I had spent ten years of my school life at a co-educational school in Germany, when I moved to the US to finish school. At that time I did not know that I was not only going to get to know a new life-style, new people and another language. Since I had chosen to live at a boarding school with single-sex education, I was also going to learn what it means to be around females all day long without having one male student in your classroom.
Looking back on my high-school career, I am able to compare these two types of education. In my all-girls-school in the US, I observed ways that students behaved which were very different from what I had experienced in my co-ed school in Germany. For example there were girls only, started to feel more self-confident so that they actually participated in class discussion. Being a part in a whole group of girls makes you feel strong and supported, as if you were a team and together you will manage to get through a year of studying. It is proven that girls and boys do not behave the same way regarding their learning, testing and thinking abilities.
There is one big advantage for all-girls classes: a girl is going to be class president, a girls is going to be chairman etc. There is no boy who is going to do the job, but there are only girls who take responsibility and learn about leadership. A lot of times you can see boys being prepared for a leading role in society. But a single-sex education also gives girls the chance to prove that they are just as able to play an important role in society as boys are.
Of course, someone might argue that girls and boys need to be in school together so they get better prepared for life and the business world where there is no separation between male and female and everybody has to fight his/her way through. But a single sex education does not exclude this. In my opinion, it just helps you to separate work and privacy and I am glad I got the chance to see what it is like to live in an all-girls school. I can only encourage every student who goes abroad to try it out, it is definitely worth to make this experience.

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