Program Reviews

I absolutely loved my semester in Paris. Middlebury provides you with great courses by inspiring Science Po professors in a small classroom environment whereas you also take courses at local universities, thereby getting a double dose of experiences. There is also a wide variety of trips to visit the rest of France, I personally had a fun time in Normandy. I would highlight the supportive team that Middlebury Paris has - they helped me through all kinds of questions and struggles I had in the beginning. I would highly recommend the program to anyone who cares about amazing food, rich cultural life and great flight connections that Paris offers! Coming back with a fluent French is also a great asset.

The only negative aspect was leaving the program - one semester was clearly not enough for me.

I found my time in Montevideo to be immensely enjoyable. Montevideo is a great city to live in, because it has the positives of the city without being a hard to get around metropolis. It was easy to walk or take the bus system to whatever destination. While most Uruguayans felt that the city was unsafe, the other international students and I felt Montevideo was a safe city. If you take basic safety precautions, like not putting your phone in your back pocket, you should be okay. This program offers students the chance to study at various public and private universities in city while having an internship at a local organization or company as well. It was great to not only study but to learn about working life as well. Additionally, the support you will receive from staff and your host family while abroad strikes the perfect balance between caring for you and letting you be independent.

After having spent a semester studying in the bustling Chilean capital of Santiago, I was eager to experience a different part of the country for my second semester abroad. I ended up choosing to study at the Universidad Austral de Chile (UACH), located in the small southern city of Valdivia. I spent my time taking humanities courses at the university's Isla Teja campus, one of two campuses in the city. I was challenged academically by my professors and felt welcomed by peers. We were mutually curious to get to know each other and learn about our respective backgrounds.

If you're not a fan of the rain, Valdivia might not be the place for you. This is important to address in the beginning, because it rains a ton here. Rainy months are from about April to September, with the hardest and most constant rainfall typically taking place from May-July. Definitely show up to Valdivia with a quality rain jacket!

However, the rain may only prevent you from having a worthwhile experience if you let it. Because of the consistent rain, the city is surrounded by lush forests and nature reserves. Rivers run right through the middle of the city and out to the Pacific Ocean, which can be inexpensively accessed by bus in less than 40 minutes. Fans of the outdoors would love the abundance of greenery, coastline and hiking trails in surrounding parts of the area. The UACH, which has a strong emphasis in programs in the natural sciences, has its own arboretum and botanical garden located right on the Isla Teja campus. When the weather permitted, I spent meaningful time taking walks in between classes and enjoying the trees and scenery. It really is a beautiful place to study.

In my experience, the people of Valdivia tended to be welcoming, friendly, and loved to spend time conversing and sharing stories. Because of the rainfall, people have grown accustomed to spending long stretches of time talking. There is a downtown area with restaurants, shops, a few clubs, and a beautiful fish open market with sea lions that jump right up onto the sidewalk. There is a stretch of bars on the Isla Teja, within minutes walking from the university, that are frequented by students and locals alike with excellent brews of local craft beer.

Valdivia is a wonderful place to live and study if one is interested in a more relaxed pace of living. The culture, because of the size of and weather in Valdivia, is more open and easygoing than that of Santiago. The university is one of the best in Chile, though the students tend to be quite politically and socially active and are notorious for striking and therefore halting university courses. My department's students occupied our building for four weeks. In situations like these, however, Middlebury's Chilean program directors organize private classes for students enrolled in the program.

I highly recommend Valdivia for students who are interested in getting to know the south of Chile! It's a truly unique part of South America!

I spent from July - December of 2017 participating in the Human Rights Track, a collaborative program between Middlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad and the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago. The track, designed to offer students the opportunity to gain a holistic and multidimensional understanding of the history of human rights in Chile, includes two Chilean university courses, one Middlebury College Spanish writing and grammar course, an independent research project, and an internship.

The beauty of this program is in the flexibility that it gives to students to craft their academic and cultural experience. I chose to approach learning about human rights through the focus of music and social movements and was able to use Santiago as my classroom, traveling to different parts of the city to conduct interviews with musicologists and historians for my research project. I got to work directly with children in some of Santiago’s most marginalized communities through my internship, which I was paired with by Middlebury's Chilean program directors.

I am very satisfied with the balance the program struck by giving me the independence to tailor my own learning experience while also providing the structure and resources to keep me in the right direction. The Chilean program team inspired unwavering confidence in me as they made themselves available in every way to support me throughout my semester. Whether for academic, personal, or logistical reasons, I knew that I could always count on them to be responsive and empathetic.

Santiago, like any huge city, is what you make of it. Though parts of the city may seem gray and commercial, I adapted to the bustle of the big metropolis and appreciated wholeheartedly all of the culture and growing diversity. Not only was I surrounded by tons of live music events, festivals, theaters and cultural centers, and different restaurants, I was a short bus ride from breath-taking nature reserves, state parks, and other culturally-rich cities like Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. The airport is 40-minute drive from downtown Santiago, making other parts of the country accessible by plane.

I mentioned the city's growing diversity above. Santiago, over the past couple of decades, has been experiencing a significant influx in immigration from countries like Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Haiti. Much of my internship work followed organizations that are helping integrate native-born Chileans with their migrant neighbors and building healthy and inclusive communities. While many Chileans are eager to welcome this growing diversity, there are also many who choose to meet migrants with discrimination. This is an evolving phenomenon in Chile, and is especially visible in Santiago.

