How to deal with homesickness abroad

Not “just stay busy” advice. The real thing: what homesickness actually is, when it peaks, and five things that genuinely make it better.

Around 70% of international students experience significant homesickness in their first semester abroad. Most do not talk about it, partly because everyone around them appears fine, and partly because there is a quiet sense that feeling homesick means something went wrong. Neither of those things is true.

Homesickness while studying abroad is one of the most common and least discussed parts of the experience. This post is about what it actually is, why it happens when it does, and what the research and the students who have been through it say actually helps.

What homesickness actually is

Homesickness is not just missing your family or your bed or your local coffee shop. It is a genuine psychological response to loss. Specifically, it is the loss of familiar routines, familiar relationships, and the social identity you had built up over years at home. When all of those disappear at once, the brain registers something closer to grief than to simple longing.

There is also an identity dimension that is easy to overlook. At home, you have a clear role. You are someone’s friend, someone’s flatmate, someone’s classmate in a context where people already know you. Abroad, that role is temporarily undefined. Rebuilding a social identity in a new environment takes time and real effort. The gap between who you were at home and who you are still becoming can feel unsettling before it starts to feel exciting.

Homesickness also shows up physically. Disrupted sleep, low appetite, difficulty concentrating, and a general flatness are all common. These are not signs of weakness or poor mental health. They are signs that your nervous system is doing the hard work of adjusting to a genuinely unfamiliar environment.

When it peaks, and when it passes

The timeline is more predictable than most students expect. Research consistently shows that homesickness while studying abroad peaks between weeks two and six of the first semester. The first week is often carried by novelty and adrenaline. Week two is when the newness wears off and the reality of being far from home settles in.

Many students also experience a secondary dip around weeks four or five. By that point, the initial excitement has fully faded, but deep friendships have not yet formed. That in-between period is often the hardest stretch of the whole semester. Knowing it exists, and knowing it is temporary, makes it considerably easier to move through.

For most students, by the end of the first semester, the intensity has reduced significantly. Routines have formed, friendships have deepened, and the new place has started to feel familiar in its own way. The students who almost went home in week three are, a semester later, almost universally glad they did not.

When it is something more

Homesickness is normal. Clinical depression or anxiety is not, and the two can overlap and escalate. It is worth seeking professional support if low mood persists beyond four to six weeks with no improvement, if you are missing classes or unable to complete assignments, or if your sleep has become significantly disrupted over an extended period. All Asia Exchange partner universities have counseling services. They exist for exactly this moment, not just for academic problems.

Worth knowing: a 2019 study in the Journal of International Students found that students with high homesickness scores were 40% more likely to report poor academic performance in their first semester. Addressing the homesickness directly is more effective than simply studying harder through it.

Five things that actually help

These are not generic wellness tips. They are the strategies that research and students who have been through it consistently identify as the ones that genuinely move the needle.

1. Give it a name

Homesickness feels less overwhelming the moment you stop treating it like a mystery symptom. Name it. Recognize it as a predictable stage, not a sign that you made a wrong decision. Research on culture shock, first described systematically by anthropologist Kalervo Oberg, shows that simply knowing you are in a specific stage of adjustment, rather than experiencing something undefined and open-ended, significantly reduces its psychological intensity. You are not failing. You are on schedule.

2. Build one tiny routine

Routine is the fastest stabilizer during adjustment. It does not need to be elaborate. A regular coffee spot on the way to campus. A Sunday evening call home. One walk you always take on Thursday afternoons. The specific routine matters less than the fact that it is yours and it repeats. Familiar structures give the nervous system something to hold onto when everything else is still new. Research consistently finds that fixed sleep, regular meals, and predictable daily rhythms reduce adjustment time more than motivation or mindset work alone.

3. Say yes to the next small thing

Not a weekend trip. Not a major social commitment. Just the next thing directly in front of you. The dinner invite. The class trip. The hello to someone in your corridor. Homesickness and loneliness reinforce each other in a specific cycle: you miss home, you pull back from your new environment, you feel more isolated, home feels even more important. Saying yes to small things is the most direct way to interrupt that cycle. Friendships abroad form through recurring contact, shared small moments rather than big planned experiences.

4. Talk to someone who has been there

Your counselor and the Asia Exchange ambassador network exist for exactly this moment, not just for booking a program. Ambassadors are former students who have been through the same adjustment. They know what week three feels like from the inside. That kind of peer knowledge is different from professional support and different from advice from people who have never been abroad. Both matter. Neither replaces the other. If you are struggling in the first few weeks, reaching out to someone who came through the other side of that same feeling is one of the most practical things you can do.

5. Give it two weeks before you decide anything

The urge to go home is strongest precisely at the moment when things are about to get better. Most students who seriously consider cutting their semester short do so somewhere in weeks two to four, which is also when homesickness is at its peak. That is not a coincidence, but it is not useful information either. The research on adjustment curves is consistent: two weeks of genuine engagement with the new environment, of building even small routines and making even tentative connections, changes the picture significantly. Give it that window before making any permanent decisions.

A note on video calls home

Research on homesickness while studying abroad consistently finds that video calls with family and friends help, but with one important caveat. They reduce the acute feeling of missing home in the moment, but they do not replace the deeper work of building connection in the new environment. Students who rely primarily on video calls as their main source of emotional support tend to stay in the adjustment phase longer than those who combine regular contact home with genuine investment in local relationships.

The goal is not to cut contact with home. It is to make sure that contact does not become a substitute for presence in the place you actually are. A weekly call home is genuinely useful. Four hours of daily video calls can make the new environment feel even more foreign by keeping you emotionally anchored elsewhere.

The students who almost went home in week three are, a semester later, almost universally glad they did not. That is not a coincidence. It is just what the other side of week four looks like.

Feeling homesick? Our ambassador community is here. You can also reach out anytime to us!

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