Anya Mittal
SEAS ’27
Bioengineering and Robotics
PGS: Health and the Healthcare System in Chile
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- Going abroad as an engineer: I’ve been told countless times that engineers can’t study abroad. And honestly, there’s truth in this – because of how my junior/senior year labs are structured, a semester abroad would delay my graduation by one full year. But that’s a false narrative. Study abroad doesn’t have to mean a full semester away – Penn offers numerous opportunities: global seminars, winter/spring break backpacking trips, GRIP, summers abroad, and more.
- Improving language skills abroad: I entered this class with a basic Spanish foundation, but it wasn’t until I was in Chile that I felt a huge improvement. I’d talk to everyone in Spanish – my classmates, our local Chilean friends, clinicians, hotel and restaurant staff, tour guides, and more – and the immersion made a huge difference.
- Balancing academics and culture: Our Penn itinerary struck a great balance between academic programming and sightseeing, and we still had evenings free. It’s tempting to stay in, but I’d recommend using that time to explore the city you’re in – it’s often where the most memorable experiences happen!
- Daily journaling: I ended each day with about 15 minutes of journaling, writing down highlights, thoughts, and things I learned. It helped me reflect more deeply and left me with a record that I now have forever.
My Experience Abroad
My global seminar perfectly bridged my healthcare-adjacent major (Bioengineering & Robotics) with my passion for Spanish – we were studying the healthcare system of a Spanish-speaking country while living in it.
Throughout the semester, we analyzed differences between the U.S. and Chilean healthcare systems, but being in Chile made the learning so much more tangible. I was able to have in-depth conversations with doctors, nurses, and midwives, and left every conversation more and more intrigued by Chile’s system. During the trip, I focused on maternal health support systems, and have learned so much about their birth control access, pregnancy support programs, emphasis on midwifery, and got to the root of why they have some of the lowest mortality rates in the Americas.
Visiting the care centers we’d learned about brought these ideas to life. We toured primary care centers, hospitals, and geriatric centers, and saw stark differences between public and private centers. One that stood out to me was the largest public hospital in Santiago, where we learned that they offer free in-vitro fertilization (IVF), free deep brain stimulation technology for Parkinson’s, and are the first Chilean public hospital to adopt surgical robots.
As someone who wants to work in surgical robotics / medical technology post-grad, it was valuable to gain insights into global healthcare systems. This experience opened my eyes to numerous new aspects of healthcare, something that will support how I engage with my future career.
Other Highlights
- Meeting locals! We spent many evenings with 3 Chilean nursing students our age, which gave us such an immersive, local experience. They’d invite us to their homes, introduce us to their families, and take us to their favorite spots around the city for good food and endless evenings. This gave me so much insight into Chilean culture.
- New friendships! Even though I barely knew my classmates at the end of the semester, we left Chile as such a close group. From every bus-ride conversation about Chilean health privacy policies to infinite airport games of Imposter, I wouldn’t choose to frolic through the streets of Santiago with anyone else.
- Life stories! We met people from all walks of life, and I loved hearing their stories. Like the Machi, who quit his accounting job to embrace his true identity as his indigenous Mapuche community’s healer. Or our incredible translator Adrian, 21y/o, who fell in love with Chile after studying abroad there, and took a gap year from college to sell his pottery there. Or our wonderful tour guides María Jose and Felipe, who, after studying translation and history, built their own tour-guide company from scratch… and only at the very end did we find out they were married 🙂
