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How not to go to university USA

Cornell university

Hello! In view of the increased interest in education abroad lately, and specifically in higher education in the United States, I would like to share my experience in entering a bachelor’s degree at several American universities. Since I have not reached my goal, I will tell you from the dark side of the question - an analysis of the mistakes that an applicant and ways to avoid them can allow. I will not go into the details of the receipt itself, since this material is more than enough for the same habr. All interested in asking under the cat.

Requirements


Before you start talking about errors, it is worth saying a little about the admission procedure itself. It is a little more dreary than, for example, in universities of Ukraine. The application generally consists of:

Separately, about each item can be found on the relevant resources, the format of the article will not allow me to fully disclose everything.

Start


Well, to complete the picture, back in April 2013.
My name is Ilya, I am 16 years old. I study in one of the Ukrainian gymnasiums in the physical and mathematical class and decided to enter bachelor in the states.
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So, advice number 1:

Plan your admission at least one year prior to the submission of documents

In American universities, the submission of documents for the fall semester begins in the fall and ends in the spring or even in the summer. The filing time is directly correlated with your ability to enroll, especially for top universities. This is primarily due to the fact that there are 2 deadlines, and therefore 2 temporary categories of requests: Early Decision / Action and Regular Decision. The formal difference is that Early Decision was created for submission to the highest-priority university, so a contract is signed that you cannot submit to another place at the Early Decision. Statistics claim that the chances of admission when participating in the ED is almost 2 times more. My adviser explained this by saying that the university has more vacancies and money for scholarships than it motivated me to apply for ED / EA.
Thus, in order to increase your chances of income, it is very desirable to go in the fall.

Since I decided to enter several universities at once (as a result, there were 7 of them), the list of exams that had to be passed was a little wider than usual:

Little about exams




Both SATs can be taken in Kiev once a month from September to June. During one attempt, you will have the opportunity to pass only one test - either the SAT Reasoning test or the SAT Subject Tests (you can take 3 subjects at a time). They cost about $ 49 each, the second depends on the number of items that you are going to take / eventually surrendered. The more times you have handed over it, the correspondingly more the chance to get a good result. TOEFL is most likely possible to pass in your city , it costs about $ 200 and is held a little more often.

Thus, like many applicants from top American universities, I needed at least 2 attempts to pass the SAT Reasoning Test & SAT Subject Test. Therefore, in April, when I still had about 6 attempts, I decided not to hurry and skipped the May session, registering for the June session.

From here follows advice # 2:

Use all attempts to pass the SAT.

I personally know people who have TOEFL 115+ out of 120, Subject Tests under 800 out of 800, and Reasoning about 2000 out of 2400 (the sum of three sections of 800). And basically problems arise with one section: Critical Reading. In short, these are tasks for the proper use of words in context and critical analysis of the text. Basically, all foreigners fall on her. One of my friends handed over the SAT 5 times due to the fact that he could not properly write Critical Reading. Personally, for the second time, I generally scored 30 points less, although I retake it precisely in order to increase the result in this section.
So do not lose a single attempt and try to knock out the maximum - it will play a role in the best universities like Cornell or Princeton.

Summer


Further, almost the entire summer I was preparing for a TOEFL with one carrier from my city. I really raised my level of English, especially the oral and auditory part of it. I also advise you to prepare for the TOEFL purposefully, since it is very competent (from my point of view), but still a specific exam.

Autumn


Autumn came, and with it a more active phase of admission. At the same time, I applied for the Opportunity program, which very well helped me cope with the costs during the application process. I started preparing for the SAT Reasoning Test and practically didn’t do other things, including studies (after all, I had to send grades for the semester), recommendations, essays. Then I also prepared myself in the same way, and in the end of November I passed TOEFL. As a result, by the end of the fall, I was not prepared for anything except the results of the exams (not the most enchanting ones, by the way):




So, advice number 3:

Prepare your teachers

It sounds a bit intimidating, but the point is that your teachers know in advance that you are entering the United States. The application process involves filling out sufficiently detailed biographical questionnaires and writing reference letters. In American schools, there is a counselor for this - a person who supervises a student during school and in the admissions process. It may seem that this is an analogue of the post-Soviet class teacher, but the counselor does not teach any subjects. Therefore, he has more time and opportunities to do all this work. As for teachers, unfortunately, they often don’t want to do anything that goes beyond their direct responsibilities (in the USA, the teacher is obliged to write you a recommendation). Therefore, it is better to agree on everything in advance.

Winter


For top universities, my results were not enough, so I registered for the December and January SAT sessions. It was then that I realized the above error and it became a little sad. However, in physics now I was sure, therefore, on December 7, 2013, I was already in the well-known Kiev surrender center. The problem is that I was in a completely broken state.

So, advice number 4:

Be in the city taking at least one day before the exam

If you live in a city where you can take the SAT - that's great. However, in my case there was a variant of the night train, arriving 40 minutes before the start of registration for the exam. Since I am a very pragmatic person in terms of time use, I chose this train 3 times. And all 3 times the night before the exam, I managed to sleep for about an hour. Therefore, I strongly advise you not to save time as I do - the consequences can be really bad.

Then came the stage of writing an essay. And here I also made a classic mistake of many applicants of American universities.

Tip number 5:

Write an essay as early as possible

Here, perhaps, it’s not particularly worthwhile to paint - it’s worth writing long before the deadline. For me, the biggest difficulty and trap is hidden in the essay topics - they seem very simple and unambiguous, writing an essay of 650 words on them (the maximum amount of essay in CommonApp , used by most universities) is very simple and does not take much time. However, in this essay, you must reveal yourself.
Take, for example, Princeton: it gives a couple of small questions for ~ 150 words and an essay for 650. Plus, a common CommonApp essay that is sent to all universities where you submit through it. That is, this is all your field for self-expression and clarification to universities, what kind of person are you? Frivolity and here played a cruel joke with me.

On January 25, I passed the SAT for the second time and there was a long period of waiting for answers from universities.

Spring


In March and early April, the decisions of universities about my applications should have come. For the sake of completeness, I present to you my list of universities in which I joined:

And after that, failures gradually began to come. Of course, it was almost impossible to enter the first 3 (given the quality of my essays for the first and the results of SAT Reasoning for the second and third). However, the failures of Colby College and Macalester College were very saddened. The last two universities in the list accepted me, WKU even gave a scholarship of 11k per year. However, this situation did not save, because of my own considerations and the conditions for further participation in Opportunity, I had to receive full financial aid. Deadlines for all more or less serious scholarships from the outside (not inside the university) have long passed.

So, advice number 6:

Carefully plan your safety schools.

We all want to study at MIT, Caltech, Stanford, etc. However, if you are already applying to universities where you will be enrolled for sure, then you need to take up a scholarship, and it is advisable to knock it out a few years ahead. The number of accepted applications from foreign students at the best universities rarely exceeds 5%. This should be clearly understood and not concentrated only on the top 5 universities.

Conclusion


In this article I tried to explain my main mistakes and form advice based on them for future applicants. They turned out 6 pieces, but in fact the list of mine and flaws known to me is much more. I hope everyone in this article will find some useful rakes for himself and replenish his piggy bank of ways to get around them.

If you are going to do, I can wish you good luck and success - this is really the goal to be pursued.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/230789/

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