Abstract
What makes 600 000 young people from all over the world come to study in the United States? Is it the reputation of the US degrees? The efficient teaching methods or the life on campus? Studying in the United States is a myth for a large number of students in the world. A lot of movies and series give us a dreamy image of what a US campus is. They make us believe that it must be very easy to integrate in such an environment. As our entire groups members had, at least once thought, of spending one year in an American College or still plan to do it, we decided to focus on the integration of French students on US campuses. Many questions arose: is it easy? What problems do students have? When do they feel integrated? Therefore, our main issue will be to find out how French students can experience a successful integration on a US campus. Thus, we could think about the following question: What are the decisive factors in matters of integration? In order to answer that question our project will be divided in two complementary parts: one more theoretical with texts, novels and articles analysis about the integration phenomenon and intercultural relations. The second and main part of our work will focus on a several case studies. The aim of that section is to share real experiences of this integration process and to find out how students deal with studying in the US and what their feelings are. The question is to know whether these personal experiences are in line with the theoretical researches or may be contradictory in some aspects.
