What I did at 18 US universities
Hello. My name is Daniel, and in this article I want to share with you my history of entering the undergraduate 18 US universities. There are a lot of stories on the Internet about how you can study in a magistracy or graduate school for free, but few people know that bachelor students also have the opportunity to receive full funding. Despite the fact that the events described here took place a long time ago, most of the information is relevant to this day.
The main purpose of writing this article was not to provide a full-fledged guide to entering one of the best universities in the world, but to share our own experience with all the discoveries, impressions, experiences and other not very useful things. Nevertheless, I tried to describe in as much detail as possible every step that anyone who decides to choose this difficult and risky path will have to face. It turned out quite a lot and meaningful, so stock up on tea in advance and sit back - my year-long story begins.
December 2016
Day three
It was a typical winter morning in India. The sun had not yet really managed to rise above the horizon, and I and a bunch of people with the same type of backpacks were already loading on buses at the exit from the National Institute of Science, Education and Research (NISER). Here, near the city of Bhubaneswar in the state of Orissa, the 10th International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics was held.
We walked the third day without the Internet and gadgets. According to the rules of the competition, it was forbidden to use them for all ten days of the Olympiad in order to avoid the leakage of tasks from the organizers. However, almost no one felt this shortage on themselves: we were entertained in every way with events and excursions, one of which we all were headed together now.
There were a lot of people, and they came from all over the planet. When we looked at another Buddhist monument ( Dhauli Shanti Stupa ), built long ago by King Ashoka, Mexicans Geraldine and Valeria approached me, who collected the phrase âI love youâ in all possible languages ââin a notebook (at that time it was already about twenty) . I decided to do my part and wrote our âI love youâ along with a transcription that Valeria immediately uttered with a funny Spanish accent.
âI didnât think so the first time I heard these words from a girl,â I thought, laughed, and returned to the tour.
The December International Olympiad looked more like a protracted prank: all the members of our team studied for several months as programmers, were puzzled by the upcoming session and generally forgot astronomy. As a rule, such events take place in the summer, but because of the annual rainy season, it was decided to postpone the competition to the beginning of winter.
The first round began only tomorrow, but almost all the teams were here from the very first day. All but one - Ukraine. Ian (my teammate), as representatives of the CIS, were most concerned about their fate and therefore immediately noticed a new face among the crowd of participants. The Ukrainian team turned out to be a girl named Anya - the rest of her teammates could not get due to the sudden transfer of the flight, and they could not or did not want to spend even more money. Having captured her and the Pole with us, we together went in search of the guitar. At that moment, I could not imagine how fateful this chance encounter would turn out to be.
Day four.
I would never have thought that it is cold in India. The clock showed late evening, but the observation tour was in full swing. We were handed out leaflets with assignments (there were three of them, but the first was canceled due to the weather) and were given five minutes to read, after which we unanimously proceeded to a clean field and began to be near telescopes. We were supposed to set another 5 minutes before the start so that our eyes got used to the night sky. The first task was to visit the Pleiades and arrange the brightness of 7 stars, missed or marked with a cross.
As soon as we went outside, everyone immediately began to look for the treasured point in the starry sky. What was our surprise when almost in the same place in the sky was ... a full moon! Having been delighted with the prudence of the organizers, a guy from Kyrgyzstan (their whole team shook hands with me at absolutely every meeting several times a day) together tried to make out at least something. Through pain and suffering, we still managed to find the very M45, and then disperse through telescopes.
Each had his own personal inspector, for one task - five minutes. For extra minutes, a fine was expected, so there was clearly no time to linger. Thanks to the equipment of Belarusian astronomy, in my life I looked at the telescope as much as 2 times (the first of them was on someoneâs balcony), so I immediately asked the expert to take the time and set to work. The moon and the object were almost at the zenith, so I had to dodge and crouch to visit the treasured cluster. It thrice ran away from me, constantly hiding from sight, but with the help of an additional two minutes I managed and mentally patted my shoulder. The second task was to use a stopwatch and a lunar filter to measure the diameter of the moon and one of its seas, detecting the time of passage through the telescope lens.
Having dealt with everything, with a sense of accomplishment, I got on the bus. It was late, everyone was tired, and by a lucky chance I was in place next to a 15-year-old American. The Portuguese is located in the back seats of the bus with a guitar (I'm not a big fan of stereotypes, but all the Portuguese there knew how to play guitars, were charisma and sang just great). Having penetrated the music and the magic of the atmosphere, I decided that I should socialize and initiate a conversation:
âWhat is the wether like in Texas?â My English said.
âSorry?â
âThe wether ...â I repeated less confidently, realizing that I had sat in a puddle.
âOhhh, the weather ! You know, it's kinda ... "
This was my first experience with a real American, and I screwed up almost instantly. The 15-year-old's name was Hagan, and the Texas accent made his speech a bit unusual. I learned from Hagan that, despite his young age, it was not the first time he participated in such events and that the training of their team took place at MIT. At that time, I had little idea what it was â I heard the name of the university several times in series or films, but that was where my meager knowledge ended. From the stories of my fellow traveler, I learned more about what kind of place it was and why he plans to go there (it seemed that the question of whether he would do it did not bother him at all). My mental list of âcool American universities,â which included perhaps Harvard and Caltech, was replenished with another name.
After a couple of topics, we shut up. Outside the window there was total darkness, melodious sounds of a guitar were heard from the rear seats, and your humble servant, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, went into a stream of incoherent thoughts.
Day Six
From morning to dinner the most merciless part of the Olympiad took place - the theoretical tour. I flunked him, it seems, a little less than completely. The tasks were solvable, but there was a catastrophic lack of time and, to be honest, brains. Nevertheless, I was not very upset and did not spoil my appetite before dinner, which went immediately after the end of the stage. Filling the tray with another portion of spicy Indian food on the buffet table, I landed on an empty seat. I donât remember what happened next - either Anya and I were sitting at the same table, or I just walked by, but out of the corner of my ear I heard that she was going to enter the USA.
And here I was triggered. Even before entering the university, I often found myself thinking that I would like to live in another country, and from afar I was interested in education abroad. To enter a master's program somewhere in the USA or Europe seemed to me the most logical step, and from many of my friends I heard that you can get a grant and study there for free. An additional interest in me was aroused by the fact that Anya clearly did not look like a person who entered graduate school after school. At that moment, she was in 11th grade, and I realized that I could learn a lot from her. In addition, as a master of social interactions, I always needed an iron excuse to talk to people or call them somewhere, and I decided that this was my chance.
