While many graduating seniors plan to pack up their cars and drive to college in the fall, a few will be pulling out their passports and hopping on a flight overseas to attend their colleges of choice.

Seniors Daniel Congbalay and Zac Kurtz are two students who plan to take this trip overseas. Congbalay plans to attend the University of St Andrews in Scotland and Kurtz plans to attend Lakeland College in Japan.

When looking for the right college, Kurtz searched through the website of the Japanese Embassy in the United States for an English speaking college in Japan. Kurtz said that Lakeland College had the most reasonable requirements and decided to apply.

Unlike Kurtz, who knew he wanted to go to college outside of the country since he was 10 years old, Congbalay said he never imagined he would be going to college abroad.

Congbalay had heard about the University of St Andrews from a couple of people before he decided to look into it. After communicating with admissions officer Beth Shotton, she and Congbalay met in Caribou Coffee. And the more they talked, the more he became interested in the school.

While Congbalay said he was quite certain the University of St Andrews was the right school for him after talking to Shotton, he visited the school in February before making the final decision. Immediately after taking the tour in the morning, he asked the faculty in the admissions office if he could accept his offer right then and there. A piece of printer paper exchanged hands and after writing a short note, dating and signing the page, his enrollment was formally acknowledged.

Once at college, Congbalay plans on studying management and economics. Looking into the future, Congbalay sees his college plan to go abroad as an advantage.

“I love doing jump-start projects and other sort of like entrepreneurial type things, so when you work with people from all over the world it’s really, really easy to globalize,” Congbalay said.

According to Congbalay, flights within Europe are very affordable. While attending college, he plans to use this opportunity to visit multiple countries within Europe, staying at youth hostels.

In Japan, Kurtz plans to study education, linguistics and possibly early childhood education. After graduating from college, Kurtz plans to “country hop” and teach in various countries all over the world. Much like Congbalay, Kurtz feels he will have an advantage within his area of study because he will be able to learn a lot more about different teaching methodologies in different countries.

According to guidance counselor Margaret Sullivan, one of the benefits of going to college abroad is being able to gain a sense of self-advocacy.

“You truly learn how to stand on your own two feet and assimilate yourself into different cultural experiences and cultural norms,” Sullivan said.

Kurtz noted that he is most excited for the independence that college will offer.

“I’m just being thrust into a new country,” said Kurtz. “I only speak the language conversationally and I get to decide everything.”

Unlike most students who typically learn a language in a classroom setting, Kurtz taught himself to speak Japanese.

“For a while I was in a stalemate and I had the typical language learner’s problem where you only learn a language here and there and then you complain that you’re not learning it,” said Kurtz. “I got a huge motivational kick…from a polyglot named Benny Lewis who is on his 19th language. He released a book called, ‘Fluent in 3 Months,’ which is about natural methodologies to learning a language and that just motivated me to start learning it faster. So, I spent … a good four months of actually studying and I can hold a two or three hour conversation.”

While he is excited for this “plight of independence,” Kurtz is nervous about it, too because he said cannot just call a parent and ask for their help if he loses something like his wallet.

Even though he will be far from home, Congbalay said he was not nervous about the distance.

“A flight is a flight,” said Congbalay. “Once you get out of driving range, whether you’re in California or somewhere else, it’s the same thing.”

As a guidance counselor, Sullivan also recognizes some of the drawbacks that may come with going to college overseas. She advises that the student pays very close attention to his or her career goals because various jobs may require different types of licenses that may or may not be available depending on the country.

After studying abroad in Austria for a year, Sullivan realized that learning a new language, navigating around a completely different place and having the opportunity to meet new people were all critical components of her own personal education.

“You really don’t know anything about anywhere in the world until you go there,” said Kurtz. “It increases your overall sense of empathy and awareness.”