Program Spotlight: NSLI-Y
My youngest daughter has always been drawn to travel, languages, and other cultures. In high school, that pull led her to a program I think more families should know about: NSLI-Y.
What NSLI-Y actually is
NSLI-Y (the National Security Language Initiative for Youth) is a fully funded scholarship program run by the U.S. Department of State. It sends American high schoolers abroad, or connects them virtually, to study languages the government considers critical, including Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Russian, along with several others depending on the year. The program covers essentially everything: flights, meals, housing, classes, and a stipend for living expenses.
It's a merit scholarship open to any U.S. citizen high school student between 15 and 18. There's no income requirement and no prior language study necessary, which matters, because most students applying have never studied the language they end up learning. Acceptance is competitive, generally somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, and the application itself is a real process: transcripts, questionnaires, several essays, and for many applicants, an interview with a State Department employee before finalists are announced in the spring.
Students can go through a summer program, a full academic year abroad, or a virtual version, depending on the year and the language. Host countries have included places like Morocco, Jordan, Taiwan, South Korea, and several others, though the specific list can shift from year to year.
Our family's version of this story
My daughter applied to study Arabic in Morocco the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of high school. She was accepted. Then COVID hit, and the program shifted to fully virtual. So instead of Marrakesh, she spent that summer in our attic on a laptop, learning Arabic from real teachers in Morocco through a screen. It wasn't what she'd pictured, but she stuck with it.
The summer before her junior year, she finally got her real chance. She spent six weeks living with a host family in Marrakesh, attending language school and learning directly from native Arabic speakers. I won't pretend it wasn't nerve-wracking to put my then 15-year-old on a plane to another country that far from home. But she came back changed.
She met some of the kindest people she'd ever known, and her Arabic reached the point where, at one point, she was able to direct a lost taxi driver to her host family's house entirely in Arabic. She learned about a culture very different from her own, and at the same time discovered how much common ground existed underneath those differences. She came home with a real appreciation for other people's values, and the ability to hold difference without judgment.
She's 21 now. She's still in touch with her host sisters from that summer. Her roommate from the program is one of her closest friends today. And her love for Arabic, and for learning about other cultures with an open mind, has stayed with her well past that summer in Marrakesh.
Why I'm telling you this
Not every student is chasing an Ivy League name or a specific major. Some of the most meaningful growth I've seen, in my own daughter and in students I've worked with, comes from an experience like this one: being dropped into an unfamiliar place, having to actually communicate, and coming home with a wider sense of the world. It's also the kind of experience that speaks for itself on a college application, not because it's impressive on paper, but because it shows real independence and genuine curiosity.
This matters for admissions too, and it's worth saying plainly: colleges genuinely value experiences like this. Admissions officers read thousands of activity lists built around clubs and resume-building, and an experience like NSLI-Y stands out because it can't be manufactured for an application. It shows a student who sought out real discomfort, adapted, and grew from it, which is exactly the kind of maturity and initiative admissions committees are looking for. Done honestly, not as a checkbox, it adds something genuine and meaningful to an application, not just another line on a list.
If you have a student with a pull toward language, travel, or a culture outside their own, it's worth looking into NSLI-Y well before senior year. Applications typically open in the fall for the following summer, so this is very much a junior-year (or even sophomore-year) conversation, not something to discover in the fall of senior year.
For current languages, countries, and deadlines, the best source is the program's own site: nsliforyouth.org.
If you want to talk through whether a program like this could be a fit for your student, book a free intro call, or join one of my free info sessions to learn more about how I work with families.
Maggie