EF Education First, Inc.

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I live in southeastern Michigan and, in short, from January 2009 to present date (May 2012) I hosted 3 students through EF, and 2 from another agency with whom lifelong connections were formed.



With each hosting experience, both the student and I were disappointed by the service we received from EF, meaning, it ranged from issues with the flight department to having no guidance from the agency when I recently had to have the 4th EF student I hosted removed from my home (we took a chance on this student, as her 3rd host family, as the agency had no information on her being contributory to failing in the first two families).



Note, that a Behavioral Agreement that a student may have to sign is not an agreement at all and when a student is removed from your home, the agency provides no guidelines to the host family on how to handle the removal (minimizing the risk of danger to anyone in the home, or to the home itself), there is no checklist provided to make sure the student isn't taking off with things like house keys, money owed to you, property that needs to be returned to the school, etc, which sure would be helpful to the host family, as you're possibly not thinking clearly at that moment in time and they do not inform you of the post-removal process, which also is a "good to know", as it there are other students in your home and the student who was removed continues to attend the same school, issues can arise.



If the current half year student I am hosting and I were simply informed by our local rep and/or the Cambridge office as to the past-removal process and if/when it looked like the agency would give approval to have the removed student sent back to her home country, it would have alleviated a lot of stress we went through in that "not knowing phase".



For example, when the student who was removed began showing back up in our area, hanging out in the daytime at a park with her boyfriend who was skipping school, and allegedly engaging in some behavior that is banned by the agency, we found that quite disturbing and saw that the agency again was working "at our expense".



Overall, the agency's #1 priority is to legally protect itself and the practices used to place students does not adhere well to being BEST practices for finding deserving, good international students and caring, trustworthy american families.



Before you do business with ANY agency, talk with other families regarding the level of service provided and the rate/percentage of students that do not end up staying with their original host family. You may be surprised at how high the rate is.



Overall I've hosted 6 international students and I won't let this "one bad apple spoil the whole bunch";.......just be particular about the agency and the student you select!

I do not recommend the EF Foundation in Cambridge, MA.