Free
The Guide
Is this real, and could it work for my kid?
- What a folk school actually is
- The honest cost, next to a US college year
- The language question, answered properly
- Whether your kid is the right fit
Folkehøgskole · Norway
Your kid can go to school in Norway next year. The tuition is zero.
Norway has about eighty folk high schools — a real, government-recognised year between high school and whatever comes next. No grades. No exams. And the tuition is free for your child too.
~80
Schools
800+
Subject lines
Aug–May
Nine months
1864
Since
What this is
A whole school system Americans have never heard of.
A folkehøgskole is a boarding year for eighteen-year-olds. Students pick one subject — outdoor life, music, photography, film, sailing, cooking, dog sledding — and go deep on it for nine months.
There are no grades, no exams and no credits. That is not a gap in the system. That is the entire idea, and it has been running since 1864.
Ålesund · 62.47°N
Our daughter is there right now.
Isla had acceptances from twenty colleges last April. None of them felt right. In August she flew to Norway instead — to a town that burned down in 1904 and was rebuilt in Art Nouveau, a few hundred metres from the water.
Where to start
Three steps, in the order most families need them.
You do not need all of it today. Start with the free guide and stop there if the answer is no — that is a real answer, and cheaper to reach now than in March.
$27
The Starter Kit
What are my options — all of them, in one place?
- Every one of the ~80 schools
- Where each one is, and what it specialises in
- Published costs, and the trip costs nobody mentions
- The application calendar
Soon
The Playbook
Which school, and how do we actually get in?
- Narrowing ~80 schools down to a shortlist
- The application, step by step
- Visas and the residence permit
- The timeline that keeps you ahead of the quota
The part nobody tells you
There are not many seats.
Norwegian regulation caps students from outside Europe at ten percent of any school’s enrolment. One school states it plainly on its own site: seven students a year, from the entire world outside the EU.
Applications open around the start of October. Schools begin saying yes in mid-November, and it is first come, first served until they are full.
