myUface Blog

When it comes time to apply to universities, most students think of themselves as a potential client of a university.  The application process, therefore, is one in which you – the client – makes a bid for a product which the university is selling: namely, an education.

While there is some truth to thinking of the application process in this way, today I’d like to encourage you all to think about applying to universities in a slightly different way.  What if the university was the client and you were the “supplier.”  The university puts out a request for a particular product – “we need 1,500 freshmen with these particular specifications” – and you put in a bid to partially fulfill that request.

It may seem strange to suggest that a university is “buying” you when, in fact, you’re the one that pays tuition.  But universities do look at students as “assets” they’d like to acquire, and not merely as individuals who will pay tuition.

It’s useful to think about just a few of the many different ways in which you are an asset to a university:

1. Most obviously, you pay tuition.  This helps the university covers its operational costs (paying teachers, heating bills for the buildings, etc.)
2. Your educational background and experiences will form a crucial part of any classroom in which you’re a student.  The questions you ask, the essays you write, and the comments you make will either improve or degrade the quality of the educational outcomes for that class.
3. Your social characteristics – your ability to make friends, your interest in participating in hobbies and sports, etc. – will contribute to the on-campus atmosphere of the university.  This is important. If a university admits 1,500 excellent students who all pay full tuition, but they’re all anti-social and hate other people, do you think that university will be a nice place to work or study?
4. When you become an alumnus, you will have the opportunity to contribute to the university both financially (through alumni donations) and socially (through giving the university and its students access to your personal and professional networks).

There are a number of other ways you are an asset to a university, but let’s stop at these four for now.  What this means is that a university views a potential student as an asset that covers costs, improves the quality of the university’s product, maintains a healthy atmosphere on campus, and develops the university’s professional and academic networks.

Now, if you think of yourself as a potential asset, then in applying to a university you have to sell yourself by convincing the university that you’re a stronger asset than other students.  We’ll talk at great length about how you can do that in later posts, but the crucial point here is just to realize that an application for a university is very much like an advertisement for a product:  if you create a good advertisement, the chances that the product will be “bought” are much higher.

What do you think? Are you an asset?  Should universities view students this way?

In the process of applying to a U.S. university, you’re going to be asked a number of questions – in essays, in interviews, and in the application – about your plans for the future.  The more time you spend seriously considering your goals and career plans, the better prepared you’ll be to answer these questions.

For that reason, I’m going to start a periodic series called “Three Questions.”  This will basically be an occasional post that asks – you guessed it – three questions designed to make you think about the world and your place in it.  By considering these questions in your free time, I hope you’ll be able to generate the kind of introspection that will help you on your essays, in your interviews, and throughout your application.

Each “question” will actually be a series of questions – one main question with a series of follow-ups.

Without further ado, here’s the first installment of “Three Questions:”

1. What is the biggest problem in your society? What, if anything, can an individual like yourself do to change it?  Is changing it something in which you are interested?  Why or why not?
2. What do you think is the proper balance between work and family life? In your culture, is it common for people to be more committed to their work or to their family?  Is it even possible to maintain a balance?
3. In sports, is it more important to win or to follow the rules? Why?

More Questions . . .

1. Three Questions - 29 Jun
2. Three Important Questions to Consider (This post)

Today the podcast covers the issue of timelines for international students interested in applying to U.S. universities.

Hope you enjoy it!

As always, comments or questions about the podcast should be directed to podcast@myuface.com.

Other Podcasts

1. Podcast: Asking Questions - 18 Jul
2. Podcast: Give Yourself Time To Complete Your Application - 13 Jun
3. Podcast: What to Do if your Application is not Accepted - 06 Jun
4. Podcast - The View from Albania - 23 May
5. Podcast: University Rankings - 16 May
6. Podcast: Timeline for Applying to a U.S. University (This post)
7. The Inaugural myUface Podcast - 02 May

The four months from September to December are  the busiest for international students applying to U.S. universities.  On Sunday we talked about the Summer timeline.  Today let’s go over what we’ll need to do this fall, if we plan to begin attending a U.S. university in September of 2010.

September

• We should continue working on our myUface profile.  Not only is a myUface profile a good way to apply independently to a number of universities, it’s also a great place to store all of your application materials.  Having all your information in one place will make it easier to fill out other applications in the future.
• We should ask three individuals (teachers, probably) for letters of recommendation.  We want to do this early, in order to give them plenty of time to complete a good recommendation.  We’ll undoubtedly have more posts later about what to look for in a reccomender, but to talk about it briefly here:  the most important thing is that your recommender knows you well.  A lot of students try to get recommendations from “important” people who don’t really know them.  The result is an impressive name attached to an uninteresting recommendation.  It’s far better to get someone who knows you and can talk about your strengths.
• We should talk to our school about preparing transcripts.  Can they provide an English translation?  How long will it take?  Does it cost anything?
• Did we get a good TOEFL score?  If not, try again.

October

• We should have received applications by now from universities we’re interested in.  If we haven’t asked for application, we need to do so immediately. We should look carefully at each application, answering the following:  when is it due?  Is there a benefit to applying early?  Does the application require special information that other applications don’t require?   What are the essay questions?
• We should ask each university that we’re applying to about their requirements for transcripts.  Do they have any special format that they want us to submit transcripts in?  We should ask our school to send certified transcripts to each of the universities we’re applying to, following the university guidelines.
• We should make photocopies of the applications and begin to fill  in the copies. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT fill in information on the originals.  That comes later.
• We should provide our recoommenders with the addresses of the universities, so they can send the recommendations to the right place.  Even better, we should give our recoomenders addressed envelopes so there’s no way they can make an accidental mistake.
• We should begin writing our essays and statements of purpose.
• If we haven’t already, we should take the SAT.

November

• November is a month for work, plain and simple.  We follow up on recommendation letters, we complete our essays, we finish the rough drafts of our applications and begin on the final copies, we make sure our transcripts have been prepared properly, we take and retake standardized tests (if need be).
• Some U.S. universities will have “early application” deadlines.  By applying to a university early, you may have a better chance of being accepted.  However, by applying early you are also promising that, if accepted, you’ll go to that university.  If there’s one university you really really want to get into, it’s a good idea to apply early.  Early application deadlines can be as early as November, so be aware!
• Even if you’re not applying early, there’s no penalty for submitting applications before the deadline.  So try to not only finish, but send off, as many applications as you can.

December

In December we’re doing three things:

1. We’re continuing to finish and send off applications.  Our goals should be to complete all of our applications by the New Year.
2. We’re corresponding with universities, verifying that they’ve received our materials, asking if they need more information, and responding promptly to any requests they may have.
3. If we have poor tests scores, we’re scrambling to take them one last time.

That’s the calendar for Fall.  In a future post we’ll look at the Winter timeline.