In January 2008, British Council is hosting a conference for young people in Greenwich prior to the Word Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland (23 – 27 January).
60 young people, 16-19 years old, from 50 countries will gather in Greenwich to lay down challenges for the worlds’ leaders and take those challenges to Davos. Each one of them has decided that they cannot wait for the world’s leaders to solve the world’s problems. They are taking command of the future.

This is a time for committed action. This is a time for naming and being counted.

Are you able to stand up in front of the world’s leaders and tell them what you will hold them accountable to?

Read more here…

In January 2008, British Council is hosting a conference for young people in Greenwich prior to the Word Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland (23 – 27 January).

60 young people, 16-19 years old, from 50 countries will gather in Greenwich to lay down challenges for the worlds’ leaders and take those challenges to Davos. Each one of them has decided that they cannot wait for the world’s leaders to solve the world’s problems. They are taking command of the future.

This is a time for committed action. This is a time for naming and being counted.

Are you able to stand up in front of the world’s leaders and tell them what you will hold them accountable to?

If you are aged between 16-19, are assertive and articulate in English, and are not just committed to change but actively taking responsibility personally and not waiting for others to do something for you, you could be the one we send to Greenwich.

You may be working in a range of areas: in climate change, in anti-discrimination, you could be starting your own business, starting and leading a political or lobbying group, running your own media (online or traditional), an arts group for a minority section of the population, or others.

To take that first step towards Davos, complete the application form and email it to greenwich.forum@britishcouncil.org.my by 24 October 2007.

Applicants should meet the criteria above and be a Malaysian citizen to be eligible.

Shortlisted candidates will be called in to the British Council office in Kuala Lumpur for a 20 minute interview on 29 October 2007.

For further information, send them an email.

Acing the Standardized Test

by John Lee, Dartmouth ‘11

To apply to an American university, there is at least one exam you must take. Most requirements can be bended, but this one is nearly absolute – you must sit for the SAT Reasoning Test. (SAT used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but now does not stand for anything.)

The Reasoning Test is divided into three sections – critical reading, mathematics, and writing. Each section is graded on a scale from 200 to 800; the average score is supposed to be around 500, but in reality is a few dozen points higher. The highest total score you can obtain is 2400. A score of 600 or above for each section is good; a score of 700 or above is sufficiently excellent that you shouldn’t be worrying about whether you ought to retake the exam in hopes of a perfect 800.

The critical reading part used to be known as the verbal section. It has always been one of the most challenging aspects of the test – before the exam format was changed a few years ago, it was literally mandatory that you memorise lists of words in order to obtain a decent verbal score.

Fortunately this is no longer the case, but even then, scoring well is extremely difficult. This portion of the SAT examines your ability to read a passage of text and obtain information from it, as well as analyse its implications.

The mathematics section should be quite easy; much of it is literally form three mathematics. Doing well should not be too difficult for Malaysian students, although the way the exam is graded may heavily penalise those liable to making careless mistakes.

The writing section is new, having been added just in 2005. It tests your ability to write an essay defending an opinion on a particular issue, and also looks at how well you know your grammar. Be warned that this part of the exam can be frustrating at times; there are subtle differences between Commonwealth English (which Malaysians are taught) and American English.

Time is of the essence on the SAT; each section is split into subsections which must be completed within a certain amount of time. You cannot skip ahead if you finish one subsection early, nor can you return to a subsection whose time has run out.

The key to a good score on the SAT Reasoning Test can be summed up in three words: practice, practice, practice. Although private tuition for the exam is available in the US, it is all but impossible to find here. Fortunately, you shouldn’t need tuition to cope with the SAT. All you need is the discipline to practice for the test – time yourself and familiarise yourself with the style of the questions. There are a plethora of prep books out there for the SAT, both in local bookstores and on the internet – not to mention free practice tests you can take online.

To sit for the exam, you must register either online at www.collegeboard.com or with the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE). There are sittings in January, May, June, October, November and December of each year.

When we said that you must sit for the SAT, that was not totally correct – there is an alternative exam accepted by many (but not all!) universities in lieu of the SAT, called the American College Test (ACT). The ACT is divided into English, Mathematics, Reading, Science, and an optional Writing component.

One good thing about the ACT is that if your university requires a different kind of SAT besides the reasoning test – the SAT Subject Tests – it may be allowed to satisfy the requirement for a subject test. Since the ACT focuses more on grammar, and has a science component, Malaysians may find it easier than the SAT Reasoning Test.

Each component of the ACT is graded on a scale from 0 to 36; the average of the scores is taken for your overall score. It is only possible to obtain a perfect score if you make no mistakes; a perfect 800 on the SAT, however, can be attained without correctly answering every question.

There is another test some universities require for international students, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The test is easy, but very expensive. Some universities allow the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) offered by some Malaysian colleges to be used instead of the TOEFL. If you obtain a low score for your reading in the SAT Reasoning Test or the ACT, you may be able to offset it by doing well in the TOEFL.

