Alixandra

About Alixandra’s program:

• Program: Semester in Florence. She attended Spring 2017.

• Program cost: $10,000 including tuition, a room in an apartment, and meal points. She was given 75 meal points and each meal she bought was around 2 points.

• Beside her meal points, she tried a variety of food within Florence. There were markets that she could buy food for cheap and cook within her apartment. Eating out she felt was cheaper too. She was able to have pizza for 5 euro and pasta for 10 euro.

Advice from Alixandra:

• Alixandra chose a spring semester over summer because she felt like she would get more “bang for [her] buck.” When looking at program lengths and costs she could go for three times as long but only pay double the amount. She wanted to do spring over fall because she could stay after her program and travel more into the summer. In addition, she chose not to do summer because her financial aid does not apply for that semester, but she could apply her normal spring scholarships to her program.

• She explored programs the year before she went and committed in Summer 2016. She felt as though committing in summer allowed her to get lots of help when campus was not as busy with the regular crowd of students.

• She had an account with the USF Federal Credit Union on campus that her dad also had access to so he could deposit money into her account. She made sure to get a card with a chip before she left since chip cards are widely used in Europe. Constantly checking her account on her phone helped her keep up with how much she had to spend while in Europe.

• When taking money out at ATMs, Alixandra mainly used the post office ATM in Florence and did not have any issues unlike some of her classmates who had card information stolen from them. She saw more locals using these ATMs and followed their example.

• Before leaving, she researched a variety of things about Italy, which helped her know what times certain shops were open. Unlike American restaurants and stores, they are often not open all day. She also found information about how to avoid pickpocketing based on the bag she brought and made sure to remain aware and always hold her bag close to her zipped up.

• Her best advice is to focus on spending money on things you can’t do in America.

How Alixandra afforded her trip:

• Alixandra was able to apply her Florida Prepaid, USF Academic Scholarship, and student loans to her program.

• She lives at home so does not have the rent expense that many students do.

• For her flight, her parents were generous enough to purchase her ticket for her that cost around $1200 flying from Tampa to Rome and then she took a train to Florence. When looking for flight options, she found that if she searched at weird times late at night when she was up studying at 4 am, she could find better deals.

• Although she wanted to stay until August, she did not have enough money to continue her travels so she returned mid-May. She wishes she would have realized how much weekend trips would add to her expenses and that she would have looked at cheaper options rather than booking preplanned trips. The preplanned trips she went on were through the school so she was able to bond with the faculty and students in her program and go on planned tours from locals. However, these included more expensive hotel stays and restaurant options.

• She limited her spending before leaving by not eating out as much. In addition, when Christmas time came around she made her family and friends aware of her saving goals and stuck to more homemade gifts rather than spending a lot.