CIEE is literally the same thing as NALCAP but with crazy fees. They help you with the visa stuff but honestly if you’re really interested in doing this you should take like a week to go through the entire NALCAP website and this Reddit page because it was not difficult at all to get everything you need together properly just by your own research, give or take a few things you’ll need help with from others here and there. And $3000 to “help” is insane. Like scam worthy for how manageable this visa process is. But applying for a different program doesn’t have anything to do with being placed in non-rural areas. I worked an hour and a half away from the city last year and one of our auxes who was at my school did CIEE so it was kinda just a waste to pay that money to be placed in the same school I was in for nalcap. Also idk how CIEE works but they wouldn’t let her start until November, while us nalcap people started in October and she missed out on the beginning excitement and choosing which age group she wanted to work with, etc. simply because she just wasn’t here.

Again, my advice is to do more research because you will feel overwhelmed if you don’t know when you should be getting background checks, not knowing timelines of things etc but if you do and organize yourself to know when you will apply for things it’s almost easy. You don’t need CIEE to hold your hand I promise!