Different universities have different testing requirements, so you should always double check on your university’s website and email them to make sure you have it right. Many will waive the TOEFL requirement if you just tell them you got a good score for reading on the SAT/ACT; some automatically waive it if you have been studying in an English-medium school for the past two years. Some universities may also have a preference for the SAT Reasoning Test over the ACT, or vice-versa; it is always a good idea to check with them.

If your initial score for any of these tests is not too good, you can retake the exam again. However, be warned that for the SAT your earlier scores will still show up when your scores are submitted to the universities you apply to. Although they will not discriminate on the basis of a bad earlier score, it will probably reflect badly on you if you sit for the test more than three times – it will make the admissions committee wonder if you have nothing better to do with your time than sit for exams.

Whatever your score actually is, don’t let it get you down (or puff you up). Academic studies have failed to find a conclusive and significant link between test scores and your performance in university (to say nothing of the rest of your life). What’s important is the education you get, and not the score you get on a test. All the best with your SAT/ACT/TOEFL prep!

John Lee is a freshman at Dartmouth College, class of 2011. He enjoys writing observations on Malaysia & the world at his website,

http:// www.infernalramblings.com

A STUDENT-ATHLETE LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES

by Tan Yee Hu, Northwood University ‘08

So, you want to play collegiate sports in the US huh?

You are making the right choice! If you have the passion for sports and are determined to go pro, the States is definitely the right place for you. I’m not saying that Malaysia is a bad place for sports; I just feel that there are more opportunities in the US to sharpen your skills. For example, many colleges have their own collegiate sports program, there’s a higher competition level in general, and there are well known sports academies such as the IMG Academy in the U.S.

This article is about my post high school journey - applying to colleges as an athlete - and my experience as a collegiate golfer.

A Brief Background

I started playing golf when I was 12 and fell in love with the game instantly. I attended a junior academy at Seri Selangor Golf Club and trained there for almost 4 years. When I was 16, I qualified to be a part of the National Team through National Trials, hosted by the Malaysian Golf Association (MGA) and represented Malaysia for a year. While I was on the team, I felt that my skills were not improving. I talked to my parents about it, and they suggested that I aim to play golf in the US. The idea sounded impossible. The United States of America?

I left for the U.S. when I was 17, right after my SPM examinations. I’m very grateful to my parents for inspiring me and supporting me to achieve my goal. Currently, I am currently having the time of my life here but most importantly, I’m also receiving a great education and learning from best golf coaches in the country.

Where it All Started

I started writing to college golf coaches at the beginning of Form 5. I used the “Ping College Golf Guide” book to get information about all the colleges in America that offered golf programs. I wrote to hundreds of coaches, primarily focusing on schools in Florida and community colleges in general (community colleges are schools that offer an Associate in Arts Degree, basically equivalent to the first 2 of the usual 4-year university stint. Students have the option of transferring to a 4-year college after completing their 2 years at a community college).

I was fortunate enough to be offered golf scholarships from a few colleges such as Johnson & Wales University-Florida, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College (MGCCC), and Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Michigan.

Choosing the Right School

Despite the numerous golf scholarships that were offered to me, I chose Brevard Community College (BCC), Florida which did not offer me a scholarship. I did, however, manage to obtain financial aid for my sophomore year. BCC was the first school that sent me a reply, and suggested that I visit them. So my parents planned a trip to both BCC and MGCCC. My mom went to college in the States as well, and she thought that a community college would be better for me as classes would be easier compared to four-year colleges. Since I would be busy settling down, trying to fit in and committing to the golf team for the first couple of years, the last thing I wanted to be worried about was failing my classes.

I wanted to go to MGCCC because the coach offered me a golf scholarship, but my parents decided to send me to BCC instead because they liked the coach there, Jamie Howell. He came across as both experienced and responsible. When I look back, I’m thankful we made that choice. Coach Howell was like a guardian angel to me; helping me out in almost everything from accommodation to roommates, transportation, and academics. He understood that, for an international student struggling to fit into the American culture, the first few months in the States would be the hardest.

This is a good example of choosing the right school. I graduated from BCC and transferred to Northwood University (NU) with a golf scholarship to pursue my bachelors degree. However, NU academics turned out to be much harder for me. I struggled my way through my first semester as I had to find accommodation and roommates by myself in addition to spending time on golf and attending classes. Besides that, the teachers here were stricter and their teaching and testing methods were very different than that of BCC. If I were to have attended NU for my freshman and sophomore year, I do not think I would have enjoyed myself as much as I did at BCC and my game would have deteriorated.

Experience as a College Golfer

A college golfer’s life is tough, at least during the golfing season. Think about the 6 am workouts, classes from 8 am to 12 pm, practice sessions in the afternoons till the sunset. All these activities were critical in improving the standard of my game to make the travel team. I did not really have time for fun - I barely even had enough time for my studies! And the worst part was that I had to maintain good grades to be eligible to play for the team. Besides that, traveling for tournaments required me to miss classes. College professors don’t typically care about your attendance in class, so it was my job to find out what I missed out and what assignments needed to be done. Sometimes, I even had to miss quizzes that the professors give for extra credit. However, I was passionate enough to continue with golf, and I also feel that all these struggles have helped make me a better person. Furthermore, I have learned valuable time-management skills, self-discipline and independence. My hard work has definitely paid off.

