As the Hanover winter trudges on, I find myself sitting in class imagining what my life would be like if I had gone to UCLA.
For one thing, it would be 80 degrees outside all the freaking time. For another, I would be a paltry distance from the beach and the ocean. I could spend my life sitting under palm trees with sand between my toes, watching the sun set at a normal hour (not 4 p.m.) and listening to the shouts of hot surfers playing beach volleyball.
Instead, my hair freezes on the way to my 9 and the soundtrack to my life consists of blocks of snow and ice shattering on the sidewalk next to me. I haven't worn anything besides snow boots since December, and if I take a nap at 3 p.m., it's pitch black by the time I wake up. Welcome to Hanover, I guess.
It's no secret that Dartmouth students love our school. As prospies, we knew exactly how cold it would get, and yet we chose to come here anyway. Thank goodness that we have the option of getting away when the cold Hanover winter or "Dartmouth bubble" becomes too much to bear.
Dartmouth currently operates 62 unique off-campus programs. These include foreign study programs, language study abroad programs and exchange programs with various other colleges and universities. Of these, 18 off-campus programs are in the United States and 44 are abroad. They are dispersed throughout 28 countries and six continents. Some off-campus programs are offered multiple times a year, while others are only held during one term.
By my careful count, Dartmouth's off-campus programs can accommodate a total of 891 students over a four-term year, according to the Off-Campus Programs website. According to John Tansey, executive director of Off-Campus Programs, the number of students who choose to go abroad through FSPs and LSAs ranges from 560 to 650 students per year, averaging about 600 students a year. Approximately 30 students participate in the 12-College Exchange and other exchange programs.
"Consistently, slightly over 60 percent of students study abroad," Tansey said. "That includes not only students on programs we support, but also students doing programs on their leave terms or transfer terms."
The most programs are offered in the Fall and Spring (40 and 31, respectively), according to the Off-Campus Programs website. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tansey said that Winter programs are the most competitive to get into.
The programs that see the most applicants per spot available are the Keble College exchange, the Government FSP in London, the Chinese FSP in Beijing, the Anthropology/Linguistics FSP in Auckland and the Spanish FSP in Buenos Aires, Tansey said.
"In terms of student participation, Barcelona and Beijing operate multiple programs, as does the French FSP in Paris," Tansey said.
Maybe it's Chupitos, the made-for-tourists bar in Barcelona (which offers hundreds of different shot varieties), or the fact that Paris is, well, Paris, but the Barcelona and Paris programs garner the greatest student interest and are consistently the best-attended, each running three terms a year.
In contrast, the English FSP in Trinidad, the Asian and Middle Eastern studies FSP in Morocco, the German LSA in Berlin and the Russian LSA in St. Petersberg have historically been less popular.
The Portuguese LSA in Brazil used to be consistently under-enrolled, but has experienced a "comeback" in recent years, Tansey said. The program had been running at under 10 students on average, but in the past three years has seen 15, 14 and 20 students participate, respectively.
Tansey pointed out that world events tend to influence the popularity of different study abroad programs. When the Soviet Union dissolved, interest in the Russian and German language programs greatly increased, but that enthusiasm has since faltered, according to Tansey.
"Now there's a lot of interest in Asia and China," Tansey said. "Spanish is a language that has a lot of current interest, and the French programs have always been strong. Our Arabic program is new, and there's definitely an interest in Arabic and what's happening in the Middle East."
Clearly Dartmouth loves study abroad. But why is there such an obsession with the world outside our little College on the Hill?
Tansey suggested that the degree to which FSP and LSA programs are integrated into the Dartmouth curriculum and the high level of faculty involvement influence the popularity of the programs. The D-Plan also "facilitates student participation I've known students to do two, sometimes three programs," Tansey said.
The flexibility of the D-Plan also means that students who are placed on waiting lists are often called up to fill slots as students who were initially accepted into programs modify their pattern of residence, according to Tansey.
Erin Abraham '14 called studying abroad "an opportunity that you never get again in your life. It's a chance that you get to learn about something in its true environment that you can't learn about in Hanover."
That's for sure. We talk a lot about our little bubble, and it's definitely true to an extent I completely missed the fact that the Grammys were happening until I went on Facebook and saw that there were a million statuses about Lady GaGa's egg entrance.
But that's only one side of the story. For every two students who stay in Hanover for four years, there are three who don't. Dartmouth students, it seems, recreate the world they've left behind in the one they've newly entered, and no matter where we go, it seems we'll always bring the College with us.
Maybe that's why we love going abroad so much no matter where we are, we'll always carry with us a little piece of home. So why brave negative temperatures for four months? Go see the world! Dartmouth will be here, awaiting your return.