Having gathered strength and having gained confidence in myself, I decided to catch it after dinner alone (it didnât work out) and invite me to take a walk. It was awkward, but she agreed.
Towards evening, we went to the hill to the center of meditation, from which a beautiful view of the campus and mountains in the distance. When you look back at these events after so many years, you realize that anything can become a turning point in a personâs life, even if it is an overheard conversation in the dining room. If I had then chosen another place, had not dared to speak, and this article would never have been published.
I learned from Ani that she was a member of the Ukraine Global Scholars organization, founded by a Harvard graduate and preparing talented Ukrainians to enter the best American schools (grades 10-12) and universities (4 years of undergraduate studies). The organizationâs mentors, who have come this way themselves, helped with collecting documents, passing tests (which they themselves paid for), and writing an essay. Instead, a contract was signed with the program participants, which obliged them to return to Ukraine and work there for 5 years after receiving an education. They took there, of course, by no means all, but most of those who reached the finals successfully entered one or several universities / schools.
The main revelation for me was that itâs quite possible for US schools and universities to enter and study for free, even if this is a bachelor's degree.
The first reaction on my part: âBut what, was that possible?â
It turned out you can. Moreover, in front of me was a man who had already collected all the necessary documents and was well versed in the matter. The only difference was that Anya went to school (this is often used as a preparatory stage before a university), but from her I also learned about the success stories of many people who worked their way to several Ivy League universities at once. I realized that a huge number of talented children from the CIS did not enter the United States, not because they were not smart enough, but simply because they did not even suspect that this was possible.
We sat on a hill in the center of meditation and met the sunset. The red disk of the sun, slightly obscured by the passing clouds, quickly descended over the mountain. Officially, this sunset became the most beautiful sunset in my memory and laid the foundation for a new, completely different stage in my life.
At this wonderful moment, I stop tormenting you with stories from my diary of the Olympiad, and we move on to the more reverent side of the issue. If you live in the United States or have long been interested in this topic, then most of the information in this chapter will not surprise you. However, for a simple guy from a province like me, this was that news.
Let's dig a little deeper into the financial aspect of state education. For example, take Harvard, known to everyone. The cost of a year of study at the time of writing is $ 73,800- $ 78,200 . Iâll immediately notice that I am from a simplepeasant family with an average income, so this amount is unbearable for me, as for most readers.
By the way, many Americans cannot afford this cost of education, and there are several main ways to cover expenses:
Scholarships and grants are often used interchangeably and are the main way to receive funding for international students and US citizens.
Although the funding system is unique to each university, there is about the same list of frequently asked questions, which I will try to answer below.
It is for this reason that I entered the universities of California. Local laws are quite loyal to the homeless, and the cost of a tent and sleeping bag ...
Okay, joking. It was an absurd tip to the fact that American universities are divided into two types according to the completeness of the funding provided:
Universities themselves determine what âfull fundingâ means to them. There is no single American standard, but in most cases you will be covered with studies, accommodation, meals, money for textbooks and moving - everything you need for a life and comfortable study.
If you look at the statistics of the same Harvard, it turns out that the average cost of training (for you), taking into account all types of financial aid, is already $ 11.650 :
The grant amount for each student is calculated based on his own income and his family's income. In short: to each according to his needs. On the website of universities, there are usually special calculators that allow you to estimate the size of the financial package that you will receive if you enroll.
The following question arises:
The policy (governing?) Of which of the applicants can count on full funding is determined by each university independently and posted on the site.
In the case of Harvard, everything is very simple:
âIf your familyâs income is less than $ 65,000 per year, you pay nothing.â
Somewhere on this line, the pattern breaks for most people from the CIS. If someone thinks I took this figure out of my head, here's a screenshot from the Harvard official website:
Particular attention should be paid to the last line - not all universities in principle are ready to provide such generous funding to international students.
Again, I repeat: there is no single standard for what full demonstrated need includes, but in most cases this is exactly what you think.
And so we smoothly approached the most interesting question ...
Perhaps this is not entirely true. The reasons for this are discussed in more detail at the end of the chapter, but for now, itâs time for you and me to introduce another term.
Need-blind admission - a policy in which the financial situation of the applicant is not taken into account when deciding on his admission.
As Anna explained to me at one time, need-blind universities have two hands: the first one decides whether to enroll you based on your academic performance and personal qualities, and only then the second hand reaches into your pocket and decides how much money to give you.
In the case of need-sensitive or need-aware universities, your ability to pay for your studies will directly affect whether you will be enrolled or not. It is worth noting immediately a few possible misconceptions:
Now that you and I have figured out which universities are, let's create a list of criteria that the university of our dreams should meet:
You are probably thinking now: âIt would be nice to have a list where you could search for universities in these categories.â
Fortunately, such a list already exists .
It is unlikely that this will greatly surprise you, but only seven are among the âidealâ candidates from all over the USA:
It is worth remembering that, in addition to financing, when choosing a university, one should not forget about many other factors that also play a role. In chapter 4, I will give a detailed list of places I entered, and tell you why I chose them.
At the end of the chapter, I would like to speculate a little on one rather often raised topic ...
Despite official information and all other arguments, many people (especially in connection with the arrival of Dasha Navalny at Stanford) have a reaction:
Miracles do not really happen. Most American universities really will not pay for you, but this does not mean that there are none at all . Let's look again at the example of Harvard and MIT:
The chart below shows what the MIT profit consists of:
Iâm all this to what - with a special desire, universities in principle can afford to make education free, although this will not be a sustainable development strategy. As a quote from one of the investment firms says:
It is easy to guess that the competition in such places is serious: the best universities want the best students and attract them by all means. Of course, no one has canceled the receipt of a bribe: if the father of the applicant decides to donate a couple of million dollars to the university fund, this will surely redistribute the chances in an unfair way. On the other hand, for these few millions you can fully cover the training of a dozen geniuses who will build your future, so who is the loser from this - decide for yourself.
Summing up, most people for some reason sincerely believe that the main obstacle between them and the best universities in the USA is the overwhelming cost of training. And the truth is simple: you will act first, and grandmas are not a problem.
