Hawaiʻi: Study Away, No Passport Required

Even though I’m chasing the goal of visiting every continent, I felt like the only person in my friend group that wasn’t going abroad this summer. Then I found the IFSA Hawaii program—a chance to study away without leaving the United States.  

I go to University of Georgia, and while Athens is a great college town, I wondered how students on the other side of the country experienced college, especially on an island like Oahu. As the 50th state, Hawaii sits thousands of miles from the mainland, geographically isolated but still unmistakably American.  

This program let me do so much more than vacation; it let me experience living here. That distinction opened up two things at once: A new lens on college life and a firsthand look at a genuinely unique part of American history and culture.  

Academic comfort meets cultural excitement 

When I arrived, the university felt familiar. Lecture halls, campus norms, the general rhythm of a college—it all lined up closely enough with university life on the mainland. I needed my credits to transfer back home, so familiarity mattered academically. It also gave my friends and me confidence to venture off campus and explore the island, rather than being confined to what we knew.  

I took a chemistry lecture and lab over the six-week session, with a morning lecture Monday through Friday, and a lab Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Compressing a full semester into six weeks was intense, and my friends and I definitely felt that pace. But because we were within a familiar American university system, we had library staff, department tutors, and TAs to lean on for academic support, which kept stress manageable.  

One island, two identities 

Honolulu itself surprised me. The city felt fast in a way my small hometown never does. From my dorm window I could see both the Honolulu skyline and the mountains behind it, a duality that seemed to capture the whole island. Tourists crowded in popular local places such as Waikiki and Ala Moana—the beaches closest to campus. But Oahu’s public bus system took us past the busy spots to explore the rest of the coastline on our own, including the Windward side (East Side) and the iconic North Shore.  

Living on campus gave us a home base and the structure made it easy to build fast friendships with other students in our dorm for the summer. We also met local students who’d stayed for summer session, and they became our guides to their favorite hikes and beaches.  

In the end, I didn’t need a passport to find a different culture. I just needed to look past my own state line. 

Isabelle M. | University of Georgia | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA | Summer 2026