myUface Blog

Cheap, effective and credits you can transfer to a 4 year school. What’s not to love?! We just got back from a conference attended by over 300 community colleges and let me tell you, they want international students to apply. What’s great about community colleges is that many of them have agreements with the large state schools to accept on a 1 to 1 basis their credits. Oh, and by the way, those transferred credits will cost you much less than if you were to have received them at the big state school. You can cut thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars off the cost of your education by studying for 2 years at a community college, then transferring to a big state school for the last 2 years. And you get the diploma from the state school!

Here’s another secret about community colleges, many of them offer a 4 year baccalaureate degree. The degrees are generally in areas like nursing, criminal justice or other areas directly related to a trade but if you are interested, let us know. We’ll help you find the right program.

Some examples you might check out include:

1. Tompkins Cortland Community College
2. Daytona State College
3. Madison Area Technical College
4. Owens Community College

As always, this is just a sampling of schools.   There are hundreds (if not thousands) of similar schools, all over the country.   myUface can help you find more, or you can apply directly. Just know that community colleges may be your best and most affordable way to get a very good education in the US.

For any student interested in study at a U.S. University, it’s a good idea to spend some time reading about ongoing changes in the U.S. higher educational system.  The better you can understand the way in which that system is changing, the better you can determine how you’ll fit into it – or even whether you should try to fit into it.

A great example is this article about the University of Iowa.  It demonstrates how many public universities in the U.S. are responding to decreased funding, and also how student expectations are changing.  These two influences – funding and student expectations – will have a huge impact on the way U.S. universities interact with international students over the next ten years.

The parts I highlighted:

As state funding becomes a smaller portion of UI’s budget and UI tries to become more self-reliant, pulling in more money from tuition has become a target. This has meant raising tuition — which has doubled in 10 years — but also boosting the mix of out-of-state and international students, increasing enrollment and improving retention rates . . .

[S]tudents have a more specific focus than in they have in the past. In 1999, 28 percent of first-year students came in as open majors, but now only 18 percent of students do, he said.

This article at U.S News and World Report isn’t specifically about international students, but it does touch on all the issues that go into financial aid decisions at a U.S. university.  Also, it does comment briefly on international students:

The aid policy for international students: A few schools on this list, such as Princeton and Grinnell College in Iowa, commit to meet the financial needs of noncitizens. Many others, such as Northwestern and Adrian, don’t guarantee full aid for international students.

Here is the list of colleges and universities that claim to meet the full needs of students.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t specify if they will offer the same to international students.

Often, international students become fixated on the rankings of universities provided by organizations like U.S. News and World Report.

In the Washington Post there’s a great article about a new way to measure university quality, called the student engagement survey.

Introduced 10 years ago by Indiana University researchers as an antidote to U.S. News, the survey has won buy-in from 1,400 colleges, with about half that number participating each year. Rather than rank colleges on overall quality, it attempts to quantify whether students at a particular school are learning, through a battery of questions: How often do you raise your hand in class? How many 20-page papers have you written? How often do you e-mail a professor? Each college is measured against similar institutions, and over time. But there is no overall ranking.

When you look at a university’s ranking, it’s also a good idea to look at data like that provided by such surveys, to get a fuller picture of the reality behind the ranking.

Readers of this blog can now get a look at a number of various online resources by going to our new page, entitled ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

http://www.myuface.com/blog/additional-resources/

Here we’ll place websites, programs, etc. that we think you’ll find useful.  To start with we’ve got about ten links, but this number will grow over time.

Hope you find it useful!

For all those that want to keep up with myUface and with international student news generally, we are happy to report that we have started a Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/gettingYOUintoU

We’ll use it to share news about our own efforts to connect students and universities, and about intl. student news in general.  See you there!

Yes, this is a strange question.  When we talk about education in the United States, most people immediately think of all those articles in the newspaper or online that say you need $20,000 to $50,000 PER YEAR to study in the US.  Well, sometimes that’s true.  However, there are TONS of educational programs, good ones, in the US that don’t cost that much.

