Dear Study Abroad Volunteers,
We hope that the start of 2023 has been rejuvenating and that this newsletter finds you well! We wanted to provide you with a few updates on things that are happening in the study abroad world of AFS-USA!
Thank you AFS Volunteers – Over 200 Study Abroad Interviews Completed!
The Study Abroad Team wants to thank AFS Volunteers for their outstanding work supporting our AFS Students in need of interviews! After an overhaul of our Study Abroad Interview form, thanks to the Study Abroad Advisory Group, 223 interviews have already been completed by 53 Area Teams.
We still have many more interviews to complete, but we want to send our thanks to the volunteers for ALL their important work! The interviews can be fully remote and allow you to connect with a local participant and their family, understand more about their desire to Study Abroad with AFS, and establish a relationship with them that hopefully last years! If you are interested in participating in these interviews, please let us know at StudyAbroad@afsusa.org or become a “Sending Interview Coordinator” or “Sending Interviewer” to receive automatic updates about Participants in your area.
NH23 Recruitment:
We are about midway through the transfer deadlines for our NH23 programs. These deadlines are set by our partners as the date by which we need to transfer full applications in Global Link. So far, we have more deposits paid for all programs, and have transferred more applications for all programs than we ever have in the past few years:
And we are seeing the same positive trends for both our YP/SM flagship programs:
And Summer programs:
Year and Semester Programs:
So far, we have 133 deposits paid, meaning that we have 133 applicants saving spots for their programs. We have a goal of 152 that we need to reach by the end of our recruitment for all of NH23, leaving us with about 19 spots remaining on programs that are still open. We are working hard to make sure that we fill each of those remaining spots and still have quite a few open programs! If you have any interested applicants, please reach out to us and we will be happy to work with them to determine an open destination!
Summer Programs:
We have plenty of room still for our summer programs with about 50 spots left to fill before our recruitment ends in May. There is space available in our programs to Denmark, France, Kenya, and Argentina so there is variety and each of these programs are ones that we have successfully sent participants on in the past. If you have any questions about programs, please let us know! In the meantime, find our programs listed here and be sure to give out our AFS75 promo code as AFS-USA continues to celebrate 75 years of programs!
Available Promo Codes:
To help encourage interested applicants to move along, we are still offering the below promo codes! Please feel free to use these at your discretion!
AFSVolunteer– $100 off Application Fee for applicant with connection to an AFS Volunteer
AFSFamily- $100 off Application Fee for applicant who is a member of a previous host family, or is related to an AFS Returnee
AFSNow- $50 off Application Fee for applicant referred by Volunteer or Staff
AFS75- $75 off the Application Fee in honor of AFS celebrating 75 years!
Withdrawal Emails:
When you claim or conduct an interview you will now be notified via an auto-email if the applicant later withdraws. This change came at the request of study abroad volunteers to better understand where applicants are in the process and to know if an applicant in line for an interview has decided to withdraw. We hope that these emails will be useful to everyone, and we are also working with our IT team to develop some additional functionality within the Study Abroad widget that we hope will give better insight into applicant’s assigned to your team, and where they are in the process. More on that to come!
SH24 Recruitment:
We plan to open our SH24 programs the week of April 10th. If you have applicants interested in Southern Hemisphere programs, then please ask them to note the date! We will have a few new program offerings this cycle that are in the process of being confirmed now. Once SH24 is launched we will notify teams via an announcement in MyAFS News!
Thank you for all that you do, always.
The AFS-USA Study Abroad Team
Erin, Jennifer, Adriana, Parker, and Caitlin