Note on entering American colleges
Good day.
I'm 25, I graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics in Minsk, now I live in America (California). In 2010, my cousin prepared documents for undergraduate with me (she enrolled at Stanford for Management, Science & Engineering), and this year I myself applied for a master program (entered at Carnegie Mellon at MS in Software Engineering). After a long preparation and kilometers of spent nerves, the mysterious system of admission became a little more understandable to me. I hasten to share some points that were in the news for me.
There is a recommendation to choose a pair of “dream colleges,” a few “good colleges,” and a pair of “fallback options.” Rating colleges can be found here (general and by discipline).
By this you not only increase your chances of getting at least somewhere (cap), but also increase your chances of getting into every single university. Because the more essays you write - the better each of them will be, and the more questions you read - the more ideas you will have on how to answer. An application to each college costs about 70-100 dollars, so the money question can become an obstacle - anyway, I sincerely advise you to prepare applications for at least 5 colleges, and to submit as much as the funds allow.
At least not in top colleges. Thousands of schoolchildren submit documents with solid A + and highest marks for tests, and only 5 percent of them enroll. High marks for tests - this is the primary selection, it is not sufficient, but a necessary condition for admission. After abirurients are filtered according to estimates, they will look at essays, recommendations, achievements, and on the basis of this they will make decisions.
Just a couple of words about the tests. How people joke in the selection committee - the SAT only tests how well a person can pass the SAT. Same with all other tests. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the structure of the test, practice it, and read how the job assessment system works. For TOEFL (and other language proficiency tests) - reading about the structure is not enough, you need to train for all sections of the exam, regardless of how well you know English. Great impact on the assessment affects the structure of the response. American schools teach a lot of “structuredness”, so it’s doubly difficult for a Russian to prepare an answer with the structure they expect, especially if you do it for the first time on an exam where you have 15 seconds to think and 45 seconds to answer. Preparation in this matter will help you a lot in the future when you prepare your essay.
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After you have completed the first dropout (estimated above), the admissions committee reads your essay. An incredible number of articles have been written on this topic, it will be useful to read. A couple of points that seemed important to me:
Not “for two weeks” in advance, but “for 6-8 months” in advance. Firstly, if you depend on someone (as is the case with recommendations, or when you ask to read and comment on your draft) - make sure that the person has enough time to help you. And if something suddenly fails - that you will have time to replay everything. Secondly, give yourself at least a couple of months and at least five iterations per essay. Try to find someone who could give you an opinion from the outside. Help from knowledgeable people is very important, but in any case, it is very difficult to evaluate your essay yourself, so any help is help. I rewrote 8 drafts before the essay was ready for submission, and the final version had very little to do with the first draft.
Whatever advice you are given (including this entire post), your admission is your admission. Only you decide whether to follow the recommendations or not, correct the essay or not, investigate the university or not. And only you are responsible for the success of this event. I sincerely wish you good luck, and I hope that something from the listed to you and can help someone else.
I'm 25, I graduated from the Faculty of Applied Mathematics in Minsk, now I live in America (California). In 2010, my cousin prepared documents for undergraduate with me (she enrolled at Stanford for Management, Science & Engineering), and this year I myself applied for a master program (entered at Carnegie Mellon at MS in Software Engineering). After a long preparation and kilometers of spent nerves, the mysterious system of admission became a little more understandable to me. I hasten to share some points that were in the news for me.
1) It is necessary to submit documents to several colleges
There is a recommendation to choose a pair of “dream colleges,” a few “good colleges,” and a pair of “fallback options.” Rating colleges can be found here (general and by discipline).
By this you not only increase your chances of getting at least somewhere (cap), but also increase your chances of getting into every single university. Because the more essays you write - the better each of them will be, and the more questions you read - the more ideas you will have on how to answer. An application to each college costs about 70-100 dollars, so the money question can become an obstacle - anyway, I sincerely advise you to prepare applications for at least 5 colleges, and to submit as much as the funds allow.
2) Test scores are not a decisive factor.
