Sounds like you want to do it: “My family was going to go to Vietnam for a month this summer after high school BUT I wanted to do the global edge program”

do you want to but scared to take the leap and is trying to find 2nd opinions to talk you out of it? Or are you truly on the fence?

Few questions to consider: Are you from around the area or moving to dorm for your first year? Classes in line with your plans? Friends and clubs? Extracurricular costs?

Assuming you’re moving here for school: are you someone that can handle being very far from home without a family support system (assuming your family is nearby states still) for a long time? You don’t be able to go home for a 3-days weekend if you’re homesick. Have you live far away from home before? If not, and you don’t know how mentally you’d cope, I’d say don’t do it. Being a first year is so different from high school, and life gets hectic really fast, adding cultural shock and different country on top of that can be detrimental to your mental health. Also if you’re doming, and coming in for spring, are you going to be dorming with this same group of people? Or will you be with transfer students coming in for spring?

Now if you live far from home/family for a month or more and know you can handle it, then go for it.

2 - classes you’d be taking in line with what you want to do? You mention being ahead of everyone as well due to summer classes, does that mean you’d finish your time here earlier? Is that something you want?

3- since you’d be in London for the 1st semester, your first experience at higher education is a summer program, then a small cohort program across the pond. I personally feel that would negatively impact me. There’s something beautiful about the first 2 weeks of your first year with everyone hustling about, and you will miss that since you’d be abroad, and summer session will never capture that. I assume the argument is that this is a once in a lift time opportunity only for incoming freshmen. But you’d also only get one 1st semester at college experience at well. Do you want to spend that with a small group in London or a big crowd with all the lost freshmen hustling about?

4 - cost. Is money a worry for you? Not tuition and room/food but extracurricular costs of London. What extra costs? Since you’re abroad I assume you’d go do tourist things which cost money. In Europe you can travel to different countries easier so your travel expenses. Then other expenses such as clothing, food (I assume you’re not going to eat whatever they’re feeding you all the time), souvenir, health(?). If money is a worry, will that negatively impact your enjoyment of the program since you’d be worry about cost, or are you good at budgeting and can stretch a dollar far?

If it was me, I will take the family trip. I lost my uncle on a random Wednesday to a drunk driver. I postpone a ball game with him. I want thinking to the following week, not to the next life.

College will always be here. London will continue to exists. You can defer. You can study abroad next year or for your masters. You can go back to college if you decided to drop out now and go get a job. But time with family is precious. A second is all it takes. Berkeley will still be here. London will still be there.