March 2017
The spring semester is in full swing, and I'm in the hospital with pneumonia. I donât know how it happened - I walked along the street, didnât touch anyone, and then suddenly lay down for several weeks. Not having reached just a bit before my coming of age, I found myself in the children's department, where, in addition to the ban on laptops, an atmosphere of stagnation and unbearable melancholy reigned.
Trying to somehow distract myself from the constant droppers and oppressive walls of the chamber, I decided to plunge into the world of fiction and began to read âThe Trilogy of the Ratâ by Haruki Murakami. It was a mistake. Although I forced myself to finish the first book, I did not have enough mental health for the other two. Never try to escape from reality into a world that is even more despondent than yours. I caught myself thinking that since the beginning of the year I have not read anything except my diary from the time of the Olympiad.
Speaking of the Olympics. Unfortunately, I did not bring any medals, but I brought a storehouse of valuable information that I urgently needed to share with someone.Almost immediately after arrival, I wrote to a couple of my school friends, Olympiads, who, by coincidence, were also interested in studying abroad. After a short meeting in a cafe on the eve of the new year, we began to explore the issue more deeply. We even had a conversation called âMIT Applicantsâ, in which the communication was only in English, although out of the three, only I did.
Armed with Google, I began my search. I came across a lot of videos and articles about graduate and postgraduate studies, but I quickly found out that there is practically no normal information about entering the bachelor's degree from the CIS. All that was found then was terribly superficial âguidesâ with a list of tests and zero references to the fact that, in fact, you can get a grant.
After a while, I came across an article by Oleg from Ufawho shared his experience joining MIT.
Although there was no happy end in it, the most important thing was the real story of a living person who went through it all from beginning to end. Such articles on the Internet were rare, and during the time I received it, I scanned it about five times. Oleg, if you read this - hello to you and many thanks for the motivation!
Despite the initial fuse, during the semester, thoughts of my adventure under the pressure of the lab and social life lost their significance and receded into the background. All that I did then to realize my dream, I signed up for English three times a week, because of which I often slept for several hours and ended up in the hospital, where we are now.
On the calendar was the eighth of March. My unlimited Internet was unbearably slow, but somehow managed to cope with social networks, and for some reason I decided to send one of the free gifts on VKontakte to Anya, although we did not communicate with her since January.
Word for word, we talked about life and I found out that in a few days she should receive answers regarding her admission. Although there are no strict rules in this regard, most American schools and universities publish decisions at about the same time.
Every year, Americans look forward to mid-March with impatience, and many write down their reaction to letters from universities, which may turn out to be both congratulations and refusals. If you are interested in how it looks, then I suggest youtube through the query âCollege Decision Reactionsâ - be sure to look to get a feel for the atmosphere. Especially for you, I even picked up a particularly striking example:
That day we talked with Anya until nightfall. I again clarified what things I would have to hand over and whether I correctly imagined the whole process. He asked a bunch of stupid questions, weighed everything and just tried to understand if I had any chances. In the end, she went to bed, and I lay for a long time and could not sleep. Night is the only time in this hell when you can get rid of the endless cry of children and collect thoughts about the important. And there were many thoughts:
Probably, such words sounded in the head of absolutely every healthy person who had ever decided on such an adventure.
It is worth paying attention once again to the current situation. I am an ordinary first-year student at a Belarusian university, who is overcoming the second semester and somehow trying to pull up her English. My goal is an exorbitant goal - to enter the first year at a good American university. I didnât consider the option of transferring somewhere: for transfer students, funding is almost not allocated, there are much fewer places, and in general I need to break my university, so the chances in my case tended to zero. I perfectly understood that if I did, it would be only for the first year in the fall of next year. Why do I need all this?
Everyone answers this question in their own way, but I saw for myself the following advantages:
And here, when drooling joyfully begins to drain onto the pillow from the anticipation of happy student everyday life, another sarcastic question creeps up: do I have any chances?
Well, everything is not so clear here. It should be borne in mind that in the best American universities there is no system of âpassing pointsâ or a list of points for which you are guaranteed to be enrolled. Moreover, the selection committee never comments on its decisions, which makes it impossible to understand what exactly led to the refusal or admission. Keep this in mind when you come across the services of âpeople who know what to do and will help you for a modest amount.â
Success stories are too few to clearly judge who will be taken and who is not. Of course, if you are a doppelgĂ€nger without hobbies and with poor English, then your chances tend to zero, but what if you? If you are a gold medalist at the International Physics Olympiad, then the universities themselves will begin to contact you. Arguments like âI know a guy who has a * list of achievements *, and he wasnât taken! So, they wonât take you either â, they donât work either. If only because the criteria in addition to academic performance and achievements are much greater:
As you can see, there are too many random factors in the admission process. In the end, they will judge âwhich candidate is neededâ there, and your task is to prove yourself to the maximum. What exactly made me believe in myself?
In addition to all this, I did my best to at least roughly compare myself with the acquaintances of Ani or Oleg from the article. I did not derive much benefit from this, but in the end I decided that on the basis of my academic achievements and personal qualities, I have at least some non-zero probability of going somewhere.
But this is not enough.All these ghostly chances could appear only on the condition that I would ideally pass all the tests that I need to prepare for, write excellent essays, prepare all the documents, including teachers' recommendations and translations of grades, do not do any stupid things and have time for everything deadlines on the eve of the winter session. And all for what - to give up your current university halfway and enter the first year again? Since I am not a citizen of Ukraine, I will not be able to become part of the UGS, but I will compete with them. I will have to go all the way all the way from beginning to end, hiding the fact of my studies at the university and not understanding whether I am moving in the right direction. I have to kill a lot of time and effort, spend a lot of money - and all this only in order to get a chance to fulfill a dream that a couple of months ago was not even a trace. Is it worth itIndeed?
I could not answer this question. However, in addition to dreams of a brighter future, a much stronger and obsessive feeling arose in me that I could not get rid of - the fear that I would miss my chance and regret it.
No, the worst thing is that I will never even know if I really had this opportunity to radically change my life. I was afraid that everything would be in vain, but I was even more afraid to frighten in the face of the unknown and miss the moment.
That night I promised myself: no matter what it costs me, I will go to the end. Let absolutely every university to which I submit documents refuse me, but I will achieve this refusal. Dementia and courage overwhelmed your faithful storyteller at that hour, but in the end he calmed down and went to bed.