Here’s a rough daily schedule for my life during the golf season (Monday-Friday):

6 am-7 am: Work Outs

8 am-12 pm: Classes

12 pm-2pm: Lunch Break

2 pm-7 pm: Golf practice/Qualifying

8 pm-9 pm: Dinner Break

9 pm-11 pm: Study/Homework

Weekends are my rest days. I would usually just relax at home and watch TV. Otherwise, I will be traveling with the team for tournaments. Tournaments are usually Mondays and Tuesdays. Saturdays are for traveling and Sundays are for practice rounds.

Application and Scholarship

I started approaching coaches in the US while in Form 5 because I wanted to launch my college career as soon as possible. I wrote many letters to them. My letters included my intentions, my resume, and my golfing records. After choosing the right golf team, I started applying to get into the college. I filled out the application form online, found out the requirement of the TOEFL and SAT from BCC and worked towards that. In my sophomore year, I applied for an academic scholarship through BCC foundation and was lucky enough to be awarded almost $7200. The tuition fee was about $8000 a year. Then, a few months before I graduated from BCC, I started the whole procedure again to transfer to a 4 year college to continue my education and my golf career. Of course, it was much easier this time with the help of Coach Howell, and I finally decided to transfer to NU on a golf scholarship.

In Conclusion

College coaches recruit golfers mostly from high schools and tournaments in America. International students are rarely recognized by them. So, in order to make the coaches aware about your existence, write to them early and keep them updated about your golf results wherever and whenever you are playing.

Choosing the right school is also very important. Make sure the school has the major that you want and the competition level is enough for you to feel competitive. If the competition level of the team is too high for you, you will not be able to make the travel team and you will be discouraged and ready to quit. On the other hand, if the competition level of the team is too low for you, you will not be pressured, and your game will never improve.

I think I made the right choice in attending Northwood University: Northwood offers my intended major, International Business, and the competition level is perfect for me as I make the travel team every tournament. Furthermore, the West Palm Beach weather is perfect for golfers, even in the winter.

Athletes, I hope my experiences will help you in your decision making. I wish you the best of luck in your college and athletic career.

Tan Yee Hu, a former DJian(Eng Han: woot!), is a rising senior at Northwood University, Florida.

Fishpond: A Big Fish in a Great Pond

By Khoo Teng Jian, Williams College ‘09

When being interviewed for a scholarship to attend an international school and study for the International Baccalaureate Diploma, I was asked about whether or not I envisioned myself as a big fish in a small pond. Having been at Williams College for two years now, I can find no more apt metaphor for the environment in which I find myself.

The two ways in which I see this picture applying are opportunity and intimacy. If you have been through the Malaysian school system, you may be well acquainted with anonymity. You are nobody until you win a few prizes, hold several positions in several co-curricular activities and have a bunch of badges for the various boards in your school. Those 500+ of us admitted to Williams in 2005 knew we had names from the day we received our admittance letters. The admissions officers, in our first few online conversations, demonstrated intimate knowledge of each of us, even the international students. The Junior Advisors, our surrogate parents in this home away from home, took pains to pin photos on a map of the US marking the 20 hometowns of my entrymates (those living around me in my dorm), and had even pasted a map of Malaysia and Penang up for me. The professors knew the 20-40 students taking their classes in days, and invited us to their offices to discuss homework or life plans or nothing at all, and by mid-semester, to their houses for Thanksgiving dinner. One might say that we had already made names for ourselves upon being admitted to Williams. I think the real (and happier) reason is this: the people here simply care about you.

What does a fish my size (177.5cm, 54kg) do in this pond of 2000 students? This summer, I’m working on theoretical particle physics, smashing protons together at the speed of light, albeit only in simulation on a dual-core G5. In my 2 years here, I have learned snowboarding and skiing, learned how to teleport a quantum state from one of the men who proved it was possible, constructed a new language, performed with six musical ensembles, two of which are symphony orchestras and one of which I will conduct next year. For classes, I have read Descartes and Kant on how we can know what we do, Mao Zedong on the necessity of Communist revolution in China and Richard Feynman on the importance of mathematics to Physics. Next year, my friends, who hail from Rochester, Zimbabwe, Nepal and Taiwan are spending half or all of their junior years in such places as Alexandria, Florence, Paris, Ireland and Oxford.

Few universities offer as immersive and engaging an educational experience as the US liberal arts colleges. Still fewer offer students such a plethora of opportunities and absolutely none treat students as individuals in the same way. Take the plunge and see how much of the pond you can fill.

