I spent too much time worrying about the US path only to see things change

Seeing the headlines about KAIST instead of Ivy League

I was scrolling through the news the other day when I saw a story about a brilliant Vietnamese student who got a perfect SAT score but turned down all those prestigious American universities to attend KAIST in Korea. It made me pause for a long time. I remember back when my nephew was obsessed with the idea of high school study abroad, specifically looking at those Christian private schools in the Midwest. We spent months obsessing over test scores, the cost of tuition which was hovering around $40,000 to $50,000 a year, and the logistical nightmare of finding a host family that actually felt like a fit. Seeing that news made me wonder if we were ever asking the right questions or just following a script that felt mandatory because everyone else was doing it.

The endless loop of SAT and pathway preparations

Looking back, the pressure was exhausting. I recall looking into those pathway programs for US universities, thinking it was the only way to ensure some kind of stability. You go through these application cycles, sometimes as early as the summer before your final year, dealing with separate school exams in biology, physics, and chemistry. It felt like a marathon where the finish line kept moving. We were so worried about securing a spot for a 2027 intake that we barely looked up from the textbooks. It’s funny now, thinking about how we treated those entrance requirements like they were the absolute center of the universe. I wonder if the intensity of that preparation was actually necessary, or if we were just terrified of the alternative.

Missing the point of being abroad

Maybe the most frustrating part wasn’t the academic load, but the way we framed the entire experience. It was always about the ‘next step’—how this school would lead to that university, and how that university would lead to a certain career path. When I heard about that girl choosing Korea for safety and opportunity, it struck me that we never really talked about what kind of life the student actually wanted while they were there. We were too busy calculating IQ tests and checking off subject requirements. I remember visiting a few international school campuses, and everything felt so sterile, designed to push you through a specific gate. There was this constant background noise about rankings that probably shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

The quiet realization of what we spent

I still hold onto the brochures from those days. Looking at the pricing, I’m honestly a bit shocked at how much we were willing to commit without knowing if it would even feel like home for him. He’s in a different place now, and things turned out fine, but the anxiety of that period remains stuck in my memory. I’m not sure I would approach it the same way if I had a second chance. We acted as if the path was narrow and fragile, like if we missed one test date or failed to hit a specific score, the whole future would collapse. That fear feels so irrational now, but it was incredibly vivid back then. Sometimes I think about the money and the stress, and I just feel a bit empty about how much of that time was spent in pure, defensive mode.

Still uncertain about the best approach

Even after everything, I still don’t have a clear answer on what the right move is. People still ask me for advice on whether they should push for a Canadian exchange program or stick to the local curriculum, and I honestly don’t know what to tell them. It feels like every situation is its own messy experiment. There isn’t a blueprint that works for everyone, and the more I talk to other parents who went through the same thing, the more I realize that everyone is just guessing based on the last piece of information they found. Maybe the uncertainty never really goes away, and we just learn to live with it until the kids graduate and start their own lives anyway.