After a couple of days, I got this message in the LAN. The game was on.
August 2017
Having returned from numerous travels and having a rest from the session, I decided that it was time to start doing something before the studies began. First of all, I had to decide on the list of places I was going to go to.
The most recommended strategy, which is often found, including in the guides for graduate studies, is to choose N universities, 25% of which will be âUniversities of your dreamsâ (like the same ivy league), half will be âaverageâ, and the remaining 25 % will be safe options in case you fail to get into the first two groups. The number N usually varies from 8 to 10, depending on your budget (more on that later) and the time you are willing to spend on preparing applications. In general, this is a good method, but in the case of me he had one fatal flaw ...
Most middle and weak universities simply do not provide full funding for international students. Let us recall once again which universities from chapter 2 are our ideal candidates:
Based on this list , only 7 universities across America meet all three criteria. If you filter out those that do not fit my profile, only Harvard, MIT, Yale and Princeton will remain out of seven (I rejected Amherst College because it was described on Russian Wikipedia as a âprivate liberal arts universityâ, although in fact there there is everything that I needed).
Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton ... What connects all these places? Right!They are very, very hard to get at all for everyone, including international students. According to one of the many statistics, the admisson rate in the undergraduate MIT is 6.7%. In the case of international students, this figure drops to 3.1% or 32 people per place. Not bad, right? Even if we omit the first paragraph from the search criteria, the harsh truth still opens up to us: to qualify for full funding, you have no choice but to enter the most prestigious universities . Of course, in all the rules there are exceptions, but at the time of my receipt I did not find them.
When it becomes approximately clear where you want to go, the algorithm for further actions is as follows:
All I can advise at this stage is do not be lazy and do not be afraid to ask questions. Studying your abilities is the most important stage of admission, and with a high probability you will spend several days sorting it out.
By the time of the deadline, I entered 18 universities:
The first 8 are Ivy League universities, and all 18 are in the top 30 universities in the United States by National Universities rating. So it goes.
The next thing was to figure out what tests and documents are needed to submit to each of the above places. After long wanderings around university sites, it turned out that the list was something like this.
It's simple, isn't it? Now more about the first points.
Application form
For all universities except MIT, this is a single form called Common Application. In some universities, alternatives are available, but there is no point in using them. The entire process of joining MIT goes through their MyMIT portal.
The cost of applying to each university is $ 75.
SAT, SAT Subject and ACT
All of these are standardized American tests of the type of the Russian Unified State Examination or the Belarusian Central Testing Center. SAT is a bit of the most general math and English test, and is required by all universities except MIT.
SAT Subject tests deeper knowledge in a subject field, for example, physics, mathematics, biology. In most universities, they are indicated as optional, but this does not mean that they do not need to be taken . Itâs critical for you and me to confirm that we are smart, so itâs imperative that everyone who is planning to enter the United States pass SAT Subjects. Usually everyone passes 2 tests each, in my case they were physics and mathematics 2. But more on that later.
When entering the MIT, you do not need to pass the usual SAT (TOEFL instead), but 2 subject tests are mandatory.
ACT is such an alternative to regular SAT. I did not give it, and I do not advise you.
TOEFL, IELTS and other English tests
If you have not studied in the English-language school for the past few years, absolutely everywhere you will require a certificate of knowledge of the English language. It is worth noting that the test of knowledge of English is the only test where in many universities there is a mandatory minimum score that you need to score.
TOEFL. At least for the reason that many universities do not accept IELTS and other analogues.
Each university has its own requirements, but in most of them at the time of my admission they asked 100/120. The threshold score in MIT is 90, the recommended one is 100. Most likely, over time, the rules will change and in places you will not even meet any âpassing scoreâ, but I highly recommend not to fail this test.
With a very high probability, no. Any point from a hundred will be good enough, so it does not make much sense to retake the test in order to beat out the speed sooner.
Registration for tests
To summarize, I needed to pass SAT, SAT Subjects (2 tests) and TOEFL. As subjects on subjects, I chose Physics and Mathematics 2.
Unfortunately, making the admission process will not work completely free. Tests cost money, and for international students no waivers are supposed to be taken for free. So how much is all this fun ?:
Total comes out $ 434 for everything. Together with each test, 4 free sendings of your results directly to those places that you specify are attached to you as a gift. If you have already researched university sites, you may have noticed that in the section with the necessary tests they always give their TOEFL and SAT code.
Absolutely every university has such codes, and 4 of them you need to specify when registering. Oddly enough, you have to pay for sending to each additional university. One TOEFL Score Report will cost you $ 20, for SAT with Essay and SAT Subjects for $ 12.
By the way, I couldnât resist and didnât spoil you now: they also take money for sending each CSS Profile, which is needed to confirm that you are poor and need financial help from the university! $ 25 for the first and $ 16 for each subsequent.
So, to summarize another small financial result when entering 18 universities:
Total admission will cost you $ 2697 . But do not rush to close the article!
Of course I did not pay that much. In total, my admission to 18 universities cost $ 750 (400 of them I once gave for tests, another 350 - to send the results and CSS Profile). A nice bonus is that you do not need to give this money in one payment. My admission process lasted six months, I paid for tests in the summer, and for sending the CSS Profile in January.
If the amount of $ 2700 seems tangible enough to you, then you can absolutely legally ask universities to provide you with Fee Waiver, which allows you not to pay $ 75 for sending an application. In my case, I got a waver in all 18 universities and did not pay anything. More on how to do this in the following chapters.
There are also wavers for TOEFL and SAT, however, they are no longer distinguished by universities, but by the CollegeBoard and ETS organizations themselves, and unfortunately we are not available to us (international students). You can try to trick them, but I didnât.
As for sending Score Reports, here you have to negotiate with each university separately. In short, you can ask them to accept the unofficial test results on one sheet together with the grades, and in the case of enrollment - to confirm. Somewhere 90% of universities agreed, so on average for each additional university they had to pay only $ 16 (and even then, some universities like Princeton and MIT take other financial forms).
To summarize, the minimum cost of admission is the cost of passing tests ($ 434, if you are not an Englishman and have not passed SAT before). For each additional university you will most likely have to pay $ 16.
