Studying Abroad Alone vs. With Friends
The question sounds simple. It is not simple.
Because the answer depends on what kind of person you are, what kind of program you choose, and whether you understand what “alone” actually means in the context of a structured study abroad experience.
This post is the honest version. Not the version that tells you solo travel will transform you into an independent world-citizen in fourteen days, and not the version that tells you going with your best friend means you’ll get twice the experience. Both of those are partially true and mostly incomplete.
Here’s what it’s actually like — so you can make the decision that’s right for you.
First: “alone” doesn’t mean what you think it means
When most students say they’re worried about studying abroad alone, they mean one of two things:
- They don’t know anyone on the program yet.
- None of their existing friends are going with them.
Both of those are true for the majority of students on any given study abroad program — including short-term, faculty-led programs like GLO’s. Most people show up not knowing a single other person in the group. By day three, they have people to eat dinner with. By the end of the program, group chats that will run for years.
“Alone” in this context means you don’t arrive with a built-in social buffer. It does not mean you travel in isolation, eat alone every night, or navigate a foreign country by yourself with no support structure.
If you’re on a structured program — with faculty leaders, a planned itinerary, company visits, group excursions, and a cohort of students going through the same experience — you are never really alone. You’re just starting without a head start on relationships. That head start matters less than you think.
What it’s actually like to go without your friends
The first 48 hours are the hardest
This is true. There’s no softening it. The first day or two of any new social environment — new city, new time zone, new group of people you’ve never met — takes energy. You have to be the one to introduce yourself. You have to read the room in the hotel lobby or on the group bus and figure out who you might click with. That’s uncomfortable for most people, including the ones who seem like they’re not uncomfortable.
But here’s what’s also true: everyone around you is in exactly the same position. The social dynamics of a study abroad group are genuinely different from most social situations because the shared context is so immediate. You’re all jet-lagged in the same country, doing the same things, eating in the same restaurants, processing the same company visits and cultural moments. Common ground builds fast.
You will talk to people you would never talk to at home
This is the thing solo travelers — and solo study abroaders — consistently say, and it’s consistently true. When you don’t have your existing social circle to default to, you expand. The person you ended up next to on the bus who goes to a school you’ve never heard of, studying something completely different, with a background nothing like yours — that’s someone you would never have had a real conversation with at home.
Some of those connections are superficial. Some of them will be the most interesting people you meet in college. You won’t know which until you’re in the room.
You get to define the experience yourself
When you travel with close friends, there’s an implicit negotiation happening constantly — where to go during free time, what to eat, how to spend the hours that aren’t structured. It’s not bad. It’s just group dynamics. Someone usually drives it, and someone usually defers.
When you don’t have a pre-existing group, you make those calls for yourself. That sounds minor. It isn’t. The student who wanders into a market alone during free time, strikes up a conversation with a vendor, and ends up with a story nobody else on the trip has — that happens specifically because they weren’t trying to coordinate with three other people.
Freedom during free time is one of the underrated advantages of going without your friends.
What it’s actually like to go with your friends
The comfort is real — and worth something
There’s a tendency in study abroad discourse to treat comfort as the enemy of growth. It isn’t. Having a familiar person with you when you land in a foreign country for the first time, when everything is loud and disorienting and your phone is on airplane mode, is genuinely valuable. That’s not weakness. That’s just how humans work.
If you’re someone who’s never traveled internationally before, going with a close friend can be the difference between an experience that opens you up and one that shuts you down. Anxiety doesn’t make you a bad traveler. It just means you might need more scaffolding at the beginning.
You can get stuck in a bubble — if you let it happen
The real risk of going with close friends is that the group becomes self-contained. You sit together at dinner, explore together during free time, and end up having the same experience as each other rather than the different ones you could have had. You stay in the comfort zone you brought with you instead of building a new one.
This isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice — or more accurately, a pattern you fall into if you’re not paying attention.
The students who go with friends and still get a full experience are the ones who are deliberate about it. They split up during free time sometimes. They sit next to someone new on the bus. They don’t use their existing friendship as a reason to skip the discomfort of meeting the rest of the group.
Your friendship might look different after
This one surprises people. You assume that traveling with someone you’re already close with will make you closer. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it reveals that you travel completely differently — different energy levels, different interests, different risk tolerances — and that’s a strange thing to discover about someone you thought you knew well.
Most of the time it’s fine. Occasionally it’s not. Worth knowing before you make the decision.
The GLO factor: why this question is different for structured programs
Here’s what most “study abroad alone vs with friends” posts miss: the type of program changes the entire equation.
Semester-long programs in a foreign university — where you’re dropped into a campus, find your own housing, build your own social life from scratch — are a genuinely different experience from a structured, faculty-led program where the itinerary is built, the company visits are scheduled, and you travel with a cohort from day one.
