2026 ND Pre-College Live Webinar: Study Abroad Program

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Couple more seconds to jump on and then we'll get started.

OK, hello everybody. Welcome to the uh 2026 Notre Dame Pre College Study Abroad webinar with the Office of Pre-college Programs. Uh, my name is Curtis Urban. I'm the international program director for pre college. Uh, my main role with the office is, is organizing and leading our study abroad programs. We have uh, four really incredible programs, uh, to walk you through tonight.

Uh, I'm going to go over the kind of the general details of the program.

Some of the the insurance and outs of each. I'll talk a little bit about the application process and at the end I'll do my best to cover any questions that you guys have. If you do have a question, you can just drop it into the question box on the chat portion of this webinar and, and I'll get to as many of those as I can at the end of the session if I don't cover something tonight that you're curious about.

A lot of the information is on our website pre college dot.

Nd.edu, you can also e-mail me. My e-mail is Kerbin 1 here. I'll put it in the chat.

Urban1@nd.edu I'll be your best source for kind of any information about the city abroad, the programs, the applications, all of it.

We'll go ahead and justice dive right in tonight. The first program I want to talk about is our study abroad Italy program. This is our longest running study abroad. It started in 2015. It was our first study abroad program in pre college. For those of you that don't know, study abroad is a major part of the undergraduate experience at the University of Notre Dame. I think over 75% of undergraduate students study abroad at some point.

During their time at Notre Dame, whether it's for a semester or a summer or over a spring break, umm, we have students going abroad and many of these students are going to our locations, global centers that we have, umm, internationally. One of those is in Rome. Uh, it's about two blocks from the Colosseum. That's where you'll have your classes. It's an incredible space, rooftop terrace that you literally can see into the Colosseum from. So it was a really cool place to learn.

And grow, umm, we'll be taking 18 students to Italy from June 6th to June 20th. Uh, the program is for high school juniors or another way to think about that, rising seniors. So if you're going to be a senior next year and currently a junior, umm, you're eligible to apply to this program.

That's the same for all of our study abroad programs.

You also, the only other eligibility requirement is you need to be 16 years of age by August 1st, 2026. That's not our rule. That's general counsel's rule in terms of youth protection policies. So those are the two kind of main eligibility requirements. The course really does a deep dive into into classical architecture and the foundations of the ancient city of Rome.

Notre Dame architecture students actually spend their entire.

3rd year in Rome learning about architecture. We really lean on those kind of expert faculty members that we have on the ground in Rome to lead the program. We go to all the all the classical sites you can think of, the Forum, the Coliseum, the Bass of Caracalla.

The Trevi Fountain, all of those kind of main things that jump out in your mind when you think of Rome, Vatican City.

We'll hit all those major, major landmarks during our first week. Our second week has actually LED by an anthropology professor, Mauricio Abahari. Umm, with all that focus on that ancient city, we, we like to remind students, you know, this is a living, working city where, you know, Romans every day are kind of maneuvering through this ancient past and, and we think about how how Romans fit in with that society today.

Umm, as I mentioned, we take class at the Notre Dame building. Umm, you'll typical day as classes in the morning.

Lunch at the at the at the Notre Dame building and then out exploring the city in the afternoon. We do several excursions in the program. We'll go to a small town called Orvieto. We'll go to Hadrian's Villa, we go to Florence, we go to the Mediterranean Sea. So a lot of fun, exciting things. All the pasta you could possibly eat. And I think last year we averaged Gelato maybe twice a day.

Umm, it's, it's, it's a must for me.

I think, I think the reason we go that much is is because of my Gelato needs. But it's an incredible program and one we're really proud of.

The next program I want to talk about is our study abroad South Africa program, a program that we've been running since 2022. Umm, again, high school juniors, August 1st, uh, August 1st birthday, be at least 16 years old next year. Umm, This program is led by Professor Henri Venter. He's a psychology professor at Notre Dame. He is a native South African. He grew up in South Africa, but he's been teaching at the university for about the last.

25 years umm.

He originally developed this program for athletes at Notre Dame so they could experience a study abroad program in the summer. Adapted it for our purposes, and it's been it's been an incredible experience. Just like Italy will take 18 students abroad.

A little different than our three other programs. South Africa is a faculty LED program. We don't have a building on site in Johannesburg or Cape Town, but it is led by Andre. He's with us kind of 24/7. I'm there 24/7 and.

A local guide is with us 24/7 as well. We stay at a mix of accommodations. We're in hotels, we're in condos. We're in this photo here that you can see we we're literally in cabins at the tip of Africa. If you see behind the tall kids head, there's some buildings back there. Those are the cabins we stay in right on the coast.

With whales going by and and the most stars you've ever seen in the sky.