More information about tests and registration here:
SAT & SAT Subject - www.collegeboard.org
TOEFL - www.ets.org/toefl
August 2017
Having decided on the list of universities (at that time there were 7-8 of them) and realizing which tests needed to be passed, I immediately decided to register for them. Since TOEFL is quite a popular thing, I easily found a test center in Minsk (based on the Streamline language school). The exam takes place several times a month, however, it is better to register in advance - all places may be occupied.
Registration with SAT was more complicated. Outside of the USA, the exam took place only a few times a year (I was very lucky that it was generally conducted in Belarus), and of the nearest dates there were only two: October 7 and December 2. I decided to take the TOEFL somewhere in November, since the results usually take from 2 weeks to a month to get to universities.
By the way, about the choice of dates: usually when you enter American universities there are two ways to submit:
I wanted to go to the Early Action at MIT for the reasons that when considering the Early Action, most of the budget for international students has not yet been spent, and there will be more chances to get there. But, again, these are rumors and conjectures - official university statistics are trying to convince you that there is no difference in which of the deadlines to act, but who knows how it really is ...
In any case, by the deadlines by November 1 I didnât have time in any way, so I decided not to curry favor and act like everyone else - according to Regular Action until January 1.
Based on all this, I signed up for the following dates:
It was 3 months to prepare for everything, and 2 of them went in parallel with the semester.
Having estimated the approximate amount of work, I realized that you need to start preparing right now. There are quite a few stories on the Internet about Russian schoolchildren who, thanks to the greatest Soviet education system, are carrying American tests to the nines with their eyes closed - and so, I'm not one of them. Since I enrolled in my Belarusian university through a diploma, I practically did not prepare for the CT and for two years I forgot everything. The main directions for development were three:
English at that time was somewhere at the B2 level. The spring courses were a great success, and I felt quite confidently right up until the moment I began to prepare.
Sat with essay
What is so special about this test? Now let's figure it out. I note that until 2016 the "old" version of SAT was surrendered, which you can still stumble on training sites. Naturally, I handed over and will talk about a new one.
In total, the test consists of 3 parts:
1. Math , which in turn also consists of 2 sections. The tasks are quite simple, but the problem is that there are too many of them. The material itself is elementary, but itâs very easy to make a mistake by inattention or to understand something wrong in a limited time, so I would not recommend writing it without preparation. The first part is without a calculator, the second is with it. The calculations, again, are elementary, but sly instances are rarely found.
What annoyed me the most was text tasks. Americans like to give something in the spirit of "Peter bought 4 apples, Jake 5, and the distance from Earth to the Sun is 1 AU ... Count how many apples ...". There is nothing to solve, but you need to spend time and attention reading the conditions in English to understand what they want from you (believe me, in a limited time this is not as easy as it seems!). In total, the mathematical sections contain 55 questions, which take 80 minutes.
How to prepare: Khan Academy is your friend and teacher. There are a lot of trial tests that are made specifically for preparing for the SAT, as well as instructional videos on all the necessary math. I always advise you to start with tests, and then finish what you did not know or forget. The main thing you should learn is to quickly solve simple problems.
2. Evidence-Based Reading & Writing . It is also divided into 2 sections: Reading and Writing. If about mathematics I didnât worry about the word at all (although I knew that I would fall inadvertently), then this section made me depressed at first glance.
In Reading, you need to read a huge number of texts and answer questions about them, and in Writing, do the same and insert the necessary words / swap sentences to make it logical and so on. The problem is that this section of the test is fully designed for Americans who write, speak and read books in English all their lives. The fact that this is your second language does not bother anyone. You will have to take this test along with them, although you will obviously be in an unequal position. Honestly, quite a lot of Americans manage to write this section poorly. It still remains a mystery to me.
Every fifth text is a historical document from the history of the formation of the United States, where the language used is particularly elegant. There are also texts on near-scientific subjects and excerpts straight from fiction, where you will sometimes curse the eloquence of the authors. They will show you the word and offer to choose the most suitable synonym for the style of 4 options, while you do not know any of them. You will be forced to read huge texts with a bunch of rare words and answer non-obvious questions about the content in a time that is hardly enough to read. You are guaranteed to suffer, but eventually get used to it.
For each of the sections (math and English), you can score 800 points maximum.
How to prepare: God help you. Again, at Khan Academy there are tests to be solved. There are quite a few life hacks on going through Reading and how to quickly extract the essence from the texts. There are tactics that suggest starting from questions, or reading the first sentence of each paragraph. You will find them on the Internet, as well as lists of rare words that are worth learning. The main thing here is to keep within the time limit and not get carried away. If you feel that you spend too much on one text, move on to the next. For each new text, you should have a clearly worked out mechanism of action. Practice.
3. Essay. If you want in the USA, write an essay. You are given some text that you need to âanalyzeâ and write a review / answer to the question. Again, on a par with the Americans. For the essay you get 3 grades: Reading, Writing, and Analysis. There is nothing special to say, there is enough time. The main thing is to understand the text and write a structured answer.
How to prepare: read on the Internet about what they usually want to hear from you. Practice writing, keeping up to date and maintaining structure.
Rejoiced at the easy math and depressed by the Writing section, I realized that it makes no sense to start preparing for SAT in mid-August. SAT with Essay was my last test (December 2), and I decided that I would be preparing hard for the last 2 weeks, and before that my training was closed by TOEFL and SAT Subjects Math 2.
I decided to start with SAT Subjects, and I postponed TOEFL on later. As you already know, I chose Physics and Math 2. The number 2 in mathematics means increased complexity, but this is not entirely true if you know some of the features of SAT Subjects.
Firstly, the maximum score for each of the exams is 800. Only in the case of Physics and Mathematics 2, there are so many questions that you can score 800 by making a couple of mistakes, and this will be exactly the same maximum score. It is nice to have such a reserve, and Mathematics 1 (which would seem to be simpler) does not have it.
Secondly, Math 1 contains a lot more text tasks, which I really disliked. Under the pressure of time, the language of formulas is much more pleasant than English, and indeed, entering MIT and passing Math 1 is somehow solid (do not give it up, kotans).
Having learned the contents of the tests, I decided to start by refreshing the material. This was especially true of physics, which had a good time forgetting itself after school. In addition, I needed to get used to the terminology in English, so as not to get confused at the most important points. For my purposes, the courses in Mathematics and Physics at the same Khan Academy perfectly fit - it is nice when one resource covers all the necessary topics. As in my school years, I wrote a compendium, only now in English and more or less accurately.