At least not in top colleges. Thousands of schoolchildren submit documents with solid A + and highest marks for tests, and only 5 percent of them enroll. High marks for tests - this is the primary selection, it is not sufficient, but a necessary condition for admission. After abirurients are filtered according to estimates, they will look at essays, recommendations, achievements, and on the basis of this they will make decisions.
Just a couple of words about the tests. How people joke in the selection committee - the SAT only tests how well a person can pass the SAT. Same with all other tests. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the structure of the test, practice it, and read how the job assessment system works. For TOEFL (and other language proficiency tests) - reading about the structure is not enough, you need to train for all sections of the exam, regardless of how well you know English. Great impact on the assessment affects the structure of the response. American schools teach a lot of “structuredness”, so it’s doubly difficult for a Russian to prepare an answer with the structure they expect, especially if you do it for the first time on an exam where you have 15 seconds to think and 45 seconds to answer. Preparation in this matter will help you a lot in the future when you prepare your essay.
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3) Essay is critical
After you have completed the first dropout (estimated above), the admissions committee reads your essay. An incredible number of articles have been written on this topic, it will be useful to read. A couple of points that seemed important to me:
- The essay should be clearly structured. Tell me what you are gonna tell me. The importance of this item is difficult to overestimate, because an unstructured essay confuses the local reader, and he may even ignore / fail to understand the main idea of ​​your essay due to the lack of the expected structure.
- Read about the basic mistakes that people make in the essay. By reading just necessarily. Like many other materials on the topic of preparing for an essay, since we do not teach this kind of essay in schools, we simply need these materials.
- The essay should feel the active position. I would not mention this moment, if I did not write for Russian-speaking people. In Russian, the passive voice is much more common (I like instead of i like, it seems to me instead of i think, etc.) than in English, and when we transfer this habit to English - “they took me, I was lucky, my work was evaluated” - with hand English speaking people it sounds like passivity. So, after writing a draft, re-read the essay in order to reduce this impression.
- The task of the essay is to sell yourself. Make them want you. One of the questions you want to think about is how will the selection committee remember you? When a couple of professors discuss you, how will they talk about you? “That guy from Russia” or “That guy who went to the international Olympiads” - two big differences, keep it in your head.
- Learn more about each university. Find out what is happening there, what they are famous for, what is the atmosphere at the university, what research The east coast is usually more severe, stiff, the west - more relaxed. Some universities are more focused on learning "in depth" (like MIT), some universities give more importance to "versatility" and multi-disciplinary training (like Stanford). When you write an essay, you need to show that you are suitable for uni, that they need to take you from all the other abirurients, and that you will be a worthy representative of the uni. In America, this sense of belonging is very well developed, everyone is sick of sports teams of universities, they wear T-shirts with symbols, and universities are very sensitive to who will represent them in the future. In any case, the essay must be customized for each uni individually.
- Your academic success and interests are very important for graduate and doctoral studies. Again, read what the university is doing, if there is a professor with whom you would be interested to work, think about what research you would like to conduct, and be sure to mention this in the essay.
- Surprisingly, social activity and help to society is of great importance. Did matinees for orphans? Have you organized a support group for people with disabilities? Did you volunteer somewhere? Be sure to mention this. You do not need to devote all essays to this, but it should be clear that you are not just a consumer who goes to university to earn more money later, but an active and not indifferent member of society who will make a difference, whatever that means.
4) Be sure to start preparing in advance.
Not “for two weeks” in advance, but “for 6-8 months” in advance. Firstly, if you depend on someone (as is the case with recommendations, or when you ask to read and comment on your draft) - make sure that the person has enough time to help you. And if something suddenly fails - that you will have time to replay everything. Secondly, give yourself at least a couple of months and at least five iterations per essay. Try to find someone who could give you an opinion from the outside. Help from knowledgeable people is very important, but in any case, it is very difficult to evaluate your essay yourself, so any help is help. I rewrote 8 drafts before the essay was ready for submission, and the final version had very little to do with the first draft.
5) And lastly
Whatever advice you are given (including this entire post), your admission is your admission. Only you decide whether to follow the recommendations or not, correct the essay or not, investigate the university or not. And only you are responsible for the success of this event. I sincerely wish you good luck, and I hope that something from the listed to you and can help someone else.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/175543/
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