The program, we jump around to a lot of locations in South Africa. We're in Johannesburg, we're seeing the Apartheid Museum, Soweto, the the home that Nelson Mandela grew up in. We're in Cape Town. We're going to Robben Island, which is the prison Nelson Mandela was held in. We go to District 6 Museum, which is a relocation neighborhood within South Africa during apartheid.

We go to Tootsie comma, which is where the students are in this photo to kind of reflect.

Done all the kind of deep, meaningful experiences we had engaging with apartheid over about the first eight to 10 days of the program. And then we conclude the program at Kruger National Park. We do a safari for 2 1/2 days, which is a once in a lifetime experience. It's it's pretty incredible. The curriculum, as I kind of mentioned already focuses on the complicated history of apartheid and what that.

One meant for the development of South Africa as a nation.

But two how how it?

How our understanding of apartheid shapes our understanding of ourselves, how we relate to other people, how we judge other people.

What place do we want to have in society? How do we want to make change in society? So some really deep kind of impactful experiences, but a lot of reflection to help unpack those in a safari to round it out which which, which isn't a bad experience.

Study abroad London, we wanted to, we've been running, This will be our fourth year running this program. We had wanted to to have a program in London for a long time. It's kind of the flagship of the Notre Dame undergraduate study abroad experience.

About 200 Notre Dame students a semester are studying abroad in London will stay at the dormitory that Notre Dame students would stay in during the academic year, Conway Hall. It's right outside Waterloo station. We walk across the Thames through Trafalgar Square to the Notre Dame building that is Fisher Hall. It's right off Trafalgar Square, very similar to to the Italy program in that we're having coursework.

At the Notre Dame building in the morning and then we're out exploring the city in the afternoon.

The kind of central theme of the course is London as a center of knowledge and power. Umm, London is a very important place as most of you probably already know, but we look at the many different layers and ways it became such an important place throughout its 2000 year history. Umm, we focus on religion idea, religion, theater, the arts, uh, monarchy, uh, we do have a lot of different topics and have a lot of.

Different experts from a lot of different fields coming in to tell you a little bit about London as a center of knowledge and power. It's a little different model than our other programs. It's almost a different professor every day, and we do that because there are so many great faculty members at the Notre Dame London building. We want you to get exposed to as many of these wonderful scholars, top of their field as you possibly can, and hopefully something during that two weeks is going to kind of spark your interest.

In, in, in in your, you know, intellectual curiosity.

All of these programs I've mentioned are two weeks long. Just as with Italy, will go on excursions in this program as well. Notre Dame's establishing a relationship with Cambridge University, so we'll visit Saint Edward's in Cambridge. We'll take a trip to Bath and Stonehenge, an overnight trip excursion. So mostly London, but we'll get out and see the city as well.

Wonderful program, wonderful experience.

And finally, our study abroad Ireland program, uh, we are the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. So you can imagine Ireland is a, is a big part of what we do here at this university. We actually have two, uh, Notre Dame centers abroad in Ireland. We have one in Dublin and one in Kylemore Abbey, which if you don't know Kyle Moore Abbey, look it up. It's a essentially a castle, uh, in Connemara on, on the West Coast of Ireland.

Uh, the first week we stay in Dublin, you'll stay at UCD.

The University College Dublin dormitories, that's where Notre Dame students today, when they study abroad in Dublin, will kind of learn all about London history or Irish history, culture, literature over the last 200 years. We'll do excursions out and about and around the city. The second week is in, as I mentioned, at Kyle Moore Abbey, it's kind of.

Quintessential Ireland maybe what you think if you close your eyes and pick your eye on your head, you know the rolling green hills, the.

The, the, the rain, it will rain, I promise you. But that's all, that's all part of the experience. She we, we, we see a sheep herding experience, but the focus out West is on kind of Irish myth and folklore, specifically within literature over the last couple 100 years. So a really incredible experience and you really get the dichotomy of kind of old versus new, ancient versus modern.

In that two week experience.

I think I've mentioned most everything I want to about the programs. The one thing I didn't mention, every program will have resident counselors that accompany the students. Resident counselors are current Notre Dame undergraduate students that will serve both, you know, help me lead the programs, but really to be mentors and sources for you guys. You know, all things about college life and the University of Notre Dame. They're they're the best resource you can have.

And they'll be with us in kind of 24/7 during our experiences.

All of these programs are for college credit, so upon successful completion of the course you do have to pass, but upon successful completion of the course, you do get 11 college credit for your participation.

The application process applications are available now. They're on our website, precollege.nd.edu. If you go to the study abroad section in the particular app, there should be an apply here button. Uh, all the applications completely online. The deadline for the application is January 21st, 2026. So still a little bit of time, but it'll come up faster than you think, especially with the holidays coming up.