At that time, my friend and I learned about polyphase sleep and decided to conduct experiments on ourselves. The main goal was to rebuild your sleep cycles so as to win as much free time as possible.
My mode was this:
Thus, I slept not 8 hours, like most people, but 4,5, which won me an additional 3.5 hours to prepare. Moreover, since the intervals of short dreams of 20 minutes were spaced throughout the day, and I did not sleep most of the night and morning, the days seemed especially long. We also almost did not drink alcohol, tea and coffee, so as not to disturb sleep, and called each other on the phone if someone suddenly decided to oversleep and go off schedule.
In just a couple of days, my body completely adapted to the new regimen, all drowsiness was gone, and productivity due to an additional 3.5 hours of life increased several times. Since then, I look at most people sleeping for 8 hours as losers, who spend a third of their time in bed every night instead of teaching physics.
Okay, just kidding.Naturally, no miracle happened, and already on the sixth day I chopped off for the whole night and turned off absolutely all alarms in unconsciousness. And the rest of the days, if you look at the magazine, it was not much better.
I suspect that the reason for the failure of the experiment was that we were young and stupid. The recently released book âWhy we sleepâ by Matthew Walker, by the way, rather confirms this hypothesis and hints that it will not work out to outwit the system without destructive consequences for itself. I advise all novice biohackers to familiarize themselves with it before trying something like this.
This is how the last month of my summer before the second year passed: for preparing for passing tests for schoolchildren and methodically searching for places for admission.
The semester began on schedule, and there was even less free time. To finish myself off completely, I signed up for the military department, which pleased me with the morning construction every Monday, and to the theater-goer, where I had to fulfill my potential and finally play the tree.
Along the way, in preparation for subjects, I tried not to forget about English and actively looked for opportunities to practice spoken language. Since there are indecently few conversation clubs in Minsk (and the time in them is not the most convenient), I decided that it would be easiest to open my own directly in the hostel. Armed with the experience of my sensei from spring courses, for each lesson, I began to come up with various topics and interactivities so that I could not only communicate in English, but also learn something new. In general, it turned out pretty well and for some time up to 10 people came stably there.
A month later, a friend of mine threw me a link to the Duolingo incubator, in which Duolingo Events began to develop actively. So I became the first and only Duolingo Ambassador in the Republic of Belarus! My âdutiesâ included conducting various language meetings in the city of Minsk, no matter what it means. I had a database of mailing addresses of users of the application with a certain level in my city, and soon I organized my first event, having agreed with one of the local coworking.
What was the surprise of the people who came there when, instead of the American expected and the representative of Duolingo, I went out to the audience.
At the second meeting, in addition to a couple of my classmates whom I invited (then we watched a movie in English), there was only one guy who left after about 10 minutes. As it turned out later, he came only to meet my pretty friend again, but that evening, alas, she did not come. Realizing that the demand for Duolingo Events in Minsk, to put it mildly, is low, I decided to limit myself to a club in a hostel.
Probably not many people think about this, but when your goal is so far and unattainable, it is very difficult to maintain high motivation all the time. In order not to forget about what I am doing all this for, I decided to regularly motivate myself with at least something and sat down on a video from students about their life at universities. This is not the most popular genre in the CIS, but in America there are enough such bloggers - just enter on youtube the request âA Day in life of% universityname% Studentâ, and you will get not one, but several beautiful and pleasantly shot videos about student life for by the ocean. Especially the aesthetics and differences of the universities there came to me: from the endless corridors of MIT to the ancient and majestic Princeton campuses. When you decide on such a long and risky journey, dreaming is not what is useful - it is vital.
It also helped that my parents surprisingly positively reacted to my adventure and strongly supported, although in the realities of our country it is very easy to stumble upon the opposite. Many thanks to them for this.
November 4 was rapidly approaching, and every day I more and more scored on my labs and gave myself to training. As you already know, I successfully scored on SAT and there were three main goals: TOEFL, SAT Subject Math 2 and SAT Subject Physics.
I sincerely do not understand people who hire tutors for all of these tests. For my preparation for SAT Subjects, I used only two books: Barron's SAT Subject Math 2 and Barron's SAT Subject Physics. They contain all the necessary theory, the knowledge of which is tested on a test (briefly, but Khan Academy to help), many test tests that are as close as possible to reality (Barron's SAT Math 2, by the way, is much more complicated than a real test, so if you are without any problems cope with all the tasks there, then this is a very good sign).
The first of the books I read Math 2, and I can not say that I was too easy. In the math test, there are 50 questions for which 60 minutes are given. Unlike Math 1, there is already trigonometry and very, very many tasks on functions and their diverse analysis. Also included are limits, complex numbers and matrices, but, as a rule, at a very simple level, so that everyone can master. You can use a calculator, including a graphical one - this can help you quickly solve many problems, and even in the book of Barron's SAT Math 2 itself in the section of answers you often see something like this:
Or like this:
Yes, it is possible that some of the tasks are literally designed for you to use a sophisticated calculator. I am not saying that they cannot be solved analytically at all, but when you have been given a little more than a minute for each of them, frustration is inevitable. Read more about Math 2 and solve the probe here .
As for physics, the opposite is true: you are forbiddenuse the calculator, the test also takes 60 minutes and it contains 75 questions - 48 seconds each. As you may have already guessed, there are no cumbersome computational problems, and knowledge of general concepts and principles is tested mainly throughout the course of school physics and not only. There are also questions from the category of âwhat law this scientist discovered hereâ. After Math 2, physics seemed too easy to me - partly due to the fact that Barron's SAT Math 2 is an order of magnitude more complicated than a real test, and partially because almost all physics questions required you to recall a couple of formulas and substitute there are numbers in them to get an answer. This is very different from what they check on our Belarusian central heating center. Although, as is the case with Math 2, be prepared for the fact that some issues are not covered by the CIS school curriculum.Read more about the structure of the test and solve the probehere .
As with all American tests, the hardest part is the time limit. It is for this reason that it is extremely important to solve probes in order to get used to the pace and not be dumb. As I already said, Barron's books give you everything to prepare and write a test perfectly: there is a theory, and trial tests, and answers to them. My preparation was very simple: I solved, looked at my mistakes and worked on them. All. The books also have enough life hacks on how to properly allocate your time and approach problems.