Khoo Teng Jian, Williams ‘09, is an alumnus of Penang Free School and International School of Penang (Uplands). A Physics major, he plays the violin and fences for Williams College in his free time. He blogs at http://khooltengman.blogspot.com/

American Application Timeline

by Khing Ju Li, Brown University ´11

Approximately 12 – 18 months before the enrolment date, decide on which university you want to apply to. A number of ways can be employed to discover this, including the Fiske Guide to Colleges, or simply going to the university website and emailing the admissions officer for more information. Consider size, location, available majors, activities and diversity of the college community.

If you are in need of a financial assistance to pay your way through university, check out the amount of financial aid available for international students. Remember that not all colleges offer financial aid to international students. To access such information, check out www.collegeboard.com , which offers general information about universities in the United States.

Once you have decided on a university, start preparing by jotting down the necessary deadlines. Also, register for standardized tests like TOEFL, SAT or ACT so that you are able to send the results of those tests in time for the university deadlines. Depending on your SPM English grade, or college grade, you may or may not have to take the TOEFL, but it is perfectly alright to contact the university admissions officer to make sure.

Among the SATs and ACT, SAT is the more popular choice among Malaysians. There are two types of SAT: SAT I and SAT II. While SAT I is usually required, SAT II is less so, unless specified otherwise in the university website or brochure. Tests are offered about 7 times a year but there might be a rush during the peak season, so register early! Advance planning would also be required because SAT I and II have to be taken on separate tests dates.

August
Contact the university for the necessary application forms and financial aid forms, if needed. For most universities, candidates may choose to either apply by mail or online. Writing application essays for US universities is a tedious process, as there can be one to three separate essays for each college you apply to. This is one of the most important parts of your application and you should not leave it till the last minute.

At the same time, request an official transcript from your school that has records for at least the last 4 years of your schooling. In most cases, you would probably have to submit both your secondary school report card and college transcript to fulfill this requirement. Ask for teacher recommendations as well. Again, the number of teacher recommendations needed depends on the university, although most universities request for two teachers from different fields of teaching, i.e. Language, Science, Math, Humanities, etc.

It is especially important to get this done as soon as possible in order to prevent taking up extra time during major events such as final SPM/STPM examinations. Doing it earlier will also increase your chances at getting good recommendations.

September - January

Send transcripts and check that the teacher references have been sent. Submit completed application forms and financial aid forms as well, if needed. Take and send results of the necessary standardized tests to the university. For early admission applicants, completed forms, documents and tests have to be sent in November. Deadlines for regular admission applicants are in late December and early January.

April – June
Notification of admissions decision by university will arrive by mail and/or email. Make a decision on which university to choose, and then notify your decision to the admissions office. Complete or return any necessary forms. Set your finances in order so as to make sure you have enough money for traveling and living in the United States. Transfer the required funds to a bank in the US, and confirm accommodation and insurance arrangements with your university.

June – August
Follow instructions on your Form I – 20 or DS – 2019 to complete the SEVIS Form I – 901, then pay the SEVIS fee of $100. After obtaining the receipt of the payment, apply to the US embassy for a visa as soon as possible. Make travel arrangements,
and contact your university’s International Student Office with details of your arrival plans, in addition to confirming any details regarding orientation of new students at the university.

Based on http://educationusa.state.gov/undergrad/admissions/process.htm

Ju Li is a recent alumna of LPC United World College in HK. She is currently a freshman in Brown University.

Application Essays, Recommendation Letters

By Elizabeth Wong, Yale University ’08, John Lee, Dartmouth ´11 and Chua Ke Lun, Anglo-Chinese Junior College

Unlike the examination results you have to submit, application essays and recommendation letters are meant to reveal what makes you tick as an individual, not just as an academic student. Your essays should complement the rest of your application, giving it a human touch - the final, finishing touch to the application, like icing on a cake. Unless it’s extraordinarily bad or good, the icing doesn’t radically change your view of the whole cake.

Advice for writing the essay? Start thinking very early on (months in advance), about why You are special, what You can contribute to the institution, and why You are good enough for it. Ponder it for a month or so, and by that time, You should have a couple of ideas already. Write your first draft. Put it away for a month and do something else. Then look at it again after a month. Open up a new Word document, and rewrite the whole thing (constantly referring to the first draft while you are at it). Repeat process as many times as time permits. Before you submit it, make sure you get at least one person other than yourself to read it.

Recommendation letters should be written by someone who has known you well from an academic perspective – someone who would be comfortable recommending you to the institution you are applying to. It would be an added bonus if he or she can write well and has experience writing such recommendation letters. Since the purpose is to present as many facets of your personality as possible, try to obtain recommendations from a range of people, i.e. not just your science teachers.