Decisions are released in mid February. Uh.

Confirmations are due by March and as I mentioned, the first program starts the the Italy program starts the second week of June.

In terms of the application, we tried to model it as much as possible, like the Common app that a lot of you will be doing next year when you're applying to university, um.

Besides kind of basic demographic information that any application is going to request, we we ask that you have a letter of recommendation, hopefully from someone who knows you well, that you've established kind of a relationship with and can speak to your academic interests and why this program would be a good experience for you.

Your high school counselors contact information, Your high school counselor is going to submit a, we call it a School Report, but it's essentially just going to have your transcript.

And then they can write a small recommendation as well if they want. Test scores are optional. My advice on test scores would be, if you have great test scores, submit them. If you don't, you don't need to. They're optional for a reason. Umm, look on the website, see what averages are for test scores. But if you do have, uh, great test scores and you want to submit them, by all means send them along. But again, they're not required.

Uh, I talked about the age requirement. Everybody will have to have a passport that's, uh, valid 6 months from the end of their pro your program. So if you don't have a passport.

I usually don't mention this at this stage, but you know, it takes the processes getting longer and longer with delays kind of with the State Department typically takes about 8 to 12 weeks, but we did have a few students that it took longer last year. But you do need to have a passport valid 6 months from the last day of the program.

In terms of the application itself, you can also submit a resume listing all the activities that you're involved in, all the experiences you have. There'll also be two essays. The first is going to essentially ask you why you want to be involved, want to be in this program. And the second is, you know, umm, what communities do you belong to and why are they important to you? Is kind of the main idea behind that getting towards the Notre Dame mission of of kind of being a force for good in the broader world.

Umm, application advice, you know, while I have you, I would just say don't, don't skip out on the essay or, you know, the resume when a lot of students are, you know, top of their class, wonderful grades, uh, great ranking class, great test scores. The place where you can stand out is the essay to show us why, umm, why you're unique. Why, why?

Should we include you in, in this program? And it's, it's, it's an opportunity for you to highlight what makes you special, what, what, what makes you stand out in the process. So.

The essay is an opportunity to do that. Have someone read your essay, proofread it, and again, letter of recommendation, make sure it's someone who knows you, someone who can speak to your academic interests and what you want to do moving forward.

Umm, once you submit online, there is a $75 application fee that can be submitted online as well. Umm, your recommender, your counselor don't need to submit their report until, uh, January 28th, so they'll have some time as well.

So that was a lot of information fast. Uh, you probably have some questions. Umm, it says there you can e-mail us at pre-callednd.edu. If you have questions, you can visit our website. We'll have a lot of information, but I also include my e-mail there. If you ask a question about study abroad, they're probably going to forward it to me. I'm going to be your best resource. I've been leading these programs since 2018. So I, I, I feel like I, I'll be your most knowledge.

Well, resource at the university about these programs. One question that we did that I can see already that we have can you apply to multiple programs? You, you can, you certainly can.

Most programs don't have any overlap. The only programs that have overlap are the Ireland and South Africa program. We don't often have students do more than one, but I don't want you to limit yourself if you want to apply to multiple programs.

I'll move to the questions now. Umm, again, I have a question here about recommenders.

Uh.

Make sure it's someone who can speak to your interests. I know that that that seems silly, but if you don't, if the teacher doesn't know you want that, well, they won't have that much to say about you. So make sure it's someone you have a positive relationship with, who you've talked to about your academic interests, you've talked to them about why you want to do this particular study abroad program. I think that's, I think that's really important.

Other questions, feel free to to to type them into the chat now.

So in terms of kind of.

If you looking for information about all of our programs tonight we're just kind of talking about study abroad, but if you're interested in summer Scholars leadership seminars, there'll be a webinar in a couple weeks. Keep an eye out for that in your e-mail to register. You can also find all kinds of information on our website at precollege.nd.edu. Resume length doesn't have to be 1 page.

You can actually put your activities right into the application.

I prefer a resume though. It gives you an opportunity to flush out what that very specific award that you won was or what that acronym conference you attended was.

It just gives you the ability to give us more context, which helps us in the review process. It doesn't have to be 1 page. We've had, you know, several page resumes be submitted.

Umm, in terms of average test scores, you can just Google kind of the University of Notre Dame average test scores and you should see a range. Umm, I again, I will stress test scores are completely optional. Umm.

If you have a grade score, please do submit. If if not, you know.

Don't it's it's that easy transportation for the programs. It's a good question. So study abroad, London, Ireland and Italy. It's the responsibility of the student and their families to get to the particular destination and the meeting point at a specific time. So if you're admitted, we'll say, you know, meet at Dublin airport at X time on on July 19th.

Umm, now.

