Over the years we have hosted a total of six exchange students, five of these we hosted through Ayusa. We reluctantly continued to use Ayusa because we were already established with them. However, we will not use them again. In general, our hosting exchange students has been a positive experience. However, the positive experience was despite Ayusa and simply because the majority of exchange students are serious students who want to experience the United States. After gaining more experience with how Ayusa operates, we would no longer recommend Ayusa to anyone. The main problems with Ayusa center on their true and only motive which is money. They do not properly vet exchange students which increases the risk of students that are not appropriate or ready for an exchange problem to still be accepted. Another big concern is that the pay reps that work for Ayusa receive is tied to how many students they recruit to be exchange students. We have now come across three examples of Ayusa telling complete lies to either us or our exchange students. These lies appear clearly are either because a local rep didn’t want to risk losing a placement and the nice commission that come with it or because a rep didn’t want to be bothered with looking into requested travel dates.
The first lie we discovered was told to the family of an exchange student we hosted from Chile. The local rep in Chile told the family that if our student attended her senior year of high school that she would get a real high school diploma. That was a totally false statement that our Chilean student and her family didn’t learn the truth about until after she arrived. Her father was particularly upset about this because he never would had agreed to his daughter going in the program had he known she would still need to take her last year of high school upon returning to Chile. This lie, along with our student’s parents wanting her to return to Chile, was why she returned back to Chile after the first semester instead of completing the full year as originally planned. The only reason we can tell for Ayusa lying to that family was that the rep didn’t want to lose the commission for signing them up.
Another lie told to both us and the family of a student we hosted from Holland concerned travel dates. What was worse about this is it was actually a regional coordinator for Ayusa that told the lie. We told this student from Holland that our County Fair was be in town and if she could arrive a few days early, she could go to that. When we approached Ayusa about her arriving a few days early, we were told “oh that’s not possible, we can’t do that”. Then about three weeks later, that same regional coordinator contacted us again telling us want a great idea it would be for this student to arrive a few days early. My wife gets the credit for immediately seeing through this. She checked the cost of the airline ticket, and saw that the date we suggested was significantly cheaper than the original date Ayusa was planning on having the student fly. As always, when it comes to Ayusa, it was all about the money, not what is best for the student.
The third lie Ayusa told got wrapped up in a lie a French family told Ayusa when we hosted a student from France. This French girl’s profile said she didn’t want to be placed in a home with pets. Then later in the profile she said she was very allergic to cats. We have dogs, no cats. So we asked Ayusa to contact them to get clarification if the problem was just cats and if dogs would be fine. The response we got back was that the student would love being with dogs. That was a complete lie the girl’s father told Ayusa. Not only did this girl not like dogs, she had a strong fear of them. The student blamed her father for the lie. The father is who was contacted by Ayusa and asked. She said that when her father told them what he had told Ayusa, her mom and her called Ayusa and tried to clarify the situation. However, the rep there in France apparently said it would be fine and never passed on the clarification. Likely this was because the rep was more concerned about getting the commission. Out dogs are mostly inside dogs, so yes it was a big issue. In this case, initially I was not sure if our French student was telling the truth about trying to send a clarification or not. However, when considering the other lies we have seen personnel with Ayusa tell, I concluded the French family was probably telling the truth and it probably all was because of the Ayusa reps concern about losing a commission.
This issue with dogs and our student from France is a good example of Ayusa’s sloppy vetting. Had they been more interested in achieving good placements instead of just money, this likely never would have happened. Also our student from Holland never should have been placed in an exchange program at all. She had never been away from her parents for more than a week and was way too emotionally immature to be in an exchange program. Additionally, she was too poor of a student to be in an exchange program. She dropped out of the program and returned to Holland.
Please don’t let the negative parts of what I discussed here cause you not to host an exchange student. Even with a sloppy exchange program like Ayusa, the odds of it being a positive experience is in your favor. Over the years we hosted students from Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Chile, and Holland. For the most part it has been a great experience. The only negative parts were caused by Ayusa not properly vetting students and lying to students and their families. Your odds of having a positive experience are probably better if you use someone other than Ayusa.