One very important thing to remember: SAT is not an exam, but a test. In most questions, you have 4 possible answers, and even if you do not know which one is correct, you can always try to guess it. The authors of SAT Subject do their best to convince you not to, because for each incorrect answer, in contrast to the missed one, a penalty is imposed (-1/4 point). For the answer you get (+1 point), and for skipping 0 (then these points, using a clever formula, are transferred to your final speed, but this is not about that). By simple thinking, we can conclude that in any situation it is better to try to guess the answer than to leave the field empty, because by exception, you are likely to narrow the space of possible correct answers to two, and sometimes even one. Usually,in every question there is at least one absurd or too suspicious answer, so in general, random on your side.
To summarize all of the above, the main tips are:
There were 3 days before the tests, and I was in a somewhat lethargic state. When preparation is delayed and mistakes become more accidental than systematic, you realize that you are unlikely to be able to squeeze out something else useful.
My math probes gave results in the region of 690-700, but I reassured myself that the real test should be easier. As a rule, I did not have enough time on some issues that were easily solved by graphing calculators. The situation with physics was much nicer: on average, I dialed all 800 and was mistaken only in a couple of tasks, most often by inattention.
How many points do you need to get to enter the best universities in the USA? For some reason, most people from the CIS countries like to think in terms of âpassing pointsâ and believe that the probability of success is measured by the results of entrance tests. In contrast to this thinking, almost every prestigious university that respects itself insists on the same thing on its website: we do not consider candidates only as a set of numbers and pieces of paper, each case is individual, and an integrated approach is important.
Based on this, we can draw the following conclusions:
So it goes. The harsh reality is that 800/800 in your pocket will not make you a strong candidate - they only guarantee that you are not worse than everyone else in this parameter. Remember that you are competing with the best minds around the world, so the answer to the argument âI have good speed!â Is simple: âwho doesnât have it?â. A pleasant trifle is that, after a certain threshold, the points do not really matter: no one will turn you around because you scored 790, not 800. Due to the fact that almost all applicants have high results, this indicator ceases to be informative and you have to read questionnaires and understand what they are like as people there. But there is a flip side: if you got 600, and 90% of applicants - 760+, then what is the point of the admissions committee to spend your time on you if they have a lot of talented guys who are tired enough to pass the test well? Of course, no one explicitly talks about this, but I assume that in some cases your application may simply be filtered out due to weak indicators and no one will even read your essays and figure out which person is behind them.
What is the competitive score in this case? There is no definite answer to this question, but the closer to 800, the better. According to old statistics from MIT, 50% of applicants had a result in the range of 740-800, and I aimed there too.
November 4, 2017, Saturday
According to the regulations, the doors of the test center opened at 07:45, and the test itself began at 08:00. It was necessary to bring along two pencils, a passport and a special Admission Ticket, which I printed in advance and even in color.
Since the fate of my admission directly depended on this day, I was afraid to be late and woke up somewhere at 6. I went to the other end of the city to a place called âQSI International School of Minskâ - as I understand it, this is the only school in Belarus, where only foreigners are taken and where training is conducted entirely in English. I arrived there about half an hour before the right time: not far from the school there were all sorts of embassies and private low-rise buildings, there was darkness all around, and I decided not to wind up circles and turn over the notes again. In order not to do this on the street with a flashlight (besides, it was rather cold in the morning), I wandered into the children's rehabilitation center nearby and sat in the reception room. The guard was very surprised at such an early visitor, but I explained that I had an exam in the next building and began to read. They say that before death you will not breathe, but to refresh some formulas in my head seemed to me quite a good idea.
When the clock showed 7:45, I hesitantly went to the gate of the school and, at the invitation of the next guard, proceeded inside. Apart from me, there were only organizers inside, so I sat down on one of the empty seats and with extreme curiosity began to wait for the rest of the participants in the test.
By the way, there were about ten of them. The funniest thing would be to meet one of his university friends there, catch the surprise on their face and silently throw a sneaky smirk, as if to say: âYeah, I got! I know what you are doing here! âBut this did not happen. Everyone who passed the test turned out to be Russian-speaking, but with the Belarusian passport was just me and another guy. Nevertheless, the entire briefing was conducted entirely in English (by the same Russian-speaking school workers), apparently so as not to deviate from the rules. Since the dates for SAT delivery in different countries are different, some people came from Russia / Kazakhstan just to take the test, but many were school students (albeit Russian-speaking) and personally knew the proctors.
After a little verification of the documents, we were taken to one of the spacious classes (visually, the school mowed everything under the American one), handed out forms and conducted another briefing. You write the test itself in large books, which can also be used as a draft - they contain the conditions of several Subjects at once, so you will be told to open it on the page of the desired test (if I remember correctly, you can register for one test, but pass in general the other is a restriction on the number of tests per day).
The instructor wished us good luck, wrote down the current time on the board, and the test began.
I was the first to write mathematics, and it really turned out to be much easier than in the book on which I was preparing. A Kazakh woman at a neighboring desk, by the way, had the legendary TI-84 (a graphing calculator with a bunch of bells and whistles), about which they often wrote in books and spoke in a video on YouTube. There are limitations on the functionality of the calculators, and they were checked before the start of the test, but I had nothing to worry about - my old man didnât know how much, although we went through more than one olympiad together. In general, during the test I did not feel an urgent need to use something more sophisticated and even finished ahead of time. They recommend filling out the form at the end, but I did it on the go, so as not to linger, and then just returned to those answers that I was not sure about.
During the break between the tests, some students of that school discussed how much they have on the normal SAT and who will go where. According to the prevailing feelings, these were far from those guys who were worried about the issue of financing.
The next one was physics. Everything turned out to be a little more complicated here than in the trial tests, but I was very pleased with the question about the detection of exoplanets. I donât remember the exact wording, but it was nice to apply knowledge from astronomy at least somewhere.
After two tense hours, I handed over my forms and left the audience. For some reason, I wanted to learn a little more about this place on the shift: after talking with the employees, I realized that most of the participants are children of various diplomats, and for obvious reasons, many of them are not eager to enter local universities. Hence the demand for SAT. Thanking them mentally for not having to go to Moscow, I left school and drove home.
This was just the beginning of my month-long marathon. Tests were conducted at intervals of 2 weeks, and test results, too. It turns out that no matter how badly I write SAT Subjects right now, I still need to get ready for TOEFL in full force, and no matter how badly I pass TOEFL, I wonât know about it until the time I pass SAT with Essay.