All that said, Notre Dame staff members will be on a specific flight from Chicago O'Hare UMM. So if you're not comfortable with your young person traveling abroad for the first time, umm, we strongly encourage people to book this direct flight from Chicago O'Hare Umm so that you can travel with staff to the destination umm.

South Africa is a little different. We, the, the flight is actually included in that program. We'll send the flight details out when you're admitted, but the flight is included in the cost of the South Africa program. Transportation on the ground kind of varies every program we're in. Most of the time we're walking a lot. Umm.

You know, in Italy we're walking, averaging 8910 miles a day, just kind of exploring, wandering the city. Uh, we do take the bus sometimes. We do take public transit in, in Dublin, we take the bus in London, we take the tube a lot. Uh, so you don't really get to experience the two, but it's a lot of walking, umm, I would say if you're not an outdoorsy person.

Ireland is very kind of, especially our week out West.

Will be a lot of kind of bog hiking and you can kind of see in this photo the kind of terrain that you'll be be walking through so make sure.

Make sure you look at what the actual programs are doing so you can see if it speaks to your interest. But all of our programs have a lot, a lot of walking because we really lean into that experiential learning. We want to be out there exploring the cities, not not spending all of our time in the classroom.

In terms of financial aid, the only program we have financial aid for is the London program. We have very limited need based financial aid for the London program. If you want to apply for that financial aid, there's an application, uh, if you go to the London app on our website, go to the financial aid tab.

You'll find a link to the form does need to be completed by a parent, not the student. Just some basic, nothing official, but just some basic financial information. But again, there's very kind of limited need based financial aid for London. Unfortunately we don't have financial aid available for the other programs.

If you want to kind of summary of all the costs, those are available on the website if you click on each.

Each separate program there's a there's a tab for costs and you.

You can see the kind of different breakdowns of the costs there.

And again, we have 18 students in each program. We cap it there just because.

If it gets too much bigger, you kind of lose that. That's that sense of community that we're seeking to develop that that connection with these kind of incredible, amazing faculty members that we're working with at all of the locations. Any more than 18 and a student I feel like can get lost in the crowd. So we cap it at 18. We have students from all over the country in the program. We have students from all over the world.

Varied levels of previous travel experience.

Sometimes people have been all over Europe or they, they've traveled dozens of times and sometimes it's the first time, uh, everybody, someone's ever been on an airplane. We've had that a few times. So a very kind of wide range of travel experiences and just know that we're there to support you in every capacity, every, every step of the way.

Any other questions?

I have a question about the age. Unfortunately, we are strict on the age. It's not.

It's a policy laid down by general counsel based on the youth protection policy of the university. So unfortunately there isn't any flexibility on age you do need to be.

16 on August 1st, 2026 applications are I have a question about the review process. It is a panel of individuals. We have several staff members here will that will do initial reads on the application and then we'll all meet as a committee to review and before we get those decisions out to you as I mentioned in mid February.

There is a lot of overlap in the application process. Someone asked if they are applying to more than one program. You can transfer, for example your your counselor report from one application to another.

Essays are very similar across the board. So if there's an essay 2 that you know, this is the essay I want to present, you can you can shift that over to another application as well. So there is overlap and you know, we understand that when we're reviewing the apps.

Anything else while you have me?

Just to clarify on that, multiple applications it is uh.

You know you will submit.

Separate applications for each program, but within that you can transfer materials from one to the other.

Meeting points that's getting kind of the, to the nitty gritty questions. Last year we met, we just moved to meet at the airport in the particular location. Sometimes families would take trips and they'd be over there already and would, would meet us. Umm, but we'll get into that, umm, kind of after, once you're admitted and once, uh, kind of more details are coming out about the program.

All right, everybody. Well, thanks so much for your, for your attention, for your questions. Uh, if you think of anything else you didn't think of tonight, umm, I bet the answers on our website at precollege.nd.edu. Umm, but you can also reach out to me again at carbon1@nd.edu. I'm happy to answer any, any questions that you have about the application project process or the programs themselves.

Umm, this recording will be sent out to you, so hopefully you didn't.

Frantically take screenshots and jot things down. Everything we talked about tonight will be sent out to you in a recording. But again, that's all I have. Thanks so much for joining me tonight. I appreciate, appreciate you being here. They are all wonderful programs. I've been on all of them multiple times. I love each and everyone of them in their own ways. I, I hope, I hope that you get to get to experience them because they are.

I don't know what I was doing when I was 16 years old, but I was not thinking about.

Uh, study abroad and then kind of wonderful opportunity that could be so, but it's exciting that you guys are thinking about that already because it can be, it can be a really impactful experience, but I'm rambling now. I'll sign off, but thanks so much, everybody and, and have a wonderful evening. Bye.