This piece was published in The Phoenix‘s Winter 2026 print issue. Read the full issue at uchicagophoenix.com/magazine.

We’re sure you’re feeling the winter chill and comforting yourself with the knowledge that this time next year, upon the permission of your tuition-paying guardians, you’ll be basking in the Catalonian beaches or partying in the Parisian streets. Your goals are clear: drink without a fake ID, travel through half a dozen European cities, and most vitally, pretend you’re not a UChicago student for a quarter. 

We know the applications will sit in the back of your mind as you groan through SOSC and your electives until the day before they’re due, and you’ll finish all of them in one sitting (not knowing about the “networking with the program advisor trick”). We’re also pretty sure you ranked Paris or Barcelona first. We did too. Congratulations, most of you won’t be getting in—only a chosen few will have this treasured opportunity to pretend not to be UChicago students for a quarter as you party your way around Europe for CIV. (Though if you really want to go here, there are now about a dozen other “programs” with which to try your luck.) The rest of you? Fighting on waitlists and trying to avoid getting “shipped off” to Morocco or Egypt. 

As older, more seasoned students, with a quarter of study abroad under our belts, we have some very serious advice: don’t bother with the European rat race. Pick somewhere that you’ll never have any reason to go again. Especially in the winter, where you’ll be happier in the slums of Old Cairo than in a frigid North dorm room. That European grand tour? Save it for your gap year. 

You’re a student at the sixth-best university in the world, which offers dozens of interesting locations for you to travel to—where every minute gets counted on your transcript. Of course you should take advantage, but you’re a UChicago student: try to act like one and see something new. Studying abroad should be an adventure. In 2026, Europe is Disney World. 

In Hong Kong, you might lose all your money on horse races or get your dirty ears cleaned in the Chinese subway. In Cairo, you could see a crocodile living in a coffee shop or have a great opportunity for bonding with classmates when your Uber breaks down on the highway because the driver accidentally filled the car with diesel. Or even better, in Pune you could make connections more valuable than any ones you have on LinkedIn, at the expense of the locals blowing up your phone weeks after you leave. The most interesting thing that might happen in Europe—beyond all the tourist sites and identical drinking establishments (apart from maybe the stock market bar in Barcelona)—is missing your connecting flight. 

And your adventures won’t just be stressful and anguished. We’ve put together a brief list of positive experiences from our programs that are definitely impossible in Europe: 

• Haggling with a Bedouin merchant to get a soccer jersey down from $50 to $2
• Finding a cat asleep in your host school’s cafeteria water fountain 
• Petting a tiger
• Learning to squat and smoke a cigarette while shitting 
• Being invited to drink chai at the home of the fifteenth descendant of a Muslim saint 
• Pretending to be an investor and touring a $10M rural estate.

Of course, the mundane “negative” experiences you’ll encounter on these programs are too obvious to bother mentioning: they generally involve toiletries, taste, and an immense amount of wasted time. Such is life. 

But what about in the classroom? 

If you end up in one of the more mainstream CIV classes, don’t expect your three courses to be much different from UChicago in terms of material, schedule, and (if you’re very unlucky) workload. Indeed, given how much UChicago has invested in Paris over the last decade, I suspect in class it feels like you’re practically still in Chicago. Here’s where an exotic CIV really shines: in class, there might be cats trying to curl up on your laptop, on mandatory excursions you might get acquainted with geriatric scammers hiding inside ancient tombs, and—if you’re very lucky—you’ll get the middle seat beside your professor on a long flight, the perfect opportunity to make a good impression. 

So, when you’re picking your study abroad, consider choosing somewhere unusual. Whether it’s a hidden gem or the worst time of your life, we guarantee you’ll come back with some good stories and learn some things that a trip to Europe could never teach you. And the best part? There’s a good chance you’ll get dragged back to Europe at some point in your life and have to sit through the same tours and wander through the same museums for a second or even a third time. But if you pick somewhere unusual, if you don’t ever want to go back, nobody will ever make you.