GLO programs are the latter. Every program includes specialized sessions, networking, cultural excursions, and business visits tailored to the needs of each unique group, with ample free time for personal exploration and growth.
What that means practically: you don’t have to figure out the social infrastructure yourself. It’s built in. The company visits, the group dinners, the shared bus rides through unfamiliar cities — those create connection whether you’re arriving with friends or without. Students who had never left the country before found it “definitely helpful to be guided for that experience.”
The result is that the “alone vs with friends” stakes are lower on a program like this than on an independent semester abroad. You’re not building a social life from zero in a foreign city. You’re showing up to a group that’s about to share two weeks of intentional experiences together. That group will form bonds regardless of who arrived knowing whom.
Which means if your only reason for wanting to bring a friend is anxiety about being alone — a GLO program specifically addresses that concern. The structure does the work.
How to decide: four honest questions
Before you decide, ask yourself these four questions. Your answers will tell you more than any article will.
1. Why do you want to bring your friend? If the answer is “because I’m nervous” — go anyway, and consider that the nerves will pass faster than you think on a structured program. If the answer is “because we’ve always wanted to travel together and this is the right trip” — that’s a real reason. Go together.
2. Why do you want to go alone? If the answer is “because I want to push myself” — that’s valid, and you will. If the answer is “because none of my friends are interested” — that’s also valid, and it’s the situation most students are actually in. The choice has already been made for them. This post is for those people too: you’re not missing something by going without your friends. You’re just starting fresh.
3. What does your friend want? If your friend is going because you want them to go, not because they want to go — that’s a problem that will show up on day four when they’re homesick and you’re trying to enjoy a company visit in London.
4. What kind of free time do you actually want? GLO programs include structured time and unstructured time. During the structured portions — company visits, academic sessions, cultural excursions — it doesn’t much matter whether you have a friend with you. During free time, it does. Think honestly about whether you want a built-in companion for those hours or whether you’d rather have total freedom.
The answer nobody wants to give you
Both are fine.
Going alone is not braver. Going with friends is not safer. Going alone doesn’t guarantee growth and going with friends doesn’t guarantee a shallower experience. It depends almost entirely on what you do when you get there — how open you are, how willing you are to be uncomfortable for a minute, how much you let the experience be what it is rather than what you planned for it to be.
What we can tell you, after 35,000 alumni and nearly 50 years of programs: the students who get the most out of a GLO experience are not the ones who arrived with the most friends or the most courage. They’re the ones who showed up ready to pay attention.
The rest tends to take care of itself.
Neither is objectively better. Going alone tends to accelerate new connections and push you further outside your comfort zone. Going with friends offers built-in support and shared memories. On structured, faculty-led programs — where the group itinerary creates automatic common ground — the distinction matters less than on independent semester programs. The more important question is why you want to do either.
The first day or two can feel uncomfortable — you’re meeting strangers in a new country with no social buffer. By day three, most students have found their footing. The shared context of a structured program (same company visits, same hotel, same group meals) accelerates bonding in ways that don’t happen organically at home. Most students who arrive knowing no one leave with relationships they maintain for years.
Yes. On structured programs with a group cohort, making friends is almost unavoidable — shared experiences create connection faster than almost any other social environment. Students who go without existing friends often report that the connections they make feel more intentional precisely because they weren’t falling back on people they already knew.
It can feel that way before you go. Most students report the anxiety diminishes within the first 24–48 hours of arrival, especially on faculty-led programs where there’s a clear structure and support system in place from day one. GLO programs include on-site orientation, faculty leadership throughout, and a cohort traveling together — which means you are never navigating a foreign country alone.
Complete freedom during unstructured time. Faster and more diverse new connections. No negotiation around where to go or what to do. Greater likelihood of stepping outside your existing social patterns. And a confidence that comes specifically from having done something unfamiliar without a safety net — which is different from the confidence that comes from doing it with someone you already trust.
Yes. Introversion is not a barrier to international experience — it’s a different style of processing it. Introverted students often find structured programs easier than open-ended travel precisely because the itinerary removes the pressure of constant social navigation. You know where you’re going and what you’re doing. The social moments are built in. You’re not responsible for engineering them from scratch.
Go anyway. This is the situation the majority of first-time study abroad students are in. “My friends aren’t going” is not a reason to miss an experience you want to have. A structured faculty-led program is specifically designed so that you don’t need to arrive with a group — you become part of one.
The real question isn’t alone vs. with friends. It’s whether you’re going.
Browse GLO’s upcoming programs and see what’s running this winter and summer. Applications take 12 minutes. The harder part is deciding you’re ready — and if you’ve read this far, you probably are.
