What countries tend to extend an additional year?

[Anonymous]

I've heard that German au pairs tend not to extend - they usually come between HS and university or starting a first job and want to get home to get started on their future lives. True or not? Are there countries that tend to extend?

[Anonymous]

In our experience (7 yrs old hosting, with very social APs who had lots of friends), many of the Brazilians and Eastern Europeans extend. Why? Because they tend to come after college or at least when they are in their early-mid 20s, and they don't have anything specific to return to (like college next fall, etc). For the Brazilians, they found there wasn't much compelling them to go home, where they would be expected to live in their parents' house again after a year of independence, and their friends were all staying (most ended up staying past their visa times too - 2 out of 3 of ours ended up on F-1s, getting their teaching degrees, and one is married and lives in Boston - and all of them had friends who stayed past two years as well). Watching our APs' friends, many of the older Eastern European APs have been the same as the Brazilians.

Our German APs, on the other hand, were all between HS/college when they came. In our case, we specifically pick APs with college ambitions who take their studies seriously, so they and all of their friends go home at the end of one year (with one exception - our last year's AP's best friend came in Dec of the previous year and extended 6 months to be on our AP's schedule). Not a scientific poll but this is our experience.

[Anonymous]

First time HM here, our Colombian AP is extending - as mentioned she finished school and doesn't have anything pulling her back home.