For those students looking to improve their Spanish, this is an incredibly worthwhile program. Like all Middlebury College abroad programs, one must abide by a language pledge and commit them self to only speaking Spanish for the entirety of the semester. Though challenging at points, I found the pledge to be extremely effective. I began my semester fairly confident in my Spanish-speaking abilities, but felt like the language flowed naturally after five months of being immersed in the program.

Chileans’ form of speaking is quite unique as it is very quick and full of phrases that are only used in Chile, but with a positive and easygoing attitude one can adapt to this mode of speaking and make many friends with Chileans in the process (many people I met loved to teach me new phrases and were very patient).

I invite those undergraduate students excited by the idea of having a fully immersive cultural and academic experience in a vibrant and bustling city to consider this program. Overall, I had a extremely enriching and enjoyable semester and remain grateful for the support by the Chilean program directors.

This program was really challenging because I came in with a lower level of Arabic but they were able to create another MSA class to accommodate my level. However, because I was at a lower level, my other classes and the language pledge were really challenging because those were still at a higher level. My professors were able to help me overcome many of those initial challenges because of the small size of the program. I had a really great host family who helped me practice my speaking and listening and respected my space. The city of Rabat is big enough so you do not get bored but not too big that you are overwhelmed. I would recommend this program to anyone who is looking to really grow academically and personally through their study abroad experience. However it is not a program for someone looking for an easy semester.

I had the pleasure of studying at the Middlebury School in Rabat in the fall of 2018. Due to Middlebury’s language pledge you speak in Arabic all the time, which can be a challenge, but is an incredible opportunity for increasing language skills. My professors were phenomenal, some of the best I have had anywhere. Over the course of four months I was able to see exponential growth in my Arabic skills. The administrators are also terrific. They are very involved and willing to work with students to make sure their needs are being met. Rabat was also an excellent place to study. Quieter than many of the other cities in Morocco, Rabat is much less touristy, while still beautiful (especially along the coast), and gave a better sense of Moroccan life. Additionally, as the capital, Rabat has tremendous resources in the form of libraries, museums, and organizational headquarters.

I really loved my experience abroad with Middlebury. Middlebury is a great program - the Director, the Resident Coordinator, and the professors were amazing, caring, and very passionate - the whole program felt like a family the whole time. There was definitely more work than at other programs in Rabat, but I thought it was helpful because we learned a lot. Middlebury has a language pledge which meant that we were only allowed to speak Arabic, and all 4 of my classes were in Arabic. When I was there I took Darija (dialect), Fusha, Moroccan
Media Culture, and Berber Society, all of which I liked a lot. Although the day from Monday through Thursday could be long, there was no class on Friday, so weekends were relaxing. My Arabic and Darija really improved because of the individualized focus and practice I was able to get while there.

When I wasn't in class or on program excursions, Rabat was an amazing city to hang out in! I spent a lot of time with my host family, who were very kind and fun. I also ended up making a lot of Moroccan friends - Moroccans are super friendly and will befriend you if you are out and about and talk to them, and there is a large college-aged community (go to Renaissance Cafe on Monday nights!). I liked that we weren't always with the program and that we had freedom in the evenings and most weekends to do activities that interested us - it never felt like we were being handheld by Middlebury, but Middlebury was always there to support us if we needed it.

I would 100% recommend this program for the academic opportunity and the chance to be a part of life in Rabat.

Studying in Madrid was a few of the best months of my life to date. The city is so alive. Life is in the streets. People are eating and drinking with their friends and family all night into the morning hours. And I'm talking everyone--middle aged people on a Tuesday night. In Spain, there is a presence and appreciation for the moment like nowhere else. The energy is inviting and exciting.
The Middlebury School provided excellent guidance and support throughout the entire experience. The staff is wonderful. I took the majority of my classes at the public university, Universidad de Carlos III, in Getafe. The Midd staff was continuously giving advice on how to best navigate Carlos III: tips for note taking, for speaking with professors, for talking to other students. They also gave advice for exploring madrid and how to best maximize our time there. All students in the Midd program had to take a grammar/language course at the Middlebury School, no matter where you took the rest of your courses (Carlos III, Autonoma, Midd). I loved my language professor. Hands down the best Spanish instructor I've ever had. In line with maximizing our experience in Madrid, she taught us the colloquial way. For example, she'd regularly tell us: "This is the grammatically correct way to do it, but in Madrid we say it this other way." The midd faculty and staff teaches you how to live in Spain--an immersive experience like no other.

I studied in Morocco for two semesters. It was a wonderful experience. Morocco is a beautiful country where everything is relatively cheap, so there are a lot of opportunities for travel, eating out on a regular basis is doable and the food is great, and you'll meet a lot of interesting and welcoming people. The program itself offers a unique opportunity to study both Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic in a setting where you later have the chance to put those skills to use. The people that work in the program are always accessible and more than willing to help, and in my experience do their best to make everyone feel at home.

I have completed three language programs with Middlebury college, two summer intensives in California and the study abroad program in Rabat, Morocco. The distinguishing component is the Language Pledge, a strictly (but kindly) enforced policy which forbids use of any language other than the target language. Without a doubt, leaving your native tounge behind is the best and fastest way to learn any language, and Middlebury provides the structure and support to do just that over the course of a semester or a year. While I opted to move to a village in the Atlas Mountains in order to conduct research, but there is no way I could have do e that without the invaluable instruction I received at Middlebury. I couldn't recommend the program enough if your main goal is language learning. That said it is very challenging, so if your goal is to hangout on the beach in Morocco you will be disappointed. But if you would like to return with excellent Arabic skills, this is the program for you!