You can help your teacher by providing as much relevant information as possible, e.g. your academic results, cocurricular involvements, and personal interests. The letter should demonstrate your teacher’s credibility and understanding of the student while providing specific examples of your qualities based on your academic or co-curricular activities.
General phrases such as “John is a hardworking student” should be avoided in favour of specifics like “John prepares his coursework on time”. Because both are so similar, there are general tips applicable to both essays and recommendations. When writing, don’t use clichés; focus on showing instead of telling, as in the previous example. Refrain from regurgitating lists of activities and grades already submitted in your application; you’re supposed to be showcasing your human side. Recognise that there are many ways to write your essays and prepare a recommendation; you should search the internet for better or more creative ideas. Self-initiative is your best friend.

Lastly, remember to thank your teachers for putting in an effort in preparing your recommendation letters, and anyone who may have helped proofread your essay. It’s always nice to have your efforts appreciated.

Chua Ke Lun is a recent ASEAN scholar from Anglo-Chinese Junior College in Singapore, John Lee is a freshman at Dartmouth College and Elizabeth Wong is a rising junior at Yale University.

Late Sunset

by Wong Chin Lin , Brown University ‘07, Harvard grad student

The sun setting at 8.30 pm can really mess with your time sense. At home in KL, I was used to eating dinner at 7.00 pm, and having the sky slowly darken into night. By the time the dishes were done, it was 8.00 pm and pitch black outside. But summer in northeast United States, I found, gives an impression of a never-ending day, and a very short night.

It was the second summer I spent at Brown, doing research for my senior thesis. Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island, about an hour south of Boston and in the smallest state in the United States. Someone told me that it was so small that you could easily walk from end to end. That person was obviously not from Rhode Island, as I discovered one Saturday afternoon. I stepped into a bus to go to an Asian grocery store but ended up with an impromptu bus tour of Rhode Island. We wound round twisting roads that cut through sparse forests and led in and out of small picturesque New England towns before ending up at Narragansett Beach an hour and a half later. No sign of any Asian foodstuff, but plenty of sand and sea.

I once called a travel agency somewhere in PJ and told them I wanted to book a flight to the US. Which state did I want to go to? Rhode Island. But she couldn’t find an airport there, the travel agent exclaimed. Was I sure that there was an airport there? Yes, I was sure, I’ve actually flown into the airport. The airport code is PVD, if that helps. Oh, she said, she found it! It’s in Providence! Not on Rhode Island. The island was probably too small to have an airport. I paused, but didn’t enlighten her. Rhode Island is like Penang. There is an actual island, and that’s where Newport (home of the filthy rich, where JFK married his wife, and where you can actually see Long Island from) is situated. However, there was a substantial part of Rhode Island that was actually part of the North American continent. Providence, the capital, is on the mainland.

As I wasn’t taking summer classes, I had been thrown out of the dorms and was living in a rather grayish house just two blocks away from the physics building. It was the shabbiest looking building located on a street with large houses and well-kept lawns. Our lawn was non-existent, and the paint was peeling, but it was spacious and affordable. I would get out of the cosmology lab I worked in around 5.30 pm, and enjoy the walk back to my apartment, admiring the flowers among the green lawns, drinking in the sun. My friends would get back around the same time I did, and we would laugh and talk while preparing dinner.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough of a lawn to be able to eat outside, but we could and did enjoy having the sunlight stream into our kitchen while having dinner. Unlike at home, where it would have been dark as soon as dinner was over, at Brown, it would still be exceedingly bright outside. We would be fooled by the light into thinking that the day was not over, and sit around the table after dinner discussing people, lifestyles, food, clothes and everything else. It would be late when we finally notice that the skies outside were dark, and that it was night, and we should perhaps be doing our work or preparing for the next day.

I would take a shower, and do some reading, but all of a sudden, it would be midnight. Summer nights are too short, but I loved the long summer days that slows time down and lulls you into thinking that you have all the time in the world. So stop, smell the flowers and enjoy the sun.

Wong Chin Lin is a recent alumna of Brown University and is a current grad student at Harvard. She wishes that summer were forever.

The Common Application

By Benjamin Lo, Dartmouth College ‘09

Congratulations! You’ve now decided to embark on the grand journey of applying for an American university. The glamour, the excitement, having more seasons than wet season and wetter season; all these and more await you!

But first, there’s a significant downside – You have to apply.

Let’s start with a few clarifications about the application process.

1. American applications are uncommonly long and complicated.

2. They are also almost exclusively tailored for those who have had American-style educations.

3. Much of this tedium is removed by the Common Application, which sends the same application to all the colleges you want to go to.

4. However, not all colleges use the Common App, and even then, colleges included in the Common App always require additional, supplementary forms to be submitted.

The Common App (www.commonapp.org) consists of several forms, namely the main Common Application, a Mid-year Report, a School Report, 2 Teacher Evaluations and various supplementary forms. In this article, what I hope to do is explain how to fill out everything in the main Common Application (except for the essays, unfortunately those can’t be filled out quite so easily), the Mid-year Report and the School Report. This information is based on the print version of the Common App; the online version will be up and available sometime later this year.

Common Application Form:

The first thing that you need to fill out when completing the Common Application is the ED/EA/REA section. Remember, you need to make multiple copies of your paper application (non-applicable if you are using the online forms) and send one copy to each college. If you decide to apply ED, EA or REA to College X, indicate so on the top of one form and send them only that form.

