Study abroad can be a life-changing experience, but evidence of its effectiveness is mixed. We examine the experience of studying abroad at colleges in the US and China, which are the largest receiving and sending countries of international students respectively. Using data from two comparable national surveys that follow the same design, we estimate causal effects by matching students who studied abroad during college to those who did not, based on their propensity to study abroad. First, we survey student profiles to better understand who studied abroad. We found that parental education and urbanity makes difference in participation. Second, we examine the impact of study abroad on student academic achievement, using multivariate regression and propensity score matching. Finally, we exploit the matched samples to examine impact heterogeneity by student background. We find a positive, statistically significant but small impact on student academic achievement in both countries, with a higher impact for American students.