Every student who boards a plane to study abroad in another country carries similar hopes. They imagine personal transformation, academic growth, and experiences that will reshape their understanding of the world.
Finding your footing in a new country.
Yet the reality of studying abroad is far more varied than glossy brochures suggest. While some young people flourish in unfamiliar environments, adapting quickly and building meaningful connections, others struggle to keep their heads above water, counting down the days until they can return home.
The difference between those who bloom and those who merely survive often comes down to factors that admissions counselors rarely discuss in pre-departure orientations.
The Weight of Cultural Adjustment Abroad
International students often face a series of transitional difficulties when they come to study in the US at universities and colleges.
Culture shock is defined as feelings of alienation and/or disorientation due to being in an unfamiliar cultural environment.
The intensity of this experience varies dramatically from person to person, but no one escapes it entirely.
All students experience some degree of culture shock when they arrive in their host country, regardless of the student’s previous experience, maturity, disposition, or knowledge of the country in which they will be living.
The students who thrive tend to be those who acknowledge these feelings without letting them become paralyzing. They understand that cultural adaptation is a process, not an event.
Those students who are the most successful in their adjustment and integration abroad often experience more severe reentry challenges than individuals who do not adapt well overseas.
This paradox reveals an uncomfortable truth about study abroad success. The students who invest emotionally and culturally in their host countries sometimes face harder transitions both ways.
What Makes Some Students Thrive While Others Struggle
Before students ever step onto foreign soil, certain psychological and social factors predict how they will handle the challenges ahead. The connection between preparedness and outcomes extends beyond packing lists and visa paperwork.
This study examined whether noncognitive student success factors varied across international student subgroups, and there were meaningful subgroup differences for the noncognitive factors, including goal commitment, persistence, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and institutional commitment.
Engagement matters deeply, even when students find themselves thousands of miles from familiar classrooms. Voyager Sopris, an educational solutions provider focused on literacy and learning, emphasizes that student engagement strategies differ and sets of principles apply across contexts.
The strategies that help students connect with material domestically, such as collaborative learning and real-world connections, become even more critical when students navigate unfamiliar academic systems and cultural expectations abroad.
Developing resilience and self-efficacy in response to these challenges is crucial.
The students who bloom abroad typically possess or develop what researchers call psychological resilience.
Resilience provides us with the capacity to effectively navigate adverse times in our lives, and resilient people are able to notice and manage their emotions, in a way that supports them to not become overwhelmed.
Positive factors affecting academic success were the support system (family, friends, seniors) and campus resources (library, laboratories, extra-curricular activities, scholarship).
Students who actively seek out these support systems rather than isolating themselves when difficulties arise demonstrate a pattern that separates flourishing from mere survival.
Support helps students thrive abroad.
The Hidden Challenges Beyond Academics Abroad
Financial stress compounds every other difficulty.
The stress caused by community, language, academics, and financial factors can alter students’ perceptions of completing their programs of study.
Students who arrive abroad with barely enough funding to cover expenses find themselves unable to participate in social activities, travel opportunities, or even basic cultural experiences that could ease their isolation.
Language barriers create unexpected exhaustion. Even students who test well in their second or third language before departure discover that functioning entirely in that language day after day drains their mental reserves.
Common concerns include homesickness, being far from family, financial constraints, academic adjustment, language difficulties, and cultural barriers, all of which can affect a student’s overall experience.
The students who survive rather than thrive often share common patterns. They spend excessive time on social media connecting with friends back home, never fully committing to their host environment.
Many of them were reluctant to ask for help, and to cope with adjustment problems, they usually used maladaptive or dysfunctional coping strategies such as avoidance and isolation.
This creates a vicious cycle where loneliness breeds more isolation, which deepens loneliness.
Discrimination and perceived exclusion affect some groups of students more than others.
They encountered various problems, ranging from cultural differences in daily activities to discrimination.
Students from certain regions or backgrounds face additional barriers that make blooming abroad significantly harder, regardless of their resilience or preparation.
Building the Capacity to Flourish
The gap between surviving and thriving is not insurmountable.
Students’ experiences abroad as EFL learners at the host institution and the different challenges they faced have helped most of them to build a self-efficacy and self-confidence in their ability to solve problems, and to develop strategies and means to achieve their academic goals easily.
The process of struggle itself can become the catalyst for growth, but only when students possess or develop the tools to work through that struggle constructively.
Universities and program providers increasingly recognize their responsibility in this equation.
Ultimate responsibility for international student inclusion and success rests largely with the institutions that welcome them to campus.
The best programs do not simply admit students and hope for the best. They provide structured support throughout the adaptation process, recognizing that students need different interventions at different stages of their journey.
Pre-departure preparation makes a measurable difference. Students who understand what to expect, who learn about culture shock as a normal phenomenon rather than a personal failure, and who develop concrete coping strategies before leaving home start their experiences with significant advantages.
Yet even with preparation, some students will struggle more than others, and that outcome does not reflect weakness or unsuitability for international experience.
The Verdict on Who Blooms and Who Survives
There is no simple formula that predicts which students will bloom and which will merely survive their time abroad. Academic strength alone does not guarantee success. Neither does previous travel experience or outgoing personality.
The students who flourish tend to combine realistic expectations with genuine curiosity, robust support networks with willingness to feel uncomfortable, and determination to engage even when engagement feels difficult.
The students who struggle most are not necessarily less capable or less adventurous. Often they simply face a combination of challenges that overwhelms their current coping resources. Financial pressure, isolation, discrimination, language barriers, and homesickness can accumulate into a weight that even resilient students find crushing.
What separates these two groups most clearly is not inherent ability but rather access to support, willingness to seek help, and often simple luck in finding the right people at the right time. Study abroad experiences vary so dramatically because students are not uniform, host environments differ vastly, and the interaction between individual and context determines outcomes far more than either factor alone.
The uncomfortable truth is that study abroad is not universally transformative. For some it becomes genuinely life-changing, opening doors and expanding perspectives in ways that shape entire careers and identities.
For others it remains a difficult period to be endured, offering some growth but primarily leaving behind relief that it ended. Both experiences are valid, and both students deserve recognition for stepping into unfamiliar territory, even when the territory proves less welcoming than they hoped.
Author
