Updated: April 6, 2026, at 11:40 a.m.

Ten years after officials founded the Global Bachelor’s study abroad program, current and former participants say the program allowed them to immerse themselves in a variety of cultures and pursue their intellectual interests in atypical destinations compared to traditional study abroad experiences.

The program, which GW launched in 2016, is housed in the University’s Office of Study Abroad and gives up to 60 first-year students each year the chance to study abroad for a minimum of three semesters during their time at GW. Over half a dozen global bachelor’s students and graduates said the program’s promise of multiple abroad semesters exploring different cultures and the ability to study their interests abroad was a major reason why they chose to attend GW. 

Global Bachelor’s students have a choice between studying in Belfast, Northern Ireland or a rotating Asia-Pacific location, which is currently Singapore, for their first abroad experience. They can then study anywhere for their second and third semesters of the program, with the latter also being a choice between a semester or a summer internship abroad.

A University spokesperson said officials created the program as part of GW’s 2016 strategic plan as a way to help students in the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, the Elliott School of International Affairs and the School of Business understand global issues. They said the program helps students further develop skills they often learn while spending a semester abroad, such as analytical thinking and creativity.

“The benefits and skill growth known to be associated with studying abroad is often only heightened amongst our Global Bachelor’s Program students who have the opportunity to do so multiple times,” the spokesperson said.

Students can apply for the program during the spring semester of their first year as long as they have at least a 3.0 GPA, are in good disciplinary standing and submit a four-year academic plan to their academic advisor. While in the program, students must complete three courses focused on setting goals for semesters abroad and a capstone with a short paper and presentation during their senior year.

The spokesperson said students were required to study in Shanghai when GW launched the program before they added Belfast as an alternative location in 2019. Officials relocated the program to New Zealand for the Spring 2020 semester after COVID-19 shutdown China that January and reduced the requirements to two abroad semesters after they lifted the pandemic-induced pause on all study abroad programs.

The spokesperson said officials rebranded the Shanghai track to the Asia-Pacific track after the pandemic, with the location rotating between New Zealand, Chile and now Singapore.

“The opportunity to continue to introduce new cohort destinations for the Asia-Pacific track has been a great way to continue to reflect the original spirit of the program — allowing students to broaden their perspectives of this influential region and gain skills necessary to succeed in a globalizing world,” the spokesperson said. 

Emma Walther, a master’s student in security policy studies who was a part of the first post-COVID Global Bachelor’s group to return to the three-semester requirement in 2022, said the program helped her gain a first-hand perspective on how multiple countries handle conflict and maintain peace in different ways. 

She also said the program enhanced her experience in her conflict resolution concentration, allowing her to visit and study how countries beyond “stereotypical” European destinations handle conflict, such as how Morocco avoided collapse during the Arab Spring and how Jordan has remained stable despite a significant influx of refugees over the past few decades.

“All of those things combine to give a really interesting perspective on conflict resolution and conflict prevention, even in some really tough parts of the world,” Walther said.

Walther said officials paused internship applications and changed internship requirements in fall 2023 while her cohort was in the process of applying for their internships to act as their third semester, a change she said made the application process much more “stressful.” Officials paused all global bachelor’s internships in September 2024, placing them under administrative review due to “potential health and security concerns,” a move they justified at the time as a “periodic review” process that resulted from some students expressing concerns over past internship choices.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on the review’s results or whether officials made changes to the program after the review.

“It was super frustrating and made all of us really stressed since time was running out for finding internships,” Walther said in a message. “For me, had the pause lasted much longer and they had made us do a third semester, I probably would have dropped the program.”

Nora Ball — a senior who traveled to Belfast and Chile as a first-year student, Cambodia during a summer internship and South Korea during her senior year — said she heard about the program while applying to GW. Enticed by the chance to spend half of her time in college abroad, Ball said she factored GW’s Global Bachelor’s Program into her decision to attend the University.

Ball said she was “disappointed” by the lack of rigor in the program’s capstone since the course made her distill all of her semesters abroad into a five-page paper and a short presentation. She said she would have preferred that the program had a formal thesis paper instead, which she thinks would allow students to reflect more in-depth on their time spent abroad.

“That is two years of my life that was conducting research,” Ball said. “And the problem with when you are putting in one country, let alone two or three, it’s not going to be five pages. It’s going to be a lot more, especially with the amount of time we spent in these countries.”

Michelle Margolin, a senior studying criminal justice and minoring in psychology and Chinese, said her decision to go to GW was largely because of the program, as she loves languages and wanted to have multiple experiences studying abroad, practicing her Chinese in Singapore and Taiwan and Spanish in Madrid. She said that although her post-graduate plans have since changed, she saw the program as a way to build connections with people across the globe and to help her career if she decided to work abroad.

“I was really set on doing something with a foreign language and maybe even working abroad,” Margolin said, “And so I thought with this opportunity, if I can get multiple experiences to go abroad, it’ll work with my four year plan.”

Allison Merlino, a sophomore studying international affairs who traveled to Belfast, said the program differs from other study abroad programs because a GW professor gives students a tour of the location, and the curriculum and coursework are designed around teaching students the history and culture of the location, both perks regular programs, which are more focused on “fun,” do not provide.

“Global Bachelor’s has the ability to connect you to the people and the history and the place you’re going to so that you can actually be a part of it more,” Merlino said. “Even though you’re only there for still for months, you feel very integrated into the community.”

This post was updated to correct the following:

A previous version of this post misspelled Ball’s name. We regret this error.