Personal Data:

Most of this stuff is self-explanatory. The main problem might arise in how you choose to have your name represented. If you have a Chinese name like Ng Eng Han, place the surname “Ng” as the last name, and Eng Han as the first. Your final college name will then be Eng Han Ng. However, if you have a trickier name like Benjamin Lo Hien Pin, then generally what works is having “Lo” as your last name, “Benjamin” as your first, and put down “Hien Pin” or “Hien-Pin” as your middle name. Now you can be Benjamin H. Lo.

Also in this section: It is not necessary to select possible areas of academic concentration. Some confusion may occasionally arise regarding the American college system. Unlike the UK, you do not need to pre-select courses before you go in, and the success of your application is certainly not determined by what course you pick, since there are no fixed spaces for whichever major you decide to do in the future. Likewise for “Possible career or professional plans.” So go ahead – pick undecided if that’s what you are. That being said, selecting an interesting academic concentration or possible career may play well into your essays when you write about your interests and passions.

There is a loaded question close to the end of this section: Will you be a candidate for financial aid? Remember, while most colleges in the US are need-blind, very few are actually need-blind for international students. Should you apply for financial aid at a need-aware college, your admission will depend partly on whether they can afford to give you financial aid.

Educational Data:

When filling out the “secondary school” section, I was usually torn between putting down secondary school information and pre-university information. This situation rarely arises for students studying in American systems, since most of them apply directly after our equivalent of Form 5. However, for those of us who did various pre-university programs such as A-Levels, STPM or IB, it becomes a bit more complicated. If you are enrolled or were previously enrolled in a Pre-U program, fill that out as your secondary school. Your “original” secondary school will later be filled out in the School Report, while your Pre-U program can be represented in the Mid-Year report.

Most schools in Malaysia should not have a CEEB/ACT code, though interestingly enough, some Singaporean junior colleges do. Leave this blank if you don’t know what it is.

As for your school counselor, we have to face the fact that school counselors in Malaysia are generally less involved than the ones in America. I would suggest that if you’ve never seen your school counselor in your life and you aren’t confident about his/her ability to fully represent you as a student, then consider approaching a favorite teacher and asking them to act as a counselor on your behalf. Again, make a note to explain why this replacement is necessary: there’s no reason to be ashamed of our terrible education system.

Finally, if you attended a peculiar program like the Singapore A-Levels, which puts you in the relaxing position of graduating in November and hence having nothing to do when applying, check “Not currently attending school” and remember to make a note of it in additional information.

Test Information:

You should have this all covered. However, if you have more than 2 SAT II subjects, pick the highest ones and find some way to mention the rest later on.

Family:

Again, pretty much self-explanatory. Use the same naming system as before.

Extracurricular, Personal and Volunteer Activities:

This is the big one. When looking at either the online or print form, one gets a sinking sense of despair with the miniscule amount of space allotted for this section. To rectify this horrifying shortage of space, first select your top 5 activities in both pre-university and secondary school. What criteria should you use to select activities? Generally, choose more recent ones. So it may be advisable to pick Public Speaking in Form 4 and 5, rather than Story-Telling in Form 1. Pick activities that you have participated in for extended periods of time, such as Red Crescent from Form 1 to Form 5. Naturally, pick activities that have “oomph” (you define oomph yourself) and prioritize activities where you have held clear leadership roles and can talk about significant contributions. Fill out all the necessary boxes and columns on the forms.

Next, prepare a table that you will attach as a supplementary document. This table should contain all the columns that the Activity section of the Common App has, but with one crucial addition: A “Description” column. If you want, you could add a few more activities on this sheet, if there are some that you couldn’t bear to leave out entirely. Keep the list of activities short and limit your descriptions to 2 or 3 sentences; admissions officials are pressed for time. The descriptions of your activities will go a long way towards imprinting your achievements on readers as well as improving their understanding of how you spent your years.

Academic Honors:

Briefly fill out this section with a list of the Academic Honors you may have received, for example book prizes in school, New South Wales International Competitions, Kuiz Sains Nasional and so on. Indicate that you have a separate sheet attached, and again prepare a table with the relevant columns, not forgetting the descriptions. Remember, American admissions officials will most likely have no experience with local competitions and may thus need some guidance in recognizing the true value of what you’ve achieved.

Personal Essay:

This, unfortunately, will take significantly more time and resources than any other part of the Common App. For advice on this section, wait for the next issue of this newsletter!

The School Report

This will be the form you use to detail your secondary school life. Something to note, though: Given that school counselors vary in quality and involvement, if you have another school official that knows you better, have him/her fill out this form instead. The moral of this story is: It might be a good idea to be nice to the Pengetua or Penolong Kanan.

Current Year Courses:

Fill out all the subjects you took in SPM or its equivalent and include the grade received next to it. Again, make a note to yourself to explain (in a supplementary letter) these subjects and grades. Don’t forget to add a certified photocopy of your results!

