• Admission• Financial aid• Testing• General•

VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE
TO US COLLEGES APPLICANTS

Accurate, honest and timely completion of the application form is the single best guarantee of obtaining admission and earning a scholarship. With hundreds of applications from highly qualified students with high TOEFL scores from around the world colleges simply first eliminate the incomplete applications.

In filling out your applications think why you should get a scholarship rather than one of the many ether applicants. Additional attributes that will help earn scholarships are the human characteristics that will make a candidature an addition to the community life of the campus. This will include sociability, generosity, ability to represent one’s country and culture, etc. Additional factors may also play a role: athletic ability since virtually all American colleges field sports teams (some even have chess teams) to compete against other colleges, musical ability since many colleges have symphony orchestras and choral ensembles, writing abilities since most colleges have their own newspapers and journals, leadership abilities since most colleges have student governments and utilize the ideas of students, acting ability since many collects have theater ensembles. Therefore your college applications should emphasize these abilities if they are of the caliber to help the college you are applying to. Remember that you are applying to educational institutions in another country and that what you consider obvious may not be obvious to them. American institutions may not know what an academic Olympiad is. They may think you are too young to apply to university when you graduate at sixteen. They may not know that the average salary in Ukraine is $100 per month. The burden to explain things is on you. No one will give you a scholarship for writing how much you like America.

Your name, address, telephone, fax and e-mail addresses must be clear and the same on all applications. If at all possible list all telephone number and identify it as home or work. (if your parents have a telephone). Ideally it should be a telephone where someone speaks English. It is good to point out the lime difference. Office telephones are not very helpful since by the time Americans are going to work Ukrainians are going home. Your birthday should be accurate. You were not born in 1997 but that is exactly what one student wrote on his application form.

The school name, address, telephone, and school director name must be present? Don't miss it!

The school transcript should be on school stationery. It must contain the school, address, telephone etc.? The signature must be accompanied by the printed name of the signatory. The transcript must come with a notarized translation in English. It should also come with a brief note explaining the five point grading system of Ukraine. Hand written copies of transcripts are not acceptable.

You do not write your recommendations but you pick your references. This person should know you well and be able to point to specific events and/or accomplishments that will specifically support your application. The recommendations should be on school stationery or on the application form provided by the college you are applying to. The address and telephone of the teacher should be present. Translated recommendations in which the original is in Ukrainian must contain a notarized stamp indicating that the writer reviewed the translation with the translator. In general if you are taking responsibility for the mailing of the recommendation and are enclosing the recommendation with your application the recommendation should be in a sealed envelope with the signature of the recommending teacher over the seal. This implies that you did not see the recommendation. Parents should not write your recommendation. This is considered highly unethical in America. One student did this in 1995. You should have received a form from USA/USA on advising teachers how to write recommendations.

You must take all the exams including the SATI and SATII exams that each school demands. Always take the SAT exam first since all colleges demand that. Exams must arrive on time. Most exams you should be taken no later than November. Do not substitute the SATII for the SATI as some students have tried to do in the past. Do not get discouraged by one bad SAT score. If you are relying on Xeroxed copies of this test results make certain the copies are well centered, clear and look professional. In general one of your SATII exams should be the Writing exam. In top flight American colleges you will be writing all the time. Take exams to show your breadth. In general in it is not good to take two math tests. A good score in one is enough.

Do not use the same essay for every school unless they use the common application.

Your extra-curricular skills should emphasize excellence. Remember if you put down automobile driving skills as your greatest achievement in life the readers may think that your highest ambition in life is to become a truck or taxi driver. America probably has 180 million drivers. Emphasize those skills you have excelled in and which the school will value as. If you have won first place in a national Olympiad in math you do not have to enter the fact that you came in third place in your school’s computer science Olympiad. Rather you should seek to balance that academic achievement with another set of attributes that will show another facet of your character. Do not be ashamed if you are poor or come from simple roots. ,!f you come from a village or a worker’s family emphasize that and show how you have overcome adversity or prejudice to get where you are. But do so with humo¹- and generosity. One of the highest American values is the generous winner who praises those who stood in his way or whom he defeated. Americans do not believe in Vin/Vona ye z dobroyi rodyny. The hardworking successful student from a bad family is respected more than a similar student from a family of successful intellectuals.

Applications should arrive on time. They should contain a self addressed envelope with Ukraine written on the bottom line encouraging the school to inform you that the application is complete. The financial aid form may arrive separately. It may have to be mailed separately. It is wise and courteous to include a self addressed envelope to be mailed back to you when all your materials have arrived. Do this in the American way. When it remains it will make you comfortable that your work for that school has been completed.

Applications should be neat. You can fill them out by pen. Xerox the original if at all possible and complete the Xeroxed form first for practice. Keep a Xeroxed form in reserve. I am aware of the paper shortages in Ukraine but I must tell you that I am turned off by students who send applications in on ruled paper or graph paper. You must realize that Americans are superficial and rich. They have laser printers and good paper. So people who write by hand have to work harder to impress. Materials written on white paper by hand with nice margins and even spacing can really make a very nice impression.

Do not be discouraged by the small print. All the colleges state that their scholarship funds are limited. It is for this reason that I compiled the list that is part of this letter. These colleges have a proven reliable track record of providing four year scholarships to international students. Ignore it at your own risk. Colleges off this list are either too weak or are unable to provide funds to international students on a regular basis.

Apply to colleges on the basis of your TOEFL scores and your abilities. If you expect to go to Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, or MIT you will have had to have won a national or international prize or be a star athlete with superior academic abilities. This year's acceptee to Harvard from Ukraine had a TOEFL score of 667 and a total SAT I of 1515. Our Yale student is an international master in chess and won the Economics Olympiad of Ukraine. He also speaks five languages and entered Yale with these credentials before the age of sixteen. In the usual four years to earn a Bachelors degree he will also earn a Master’s in Economics. You can always go to Harvard for graduate school if you do well at an American college, it is so much easier. Do not waste your precious time applying only to the top ten schools. But utilize the enclosed of colleges closely.

I will not venture to write much about the essay. Your essay must stand out in some way if you really expect to win a $120,000 scholarship. You must realize that most American colleges are overwhelmed with applications from abroad. Americans also have little knowledge about Ukraine. You want to extend their knowledge beyond Oksana Baiul and Chornobyl. Your essay should demonstrate emotional maturity or some exceptional human characteristic of yours, your genius, so to speak: humor, friendship, creativity, insight or analytic ability that will make you a human asset to the college you will attend. Essays on sexual harassment, on a friend who fell off a cliff, on a neighbor who beat his wife until she committed suicide, on students striking in Kyiv in 1990 are still memorable.

Wish you good luck and keep all the items in mind when processing your application.

Prepared by Bohdan Oryshkevich