English Language Programs

We now have HUNDREDS of students registered at myUface.  Almost all of you say you want to get your undergraduate degree in the US.  However, many of you will not likely be able to get the 500 TOEFL score (paper based) to start an undergraduate program (let alone the 550 to begin most graduate programs).  If this situation sounds familiar to you, here’s an idea – think about a Summer English Language Program!  You will spend between 6 and 12 weeks in the US learning English and, in some cases, improving your study skills.

How much do these programs cost?  Some of the shorter programs cost as little as $3,000-$5,000!  This includes tuition, dormitory and meals (but sadly not airfare)!  That’s hard to beat and it will make you a much more attractive and successful student later.  Here are some of the programs we like (but there are literally TONS of others that are fantastic as well….just ask your local educational advisor):

1. Rochester Institute of Technology – great school, great location in New York and best of all….GREAT PRICE.  (7 weeks for about $4400)
2. Utah Valley University – some of the best skiing in the world right outside your dorm!  Very friendly and safe area not to mention it’s a wonderful program.  I visited this college and really liked it and the staff.  Even better, students who complete the ESL program are automatically eligible to register into regular degree seeking classes!
3. The University of Pittsburgh’s English Language Institute – Pitt’s ELI program even offers a three week cultural and language program during the summer where tuition is $1800.  They also offer a five week program for potential grad students that costs $2400 (tuition only).  Check them out!

Again, there are hundreds of great ESL programs out there that won’t break the bank.  If you think that an ESL program might be a better start for you, please go back into your myUface profile and choose “Special Program – ESL”.  Even better, if you think you might be able to afford the $4,000-7,000 price tag, indicate this on your profile.  This is important information for universities when they search your profile.

Yesterday I mentioned that in order to improve your chances of getting into a U.S. university, you needed to have a “complete” application.  What do I mean by complete?

A complete application:

1. Has ALL applicable fields filled out (no blanks!)
2. Has an essay, a resume / CV, and a recommendation attached
3. (coming soon) has your transcripts from secondary school or university attached.  As of Feb. 8th, 2010, there is no space to do this at myUface, but we are adding this functionality soon,
4. Has standardized test scores noted.  For guidance on which test scores you need, contact us.

If you have most of these things, we will still share your application with universities, but be aware, if they’re interested in you they will nonetheless require all of the above information.  So be sure that, if you don’t have it completed yet, you’re working on it!

So far, we’ve received nearly 300 applications on myUface, and we’re working to connect all of these students to universities in the U.S.

We believe we’ll be successful with many of our candidates.  Others don’t have applications that are complete enough for universities to truly consider.  You may be wondering, How can I improve my chances of getting into a U.S. university?

Two things:

1. Make sure your myUface application is complete. More tomorrow on what “complete” means.
2. Don’t only apply to universities through myUface.  Increase your chances of getting into a U.S. program by applying independently to universities as well.

Some sites want you to maintain an exclusive relationship with them and them alone.  Here, our priorities are different:  we want you to get into a U.S. university, no matter if you do that through us or on your own.

By applying independently to a few U.S. universities, you give yourself a good chance of being accepted directly to a program.  If you also apply through myUface, you’ve ensured that you have several chances for universities to notice you.

Applying to myUface alone is a great step, but we encourage all of you to pursue university applications independently as well.

Are you considering studying internationally, but can’t make up your mind?  Do you wonder if all the effort that goes into studying abroad will be worth it?

Well, here’s a sign that an international education will be considered very valuable in the coming years:  the THINK Global School.

The Think Global School is a high school which changes its campus every trimester.  If you are a student at the school for four years, that means you will live and study in twelve different cities around the planet.  You can see more about the school here.

So why is this relevant to students considering studying at a university i the U.S.?  Well, the people behind Think Global clearly believe that an international education is worth a lot, and that parents will be willing to pay very high tuition in order to prepare their students for a globalized world.

Just how much is that international education worth?  Well, one year at Think Global school costs $88,000.  Yes, eighty-eight THOUSAND.

Tuition at a U.S. university doesn’t look so expensive any more, does it?