Franklin College

Travel, Travel, Travel!!!!! There are so many great sights! Go all over Europe! Also Milan is only 30 minutes aways from you, try to visit that place a lot, along with other Italian cities. Read up on Lugano and the surrouding areas, that way you have an idea about where to travel. Meet lots of people!! Franklin is only about 40% American it seeemed, so you have a great student body to learn from. There are so many languages and cultures in the school that you can learn from!!!

Its a decent school. Teachers are mediocre, and some have horrible teaching skills. The best parts of this univeristy though is the 2 week academic travel and the student body.

knowing what to expect from the courses, knowing there was no phones in the apartments, knowing the limitations on computer facilities and library resources, knowing how few people were really active (its in the Alps!) and how few would travel on weekends

I would re4commend it for many people, it has an academic travel program which is awesome and unique, but they need some serious improvements to accomodate students- there is more than a 30% turnover rate amongst students who go intending to stay for a degree, something they wont tell you

I felt totally prepared when I went abroad, I brought way too many clothes, so that is one thing that I would do dfferently.

I would recommend this program mostly because of its great location. Everyone that studied abroad there was awesome. However you could probably find a more academic program with more well rounded undergraduate students at another institution.

More language experience would have been fun but not necessary. If you definately know where you want to travel it's in your best interest to buy a swisspass or eurail pass. However, it's hard to guess what kind of people you'll meet or where you'll want to travel, so don't worry. Having a pass will save you some money and hassle but it's not difficult to figure it out as you go. Take advantage of the cheap airfare within europe and check out possible destinations before hand. We flew roundtrip to Paris from Milan for 40 euro roundtrip. Check out volareweb.org and ryanair.com

Take advantage of the amazing location and travel travel travel.

Being a tourist hot-spot, EVERYTHING in Lugano is outragously expensive. Having limited funds, I opted to shop around and buy food at grocery stores rather than eat out. If you're smart about it, you can manage on a decent budget. Housing was included so it's hard to say how it compares, but I'd imagine it'd be expensive if not arranged through Franklin. Although admittance to clubs is free for Franklin students, drinks are crazy expensive. It's much more economical to pre-load with a cheap bottle of wine. My basic philosophy was to cut costs on food and partying and really take advantage of the travel opportunities. While academic travel is offered during the year, summer session students had no problem what-so-ever arranging once in a lifetime budget friendly adventures.