myUface Blog

Dear myUface users,

We started myUface to help international students find placements at U.S. universities.  And last year, we helped 16 different students find a place to study.

But before we can help you, you need to help us – BY COMPLETING YOUR MYUFACE APPLICATION. Without a complete application there is NOTHING we can do to help you get into a U.S. university.  Without an application, we have nothing to show universities that otherwise might be interested in you.  So please, help us help you – COMPLETE YOUR MYUFACE APPLICATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

We’re proud to hear from many myUface users that they’ve been accepted to universities in the U.S.  Many of them, though, have a big problem:  they don’t have the resources to pay for tuition and living expenses, and the school isn’t offering a full scholarship.

We can’t offer a solution to this problem.  However, we have done a lot of work on this blog explaining some of the different options for finding financial aid.  You can find that here.

The bottom line is that finding financial aid can be very difficult.  You need to work hard and be disciplined.  You also need to look to all available options.

Good luck to anyone in this situation!  Use the myUface blog resources and let us know if you have questions!

The way myUface works is simple. You create an online application. Universities search our database and find students (like yourself) who fit their needs. Then they contact you.

But we’ve got another way of helping you contact U.S. universities. If you finish your myUface application by December 31st, we’ll take your information and send it to universities ourselves.

That’s right – your application, sent to universities in the U.S., for free – BUT ONLY IF YOU COMPLETE YOUR APPLICATION BY DECEMBER 31st!

So get working on those applications!  And remember, we’re here to help.  Ask us questions about the application, we’ll answer them.

Want to know more about myUface?  GO TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Today I want to talk about the importance of completing your myUface.com profile as soon as you can.  You want to get your myUface.com profile finished quickly for three main reasons:

1. First, and most importantly, the quicker you finish your myUface.com profile, the quicker we can evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, and share your profile with the appropriate universities.  U.S. universities will soon be inundated with thousands of applications from students all over the world.  If you can get your information to them before the rush, you’ve got an advantage.
2. Second, if you get your profile done quickly, you have time to get feedback from myUface and from U.S. universities.  Let’s say, for example, that you have a poor essay, but that everything else about your application is great.  If you are able to get us your profile now, there’s a good chance we’ll hear that from a few universities – and we can share that with you in time for you to make changes and resubmit your profile.  If you wait too long, you won’t have the chance to have that feedback.
3. Third, if you finish your profile early, you can relax, cross it off your list, and do fun things elsewhere!!!

Please, work on those profiles!  It helps you, and it helps us.

As always, if you need help with your profile or if you have any questions, e-mail us.

The U.S. government sponsors a number of scholarship opportunities for individuals to study at U.S. universities.  Below are some the the most well-known examples:

• The Fulbright program “brings citizens of other countries to the United States for Master’s degree or Ph.D. study at U.S. universities or other appropriate institutions.”
• The Muskie program sponsors fellowships for students from “Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan for one-year non-degree, one-year degree or two-year degree study in the United States” in a number of fields.
• The Global Undergraduate Program sponsors students at undergraduate institutions from the same countries as those listed under the Muskie program, above.
• The Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program “provides a year of professional enrichment in the United States for experienced professionals” in non-degree study.

Not all of these programs exist in every country.  On the flip side, the U.S. Embassy in your country may administer other scholarship or fellowship programs.

How do you find out about programs sponsored by the U.S.?  Simple.  Go to the homepage of the U.S. Embassy in your country.  There should be a tab entitled, “Education & Culture” (or something like that – perhaps “Culture/Education,” etc.).  Under this tab, look for a link that says “Exchange Programs.”  The resulting page should contain information about the opportunities available in your country.

Here’s an example from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria.

A few things to know about educational opportunities sponsored by the U.S.:

1. Generally speaking, the competition for these scholarships is going to be open and merit-based.  Most of the time you’ll be asked to fill out a separate application and go through a separate application process.
2. Sometimes U.S.-sponsored programs are administered by independent, non-profit organizations such as American Councils, IREX, or IIE.  In other words, don’t simply send applications to the Embassy.  Figure out how the scholarships are administered and contact any administering organizations.
3. Many times U.S.-sponsored programs will place you at a particular university, oftentimes with minimal input from you.
4. Many U.S.-sponsored programs place students in one-year, non-degree programs in the U.S.  This is great for students who want to see the U.S. from a student’s perspective, but who aren’t necessarily tied tot he idea of getting a U.S. degree.  If you do want a degree, some of these programs may not be for you.
5. Most, if not all, U.S.-sponsored programs require you to return to your country for at least two years after the completion of the program.

What do you think?  Is a U.S.-sponsored program right for you?

