Welcome Letter

We are looking for bright, open minded, flexible young people who are willing to move outside their comfort zones and who want to learn about the world and themselves.

Being an exchange student is a challenging, rewarding and fun experience. You're not a tourist or a guest. You’re actually living in your host country as a member of that community.
You'll be placed with a host family and attend a local school. You’ll live like a local and become immersed in the culture. You’ll learn the language and gain invaluable international experience. You’ll learn a lot about yourself.
Student exchange programs promote tolerance, maturity and independence. They also encourage an international perspective. In a very competitive world these are highly sought after qualities. Experience is everything™.

Investment for Life

Being an exchange student is an investment for life and complements your formal education in important and exciting ways. The experience of living or studying overseas can bring enormous rewards:

• Learn about the world first hand
• Open career doors you didn’t know existed
• Get to know how others live and come to see the world from another perspective
• Learn another language
• Test yourself and acquire independence and maturity
• Make new friends and appreciate old ones even more
• Gain experience and judgement

Long after you return home your exchange experience will influence and inform your life. It will provide you with a substantial backdrop from which to make future study and career choices. Employers are increasingly alert to the benefits of student exchange. Your experience will set you apart from the crowd and mark you as someone who has proven themselves in challenging circumstances.

Challenge Yourself

• It requires courage to travel half way round the world to live with a new family in a new community very different from your own
• It requires flexibility to attend a new school, make new friends and perhaps learn a new language
• It requires an open mind to live in another culture, to observe and appreciate the differences and to truly learn from the experience
• You become immersed in the local community
• You will find that all the familiarity of home – the ways of doing things, the people, sights, sounds, smells - are suddenly no longer there. You will be confronted with completely different ways of seeing and understanding the world around you
• You may encounter homesickness and culture shock particularly in the early stages of the program

Please don't think living and studying overseas is easy.

But if you have realistic expectations and are prepared to challenge yourself then it can be a life changing experience.

Student Exchange Australia New Zealand Ltd has many years experience of delivering high quality programs. All our staff have either been exchange students, have lived, worked or studied overseas. They understand the challenges involved and are committed to providing you with a high level of service and support throughout.
The best way to learn more about our programs is to come along to one of our free information sessions. They are held regularly in major cities and allow you to meet our staff and hear from returned participants. I run many of the sessions myself and I hope to meet you there.
If I can ever be of any assistance please feel free to call on 1300 135 331 (in Australia) or 0800 440 079 (in New Zealand).
Kind regards,
Nick Lorentzen MA Warwick, MintS Sydney
National Director