Waiver:

You should waive your right to see this report: Generally, its seen as the more responsible thing to do.

Counselor Section:

If your selected “counselor” has had little or no experience with the American system, fear not. Before he/she fills out this section, make sure you do all the groundwork. Arrange meetings between your counselor and subject teachers so that he/she can listen to them vouch enthusiastically for your shining brilliance and remarkable genius. Consult your principal regarding class ranks on how it should be filled out, if your school does not release official ranks. GPA is also rarely used in secondary schools, and as such you may elect to leave it blank, or fill out letter grades instead.

Malaysian public schools usually do not take classes on a block schedule, and don’t offer AP classes. However, in filling out his/her evaluation of your course selection, a good criterion to use may be the number of SPM subjects taken, as well as the subjects themselves. Much as I hate to endorse the grade-chasing nature of SPM, this might still be the simplest quantitative calculation of course difficulty.

Ultimately, this entire section has to be discussed with your counselor, various school teachers and school officials. Unless your counselor has had plenty of experience filling out such forms and knows exactly what to do, make sure that you explain how each section should be filled out and what should be taken into consideration. Finally, ensure that all these changes are noted down and explained in a supplementary letter, so that admissions readers understand why you could not follow the template exactly, as well as what criteria were used in determining these statistics. In fact, it would be even better if your school could produce and sign that explanatory letter themselves.

Ratings:

Again, self-explanatory. The key thing to note here is the discrepancy between international ratings and American-system ratings. Typical Asian reticence tends to raise the bar for “outstanding” and “one of the top few” as compared to Western teachers (though I may be generalizing). In theory, admissions readers are supposed to account for this bias towards understatement, but in practice this may not always be the case.

Evaluation:

Read the articles on Teacher Evaluations for a handle on what a good evaluation should cover.

Mid Year Report

The Mid-Year report has the exact same format as the School Report. However, for our purposes, we’re going to use it to detail Pre-University education. Thus, you may need to contact a different set of teachers and school officials to fill out this form, as well as liaise and explain the various intricacies of the form like you did in the School Report. Remember to state in the explanatory letter what you picked for each report and why you had to separate your secondary and pre-university education into two different reports.

Additional Stuff?

By now, you’ve probably realized that every time any confusion arises, I’ve mentioned a supplementary/explanatory letter. Sadly, it’s true. The Common App forms are at best, a rough fit to the international student experience. While admissions readers are supposed to be well-versed in the various systems, it never hurts to explain (briefly though!) what’s different about your system and how you’ve attempted to characterize and account for these differences in your application. To summarize quickly, the key differences you might look out for are: Educational Data in the Common App form, Course Selection, SPM or equivalent grades (America does not have national tests aside from the SATs), Class Ranks and GPA. Fill these out with the closest approximation you can find, explain them clearly and all should be well.

Keep in mind that several US colleges have a unique application supplement for the international student. If they do, it should be displayed in the “International Student” portion of their website under “Applying to XYZ College”. This usually makes it much easier for you to report your grades and school system, because you won’t have to change your SPM A1 into a US grade.

The most important thing you should remember is, when in doubt, email an admissions officer. Most colleges will have admissions officer specially in charge of international students, and they will be most happy to help you with your logistical or technical difficulty. Do not think that by asking questions you will be messing up your chance of admission into the college. Much the contrary, sometimes simple technical mistakes will nullify your whole application. So, please, please do not hesitate to email the college in question if you have questions about something.

The common application is a necessary evil, but for international students it usually comes across as more evil than necessary. However, keep in mind that it is a doable process and that many seniors have gone through it and come out on the other side. I do hope that this article has made the common application easier for you to navigate.

Transfer, transfer! Not twinning-lah

By Chuah Shu Guan, Wichita State University ‘07

Dear Readers,

I am confident that by now, you will have familiarized yourself with the various routes leading to the American education system. Let us now move on to a much misunderstood route known as the American Degree Program (ADP). First of all, to clarify one important point — the ADP is not a twinning program, as popularly referred to by most people. It is, to be exact, a credit transfer program. Allow me to explain. A twinning program functions in such a fashion: you either complete one or two years locally, and complete the remaining years in one of the designated partner universities. In a credit transfer program, however, you complete a certain number of credit hours (a.k.a subjects) in a local college that hosts an ADP program, and finish the remaining credit hours in a partner university of your choosing. This translates into a number of benefits for the college student in terms of flexibility when it comes to transferring to overseas universities.

Now with the aforementioned background information in mind, let me explain to you in detail how the ADP works for those of you who have considered this as an option for tertiary education. When you enroll in the ADP, you will be required to take major subjects and non-major subjects. Let us say you are majoring in business, and 128 credit hours (approx. 42 subjects) are required to obtain your Bachelor’s in Business Administration. What a typical student usually does is that he or she would complete about 60 credit hours in a local college, and finish the rest (68 credit hours) in a US university of his or her choosing. In some cases, it is even possible to do 90 credit hours in a local college and finish the remaining hours in the US.To cite a personal example, I was able to transfer 98 credit hours to Wichita State University, and spend one more year to complete another 30 credit hours before I obtained my business degree.