Posts in this Series

1. Your Education is an Investment - 08 Jul
2. Researching Scholarship Opportunities - 07 Jul
3. How to Ask Questions About Financial Aid - 28 Jun
4. Ninth Option for Financial Aid: Loans - 27 Jun
5. The Difference Between Scholarships and Fellowships - 26 Jun
6. Eigth Option for Financial Aid: U.S. Universities - 25 Jun
7. Seventh Option for Financial Aid: Ethnic Communities in the United States - 24 Jun
8. Sixth Option for Financial Aid: Private Organizations in the U.S. - 23 Jun
9. Fifth Option for Financial Aid: U.S. Government Programs (This post)
10. Fourth Option for Financial Aid: Scholarships from International Organizations - 20 Jun
11. How to Ask for Support - 18 Jun
12. Looking for Support in Your Country: Why it Makes Sense - 17 Jun
13. Third Option for Financial Aid: Individuals in Your Country - 16 Jun
14. Second Option for Financial Aid: Private Businesses or Foundations in Your Country - 15 Jun
15. First Option for Financial Aid: Government Programs in Your Country - 14 Jun
16. The Third Step in Financial Aid: Find What's Available - 11 Jun
17. The Second Step In Financial Aid: Identify Your Assets - 10 Jun
18. The First Step In Financial Aid: Identify Your Needs - 09 Jun
19. Finding Financial Aid for your U.S. Education - 08 Jun

Over the past two days we’ve discussed the first two “steps” in getting the financial aid you need in order to study at a U.S. university.  Step One was to identify the cost of the education you’re pursuing; Step Two was to identify the assets you yourself possess (or that your family is willing to give you).

Once you complete these two steps, you should have a good idea of the amount of financial aid you’ll need to identify from outside sources:

Cost of your education – Assets of you / your family = needed aid.

So, for example, if you have researched a program that will cost $150,000 over four years, and you and your family can contribute only $60,000 over those years, you’ll need to identify $90,000.

Step Three is identifying the sources of those funds.

Over the next couple of days we’re going to delve deeply into the different potential sources of aid, but for today’s post I just want to breifly note the traditional sources of financial aid:

• Aid from your country’s government. Many countries have programs designed to subsidize the costs of education abroad.
• Aid from private institutions in your country. Domestic companies or foundations will sometimes sponsor students, particularly as part of a training program for employees.
• Aid from individuals in your country. Often, wealthy individuals will offer support to students as a way of “giving back” to their society.
• Aid from international organizations. Certain international organizations offer scholarships or support to international students.
• Aid from the U.S. government. The U.S. government administers several scholarship and fellowship programs for international students.
• Aid from private sources in the U.S. A very few foundations or other private sources in the U.S. offer scholarships to international students.
• Aid from universities. Some universities offer financial aid to international students.
• Loans. International students often take out loans to finance the cost of their education.  Banks or other lending institutions in your country may offer student loans. U.S. lending institutions will offer international students loans; usually, however, a credit-worthy U.S. citizen must co-sign the loan.
• Work-study. Some institutions will offer students the chance to work part-time as a way of financing part of their education.

Over the next few days we’ll cover each of these sources in greater detail.

For now, I want to ask you all the following question (and please leave your answer as a comment):  have you looked into these sources of aid?  All of them?  What have you found so far?

Posts in this Series

1. Your Education is an Investment - 08 Jul
2. Researching Scholarship Opportunities - 07 Jul
3. How to Ask Questions About Financial Aid - 28 Jun
4. Ninth Option for Financial Aid: Loans - 27 Jun
5. The Difference Between Scholarships and Fellowships - 26 Jun
6. Eigth Option for Financial Aid: U.S. Universities - 25 Jun
7. Seventh Option for Financial Aid: Ethnic Communities in the United States - 24 Jun
8. Sixth Option for Financial Aid: Private Organizations in the U.S. - 23 Jun
9. Fifth Option for Financial Aid: U.S. Government Programs - 22 Jun
10. Fourth Option for Financial Aid: Scholarships from International Organizations - 20 Jun
11. How to Ask for Support - 18 Jun
12. Looking for Support in Your Country: Why it Makes Sense - 17 Jun
13. Third Option for Financial Aid: Individuals in Your Country - 16 Jun
14. Second Option for Financial Aid: Private Businesses or Foundations in Your Country - 15 Jun
15. First Option for Financial Aid: Government Programs in Your Country - 14 Jun
16. The Third Step in Financial Aid: Find What's Available (This post)
17. The Second Step In Financial Aid: Identify Your Assets - 10 Jun
18. The First Step In Financial Aid: Identify Your Needs - 09 Jun
19. Finding Financial Aid for your U.S. Education - 08 Jun

The podcast for today asks what to do if your application to a university is rejected.  Hopefully you will not find a use for it!

