<p>hi everybody, </p>
<p>a lot of international students go through a lot , take a lot of risks, downfalls etc..before seeing light at the end of the tunnel.</p>
<p>whats you're story?</p>
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whats you're story?
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<p>You mean 'What is your story?' :p</p>
<p>Whats yours? ;)</p>
<p>Uh.. i went from a paranoid 10th grader ("omg my curriculum isnt recognized overseas.. am i an auto reject?" "omg new sat! a new writing section?!" "omg i didnt know about ECs being recommended.. im gonna get rejected!" "no one knows anything about the new SAT in my country boo hoo" "OMGZZZ i needz to get into an ivy league!!"), to a more .. relaxed.. person.</p>
<p>Basically, when I started my whole US college process, my country was extremely unfamiliar with the system.. Now, it's a whole lot better, with SAT prep courses and lectures concerning US colleges and what not, but during my time (starting in 2003) I basically had to gather up all my research by myself, get SAT study tips from CC, .. actually, i got everything from CC.. haha.</p>
<p>I think this learning process has made me more mature, and wiser, as a person. Doing research on these things, made me realise that i couldnt depend on my parents or teachers for information.. and participating in so many ECs, grabbing every academic opportunity given (..which was.. pretty uh stimulating..) and doing so much community service helped me become more of a well rounded person, than my peers who just focused on studying.</p>
<p>And all the hard work paid off in the end.. As my whole admissions process came to an end, i got my acceptance/rejection/waitlist letters.. I was rejected at my dream school (JHU) but I didn't take it too hard and just looked ahead to the future (the biggest lesson I had learned from this process was this: stop sulking about the past and look ahead to the future.. if I didn't learn this, I wouldnt be where I am today lol).. i was waitlisted and later accepted at an ivy league, and got accepted by a lot of other great schools.. and now, I'll be attending CMU in the fall!</p>
<p>yay :)...............</p>
<p>w00t!!! go NoFX! :D</p>
<p>I don't have much of a story to tell. I didn't apply abroad, so I won't go to college outside the country (yet).</p>
<p>lol NotAmbidextrous. Are you trying to crack the "most posts per day" record or are you just really really bored today?</p>
<p>Well, my story sounds much like NoFX's, except that I started out as a paranoid 12th grader (high school goes through 13th grade here) and ended up at Bryn Mawr College.</p>
<p>lol. no I'm just really really bored :D</p>
<p>God this sounds like a while ago.. but yeah my story is pretty random!! I pretty much did everything you are NOT supposed to do!!</p>
<p>I decided to go the US around the middle of Grade 12 , i.e Senior year around August (yeah , I know its retardedly late), then due to registration being a pain in the ass for SAT's, SAT's 2, I gave them in october , november. My situation was so bad that I couldnt get a spot for toefl for like 3 months and had to fly down to a different part of the country to get in. Anywyas , after the standardized testing happened , I pretty much went thru the regular grind process , got my LOR's , Essays etc etc , I was one of the very few people applying from India that time (nowdays the application process has hit a new high , plus there is a lot more awareness about everything) , heck I was using dial-up to get my info! As far as our high school is concerned , we never had a counsellor or even someone remotely aware of the admission process.</p>
<p>The result was pretty suprising , I got into every place I applied , I managed to get into a couple of ivy's (Cornell , Columbia , Upenn) and a bunch of decent private colleges which gave no scholarship (CMU and the likes) and a bunch which threw a decent amount of money at me , in the end I settled for a state college, cuz thats all I could afford , and since I was all about "engineering" and psychology I really dint think I was missing out!! </p>
<p>Now after 4 years of hating engineering and loving psychology , I am moving on to grad school for mgmt. at Dartmouth !!! </p>
<p>Although the biggest lesson for me personally was realizing that the US admission process is not about the best candidates (at least when it comes to international students) , most of the selection is done on the basis of "diversity" , money and networking. I think internationals suffer far more (Especially in a place like India) where it is extremely hard to be diverse just because of our educational system. And yeah for the love of god , please start early on the process , the later you start the more screwed the process becomes!!</p>
<p>Well I was reasonably rich Indian at one point. Thanks to "Operation Shakti" and the subsequent embargoes my dad went bankrupt (he owned a corporation). So we immigrate to the US (the guys who "brought" us here basically screw us out of money by promising Green Card and paying $2 an HOUR!!!!). Anyways parents do menial jobs and barely make ends meet, I went to a sucky middle school (more than 60% of the school is BASIC IN MATH FOR THE MSAs) and get into a Top High School. My Dad is involved in an accident (no medical insurance btw) and family is thrust deeply into debt. So I started working (2 weeks before Freshmen year began) and continued till the first week of summer) ~25 hours. Since the High School is really competitive, even a .1 drop in GPA leads to great falls in the class rank and my GPA isn't about average (3.5, by the school's standards). Ya being International and Poor in the US and Indian is the ultimate anti-hook for college admissions!</p>
<p>End of the Part 1 ;)</p>
<p>Light at the end of the tunnel - in 3 years! :)</p>