branding/outreach department
Google (search your academic fields for available local/national grants)
The real cost
Although all these trips were mainly fully funded, there was a small cost to me. The cost was the time to research for the opportunities. Prepare work good enough to write a poster or paper or apply for a speaking slot at a conference. When accepted, to represent your university well. Know your subject and be an active participant to those events. Sometimes, finish the last touches to your presentation late at night. Stand up as a student in front of an audience of experts in your field and present your work. Take in questions from the audience.
That’s a cost that as a student, you should be willing and easily able to pay.
I will end this post by sharing with you the comment that I receive the most about my travelling while a student.
Fellow Student: Wow! You’re so lucky. You get to travel a lot.
Me: But have you asked for opportunities to travel? Have you written a paper? Have you applied to conference?
Fellow Student: ummm…
Lastly, let me tell you that this is also something I’ve heard recently, in the work place, from a colleague who commented that I “get to travel all the time for work” – like it just happens to me, while he never “gets to go anywhere and is stuck in the office”. So I nicely replied that most people who “get to travel” created a career path to get in this position in the first place, or put in time and effort to send proposals forth to their managers and ask for it… That will be the topic of a whole other post.
Please share below, where has your student life taken you?