Studying abroad can be an incredibly enjoyable experience for many individuals. Here’s what you need to know about including study abroad on your resume.

How to Appropriately Include Studying Abroad on Your Resume
Study Abroad on Resume
If you had a chance to study abroad at any point in your academic career, it makes sense to show off that experience as much as possible. However, while international students certainly learn a lot of skills that can fill out a professional resume, you must know how to show these skills to potential employers. When you’re going through the resume writing process, you want to know how to get the most out of your study abroad experiences. Here’s what you should know about adding it to your resume.

When to Include Studying Abroad on Your Resume
If you’re applying to some types of jobs that would benefit from it, you’re going to want to include studying abroad more prominently. Typically, these situations create a better path to including studying abroad on your resume:
- Resume with no work experience
- Student resume
- Entry-level resume
- Recent graduate resume
If you don’t have much experience to list on your resume, but you still want to fill out your resume as much as possible, studying abroad is a great way to vary your resume information effectively. If you have lots of experience, chances are that studying abroad won’t add much unless it’s directly relevant to the position.
Top Resume Sections To Fill Out With Studying Abroad
When you open the ResumeNerd resume builder, where should you be looking to include your experience studying abroad? Typically, you can include this information in 4 separate ways throughout your job application.
1. Education
Your education section is the natural place to include studying abroad. Especially if all or most of your academic experience is an international experience, adding it to the education section of your resume indicates that you’re an accomplished individual and well-traveled. You can also include additional academic information, like relevant coursework and information about any research projects you may have participated in.
2. Work experience
Especially if you don’t have much other professional experience, your work experience section is also a great place to include your international travel. Hiring managers are looking for all kinds of professional experience. If you had an internship or academic job internationally, you can include it in your work experience section to showcase how your career path leads to the job you’re applying for.
3. Skills
Your skills section will be able to benefit quite a bit from international experience. Hiring managers love to know that you can adapt to new environments. Studying abroad can also indicate new skills to offer their organization. Here are a few bullet points of new skills you may develop as part of studying abroad:
- Communication skills, including cross-cultural communication
- Independence
- Leadership skills
- Ability to overcome language barriers
- Knowledge of new cultures
- Problem-solving skills
- Cultural sensitivity
Remember that foreign language skills are also very important to include in your resume. This is true whether it’s a more common language in the United States, like Spanish, or a less common language, like Russian. Either way, extra language proficiency can be very helpful to your job application.
4. Resume objective/Resume summary
Your resume objective or resume summary is a short paragraph at the beginning of your resume. It indicates the most important elements of your skill set and general qualifications, and it’s another great place to include studying abroad. This is especially helpful in resume objectives, which are most common for individuals without much professional experience. A quick sentence in your resume objective such as, “Studied at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain” can show off international experience.
How To Include Study Abroad on Your Cover letter
Finally, don’t just stop by including your study abroad on your resume. You can also include your study abroad in your cover letter. You may be looking for skills to fill out your cover letter, especially if the job description lists several preferred experiences that you don’t have. Including your studies abroad can be a great way to live up to whatever preferences a hiring manager has. You can also add any other accomplishments you achieved while studying abroad, like the Dean's List.
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Conclusion
Studying abroad can be a great addition to your resume. However, recruiters are typically most interested in studying abroad that happened within the last few years. If you’re considering listing the study abroad that you did many years ago, it might be best to leave it off your resume and just upload it to your LinkedIn profile.
If you’re still unsure how to include your study abroad on your resume, look at ResumeNerd resume examples to see how other people approach the struggle of including study abroad on their resume. Remember, you can highlight study abroad in a variety of sections on your resume, not just in one or two throwaway lines that could get missed by the hiring manager. Lastly, highlight skills and experiences you had while studying abroad that line up with the job description.