Seemingly simple and straightforward so far? Good. Here’s the catch: the ADP is not as simple as it seems. The flexibility that you get comes at a price: it comes with various options, and various options bring forth various complexities. My immediate task at hand is to reveal to you the intricacies of the ADP, now that I have been equipped with hindsight, having gone through the ADP myself.

Firstly, the ADP offers you the option to transfer to various universities in the USA. However, different universities will have different credit transfer policies. In general, most subjects are equally transferable to most universities, but there are some minor exceptions, and this is what you need to remember when picking your courses in ADP, so that you don’t feel dissatisfied or cheated when you discover a subject you have taken is not transferable. This is due to the fact that different universities in the US are regulated not by the central government in Washington DC, but that education is a policy matter left to state governments. This means that subject transferability varies from university to university in different states.

Now that you are aware of this minor caveat in ADP, you can proceed to tackle the problem in the following fashion: have a basic idea of which possible universities you might want to transfer to, and make an appointment with your academic advisor and ask for a list of transferable subjects to the respective universities that you are interested in. Some universities in fact post on their own websites a list of transferable subjects from the various colleges in Malaysia. Wichita State University for example, has such a list on their website. If you have no idea which university you want to attend yet, which is usually the case, your advisor will usually help you choose the subjects that have a high degree of transferability. When in doubt, ask!

Furthermore, the lower level subjects (100- and 200-level) are usually easily transferable. In some cases, 300-level subjects are also transferable, dependent upon the university’s transfer policies. However, I’m confident that by the time you are ready to take 300-level subjects, you should already have an idea of where you want to transfer to, and thus you can start choosing your subjects based on your top-choice university. For a general frame of reference, most people successfully transfer around 90% to 100% of their subjects.

Also be wary of the fact that the subjects you take is dependent upon the major which you choose. That is why it is important to have an idea of what you probably would want to major in before you enter ADP. The wonder of ADP is that, if you decided to switch from an engineering major to a business major, the engineering subjects that you have taken can be considered as non-major subjects which contribute towards your business major degree. However, the later your switch your major, the higher the risk of your subjects becoming wasted, as there are only so many non-major subjects that you need to take to fulfill your degree requirements. But still, keep in mind this pointer, so that you will be wiser in your decision making process.

Now that you have understood the insider details regarding transferring subjects, let us move on to the universities that are available in the US. The wonder of the ADP is that you have a lot of universities to choose from – at least a hundred universities throughout the US. However, the more popular transfer choices, based on where most of my friends have gone, are as follows: Ohio State University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Iowa State University, Drake University, Wichita State University, Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, SUNY Buffalo, Purdue University, University of Indiana, IUPUI, Embry-Riddle University, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech University, Fresno State University, Michigan State University, California State University in Fullerton, San Jose State University, University of Minneapolis, University of Hawaii-Manoa… the list goes on, but these universities would be good starting points for you to look at.

Some of you may notice that the above list of universities do not sound familiar to your ears, and that is fine. Most of them aren’t the famous universities that you hear about being publicized in magazines or advertisements or other forms of mass media, eg. Stanford University, University of Chicago, MIT, Yale University, Harvard University… But this is the general reaction that I have obtained from my professors in Wichita State University – the curriculum in these different universities are generally the same, the things that differ are the facilities, students, teachers, learning environment, and other factors. Bear in mind that although you might get better professors in those universities, you pay more for those professors as well. Is the extra money spent for better professors worth it? That is a decision that you students and parents have to make. Furthermore, another aspect to bear in mind is with regards to the professors themselves: the professors might be well educated, but is their focus on educating undergraduates, or is their focus on their personal research? That is another aspect that you should find out before picking a university just based on the fact that the professors there are highly acclaimed. You must ask the question: What are they acclaimed for? Excellent teaching skills? Or excellent research skills?

Recently I received an email from a concerned parent regarding the quality and quantity of subjects that are offered in ADP courses in Malaysia. I am sure that most of you aspiring ADPians are concerned about this issue as well. Well, to be frank, the colleges in Malaysia definitely do not offer as many subjects as the universities in the US, plainly because the student population in Malaysian colleges is much smaller in comparison to US universities. Quality wise, I cannot say for sure, as I have not had the chance to compare a Sociology 101 course in Malaysia to a Sociology 101 course in the US. However, common sense would probably dictate to us that since almost all the professors in US universities have obtained Ph.D.s, whereas most lecturers in Malaysian colleges have only a Bachelor’s or a Master’s Degree, the professors teaching in US universities would probably be better equipped in terms of teaching methodology and thought-flow processes. This is my (educated) guess.

If the US is the education destination that you desire, then I hope the insights provided will help you manage your tertiary education better. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at shogun_clancyfan at yahoo dot com.