The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

82 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT in the middle of all this. But it is still frustrating to encounter the distress, bewilderment and sheer resistance of some embassies to legitimate, well- documented requests to pay French school bills. The optimal solution to this would be to change the rules to allow acceptance of foreign school billings, at least up to a certain amount. At the very least, B&F train- ing should include some coverage of how to handle non-U.S. education finances. College-Bound Finally, parents should be aware that not all U.S. colleges enthusiasti- cally accept French credentials, and getting accepted to the ones that do can be harder than it would otherwise be. Lycees naturally focus on educat- ing their students for French univer- sities, and are therefore centered on preparation for the arduous two-part Baccalaureat examination (known familiarly as the “Bac”), not the U.S. college admissions process. It is no exaggeration to say that the Bac process enlists France’s full attention and best talents: your daughter’s phi- losophy exam may be graded by a Sorbonne full professor. It can also be a truly unforgiving ordeal: there were rumors (fortunately untrue) in France that this year’s math Bac was so impossibly hard that the Ministry of Education might have to repeat it! Continued from page 80 Continued on page 84 Dealing with sometimes inflexible French bureaucrats is good preparation for seeking reimbursement from State for educational expenses.