As always, e-mail any podcast questions you may have 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 (This post)
4. Podcast - The View from Albania - 23 May
5. Podcast: University Rankings - 16 May
6. Podcast: Timeline for Applying to a U.S. University - 09 May
7. The Inaugural myUface Podcast - 02 May

In researching universities in the United States, you’re likely to look at some lists or information about how the university is “ranked” in comparison with other universities.  And you’ll probably want to go to a university that is ranked high on the list.  This is natural.  Everyone wants to go to the best university, and so when we read that University X is ranked #1, and University Y is ranked #100, we quite understandably would prefer to attend university X.

But is the ranking system accurate?  Is the #1 ranked university really the #1 best university?

The most famous and influential ranking is U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of U.S. institutions of higher education.  It ranks colleges and universities according to several different criteria, and it provides a simple list as a summary.  Here, for example, are the top-five ranked universities according to U.S. News and World Report:

1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. MIT
5. Stanford

Not everyone believes that these rankings  accurately reflect educational quality, however.  In this article, Amy Graham and Nicholas Thompson lay out what they view as problems with U.S. News and World Report’s methodology:

Unfortunately, the highly influential U.S. News & World Report annual guide to “America’s Best Colleges” pays scant attention to measures of learning or good educational practices, even as it neatly ranks colleges in long lists of the sort that Americans love. It could be a major part of the solution; instead, it’s a problem.

U.S. News’ rankings primarily register a school’s wealth, reputation, and the achievement of the high-school students it admits. At one time, most academics believed in one simple equation: Good students plus good faculty equals good school. The rankings reflect this outlook, tabulating things such as percent of faculty with a doctorate (to measure the quality of the professors) and SAT scores of the freshman class (to get at quality of the students). That’s like measuring the quality of a restaurant by calculating how much it paid for silverware and food: not completely useless, but pretty far from ideal.

You could also ask if it’s a good idea to rank a university as if it were a single unit:

[E]ach institution is nothing more than a collection of local chapters of international intellectual fraternities.  The quality of each chapter at each institution is more or less independent of the quality of any other chapter at the same institution, except to the extent that financial muscle can attract better quality across the board.

In other words, the quality of education is mostly dependent on individual professors and departments, which are not necessarily reflected in the rankings for their host institutions.

The individuals who do the rankings are well aware of the methodological difficulties, and even a well-known methodology like U.S. News and World Report’s is constantly refined.  The struggle to arrive at a comprehensive and fair set of criteria for ranking programs and institutions has led to the formation of various national and international associations, for example The International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence.

The bottom line is, remember that each ranking system has its own set of criteria, which may or may not apply to your own personal or professional goals.  So when you see that University X is #1,  that does not necessarily mean that University X is #1 for you.

The rankings that are most useful for you are going to be the ones you make yourself.

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings (This post)
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States - 10 May

So, you want to study at a university in the United States.  The only question is, Which one?

Because, as we’ve mentioned before, there are over 4,000 of them.

Now, for some people, the answer to this question is easy:  What university am I going to study at?  Well, obviously one of the good ones.  You know, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, those kinds of universities.

After all, you can go online to the U.S. News and World Report Rankings and get a tidy list of the best U.S. universities.  Easy, right?

For those that think choosing a university is as easy as downloading a list of rankings, we ask you to take this very short quiz:

Now, by posting this we don’t mean to suggest that universities like Harvard or Yale aren’t great universities – they are.  What we are suggesting is merely that different universities are going to have different strengths and weaknesses.  Hard as it may be to believe, the “best” universities aren’t the “best” at everything, and if you base your decision-making solely on the basis of a composite ranking, you may end up in a program that just simply isn’t right for you.

So for the next ten days, we’re going to be looking at other factors – besides rankings and test scores – that you should take into consideration when choosing a university.  We’re hardly going to talk about the traditional measures of what makes a university “good” at all.  Our hope is to get you to start thinking about all the different qualities a university possesses, and then identify which ones matter to you.

Posts in this Series

1. Conclusion - How to Choose a U.S. University - 02 Jun
2. Activities Around a University Campus - 01 Jun
3. Check Out U.S. Universities on iTunes U - 26 May
4. Extracurricular Activities - 25 May
5. Get to Know Your Potential Professors - 21 May
6. Don't Forget Your Life! - 20 May
7. What Do You Want to See in the U.S.? - 19 May
8. How Many International Students go to your Chosen University? - 18 May
9. The Problem with University Rankings - 17 May
10. Using Facebook to Research Universities - 14 May
11. Look at the Surrounding Neighborhoods When Looking at a U.S. University - 13 May
12. How Weather Should Factor Into Your Search for a U.S. University - 12 May
13. Looking for a University in the United States: Cost of Living - 11 May
14. Looking for a University in the United States (This post)

I’m happy to announce the release of our first myUface student guide,“The Advantages and Disadvantages of University Study in the United States.”

It’s a compilation of some of our early blog work about the advantages and disadvantages of study in the U.S.

Enjoy!

the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-university-study-in-the-united-states