study abroad
 

how good does that look on someone's resume or grad school application if the person is in technical field

i know it will probably look awesome on sociology major or something, but not sure about a person from a technical field.. say computers...

The thing is I really want to visit a country, I have two options - visit it by myself (and maybe family) or go with a study abroad program.

study abroad is more expensive than how much i would have to pay if i would go by myself. (the difference is about $2000)
so I am a little confused about what i should do.
should I pay $2000 more to go with the study abroad program?

Depends, where abroad you want to study. If you came to the UK, you can look at paying over £7000 more than what residents of the UK would have to pay.

I looked at doing a masters in south africa a while back and the price for international students over there was a bit less than what I would've paid for a masters here.

no i am not asking about price here
it's already determined...
i am asking how good such study abroad programs look on resume/applications

Two points: As Seif points out, sometimes it can cost you more. This is particularly true when the area has moderate to heavy subsidies for post-secondary education. The rationale here is that non-citizens have not paid into the system; thus they are not entitled to the benefits of the government subsidies. The result is they pay very high un-subsidized rates (often in advance).

The second point is that you want to be sure that credentials you earn abroad will be recognized where you want to be working. Every day, you hear or read about doctors, scientists, etc who emigrate here (here being Canada for me, but it applies equally to many other countries), find their degrees are worthless, and end up pushing a mop around a high school.

I would not award any points for study abroad unless that study had been financed by others who perceived (rightly or wrongly) that you were special

i am sorry
i think i did not make it clear
i am talking about study program only for 2 weeks!
sorry again

I think if you study abroad it would benefit you greatly. All organizations have cultural diversity of some kind. So studying abroad would help you interact with more people then just your cultural. I think if I was business owner I would pay a little more if a person studied abroad. Especially if your position was one where you traveled a lot or traveled to different countries, and came in contact with different cultures.

It might help. My resume was nearly blank; I listed the classes I took and a website I'd worked on the summer before. I had hardly any extracurriculars, so few I didn't even bother mentioning them. I still got a couple offers.

If you think it'll be fun, though, totally go for it. Life after school kinda sucks when you don't have 4 vacations per year, so enjoy yourself as much as you can while you can. And there might be other advantages. It certainly wouldn't hurt...

Ahh, in that case, go for it, provided you have the financial means. However, your expectations shouldn't include acquiring a lot of technical knowledge in that short a period; as bigguy mentions, the exposure to other cultures can itself be beneficial. Plus, it may look good on a résumé, particularly if you were chosen for the program due to merit.

I thought you meant acquiring a degree abroad, or something, and that is best approached with caution.

As far as the resume goes, if I were a potential employer and you were interviewing with me... I would probably ask you about it, but it wouldn't put you any higher in the books than the next person. As the others have mentioned, it would be good to do just for the cultural exposure really.