NSLI-Y (National Security Language Initiative for Youth) is a program run by the U.S. government for U.S. high school students to study abroad for either 6-8 weeks over the summer or 8-10 months during the school year. It's available to all U.S. high school students age 15-18 at the time of application, but most who get in either apply during their junior or senior year. As of this year, there are 8 languages you can study:
Arabic, Chinese (
Mandarin),
Hindi,
Bahasa Indonesia (new this year, and only available as a summer program),
Korean, Persian (
Tajiki, and only available as a summer program),
Russian, and
Turkish (it had been put on hold, but at least for now the program has been opened up again).
Applications for 2018-2019 close November 2 at 4PM Eastern Time. You do
not get to choose which country you go to, but, as it is run by the U.S. State Department, they would not put you somewhere they thought was unsafe (which is why the Turkish program had been put on hold for the past few years).
The program and other similar programs such as
YES (the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study Program, where you travel to Muslim-majority countries to engage in cultural exchange) and
CBYX (the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange, where you can go to Germany for a year and study politics) are getting their budgets cut by our current president and his administration, which might make it a little more difficult to get accepted, but I don't think it should be a major change.
I'm trying to apply for the Korean program, most likely the summer program, but you can put two program requests in your application and one of them is "any," so I'm really just applying for all of the summer programs (because I am a language nerd). If anyone else is interested in applying, I would be happy to answer your questions (but this is also my first time applying, so I'm not necessarily the most knowledgeable about the program).
Check out the NSLI website if you are interested!