There was no time to rest, and, returning home that day, I immediately began intensive preparation for TOEFL. I will not go into its structure in detail here, since this test is very popular and is used not only for admission and not only in the USA. Let me just say that there are also sections Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking.
In Reading, you still had to read a bunch of texts, and I did not find a better way to prepare, except to train to read these texts, answer questions and learn words that may come in handy. There were a lot of word lists for this part, but I used the book â400 Must-have words for TOEFLâ and applications from Magoosh.
As with any test, it was fundamentally important to familiarize yourself with the type of all possible questions and study the sections in detail. On the same Magoosh site and in YouTube there is a fairly comprehensive amount of training materials, so finding them is not difficult.
Most of all, I was afraid of Speaking: in this part I had to either answer a relatively random question to the microphone, or listen / read the passage and talk about something. It's funny that often Americans do not pass TOEFL by 120 points precisely because of this section.
I particularly remember the first part: you are asked a question, and in 15 seconds you should come up with a detailed answer almost a minute long. Then they listen to your answer and evaluate it by connectedness, correctness and everything else. The problem is that very often you cannot give an adequate answer even in your own language, let alone in English. During the preparation, I especially remembered the question: âWhat was the happiest moment in your childhood?â - I realized that I didnât have enough 15 seconds even to remember something that I could talk about for a minute as a happy childhood moment.
Every day for those two weeks I took a study room in a dormitory and wrapped endless circles around it, trying to learn how to answer these questions intelligently and fit exactly in a minute. A very popular way to answer them is to create a template in your head according to which you will build each of your answers. Usually it contains an introduction, 2-3 arguments, and a conclusion. All this is glued together with a bunch of passing phrases and speech turns, and, voila, you blabbed something for a minute, even if it looks strange and unnatural.
I even had ideas for a video a la CollegeHumor on this subject. Two students meet, one of the other asks:
- Hi, how are you doing?
- I think that I'm fine today for two reasons.
First, I ate my breakfast and slept quite well.
Second, I have finished all my assignments, therefore, I am free for the rest of the day.
To sum it up, for these two reasons I think that I'm fine today.
The irony is that youâll have to give roughly such unnatural answers - I donât know how the conversation goes with a living person during IELTS, but I hope that everything is not so bad.
My main training manual was the notorious book âCracking the TOEFL iBTâ - it has everything that can be useful, including a detailed test structure, various strategies and, of course, probes. In addition to the book, I also used various exam simulators, which I could find on torrents for the TOEFL simulator request. I advise everyone to go through at least a couple of tests from there in order to better feel the time frame and get used to the interface of the program with which you have to work.
I didnât have any particular problems with listening, as everyone speaks relatively slowly, clearly and with a usual American accent. The only problem was not to miss words or details that could later become the subject of questions.
I wasnât particularly prepared for writing, except that I remembered another popular structure for constructing my essay: an introduction, a few paragraphs with arguments and a conclusion. The main thing is to pour more water, otherwise you wonât get the right amount of words for good points.
November 18, 2017, Saturday
On the night before the teflon, I woke up about 4 times. The first time was at 23:40 - I decided that it was already morning, and went to the kitchen to put a kettle, although only then I realized that I had slept only two hours. The last time I dreamed that I was late for him.
The excitement could be understood: after all, this is the only test that you will most likely not be "forgiven" if you write it for less than 100 points. I reassured myself that even if I dialed 90, I would still have a chance to enter MIT.
The test center was cleverly hidden somewhere in the center of Minsk, and again I was one of the first. Since this test is much more popular than SAT, there were more people here. I even stumbled upon a guy whom I saw 2 weeks ago when passing subjects.
In this cozy room in the Streamline Minsk office, we were waiting for the whole crowd to register (as I understand it, many of those present were familiar and went there for TOEFL preparation courses). In one of the frames on the wall, I saw a portrait of my teacher from spring English courses, which gave me confidence in myself - although this test requires very specific skills, it still checks the knowledge of the language with which I had no particular problems.
After some time, we took turns starting to go into the audience, take pictures on a webcam and sit down at computers. The start of the test is not synchronous: as soon as you sit down, then you start. For this reason, many tried to go in the beginning, so as not to be distracted when everyone around started talking, and they still only have Listening.
The test began, and I immediately noticed that instead of 80 minutes, I had 100 for Reading, and instead of four texts with questions, five. This happens when one of the texts is given as experimental and not evaluated, though you will never know which one. I just hoped that it turned out to be the text in which I would make the most mistakes.
If you are not familiar with the order of sections, then they go like this: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing. After the first two - a 10-minute break, where you can leave the audience and stretch out. Since I was not the first to go, by the time I finished listening (but there was still time for the section), someone nearby began to answer the first questions from Speaking. Moreover, several people began to respond at once, and by their answers I was able to understand that it was about children and why they love them.
By the way, I didnât really like children, but I decided that it would be much easier to take and argue the opposite position to myself. Often in TOEFL recommendations you are advised not to lie and answer honestly, but this is sheer nonsense. In my opinion, you need to choose the position that you most easily come to open and justify, even if it is completely opposite to your personal beliefs. You must make this decision in your head for the time when the question sounds. TOEFL forces you to give detailed answers even where there is nothing to say, and therefore I'm sure that people lie and come up with it every day. The question in the end turned out to be something like a choice of three activities for the summer student side job:
Without hesitation, I began to rub in the detailed answer about my love for children, how interesting I am with them and how we always get along. It was a blatant lie, but I'm sure I got the maximum score for it.
The rest of the test passed without any incidents, and after 4 hours I still broke free. The feelings were debatable: I knew that everything went by no means as smoothly as I wanted, but I did everything I could. By the way, in the morning of the same day I received the results of SAT Subjects, but I decided not to open them before the test, so as not to get upset.
Previously, having gone to the store for Heineken for the promotion, to immediately celebrate / remember the result, I clicked on the link in the letter and saw this:
I was so glad that I even took a screenshot without waiting for the disappearance of âPress F11 to exit full screenâ. It was not perfect speed, but with them I was no worse than most of the strongest candidates. It was up to the surrender of SAT with Essay.
Since the results of TOEFL will be known only on the eve of the next test, the voltage did not drop. The next day, I went to Khan Academy and began to intensively solve tests. Everything was simple enough with mathematics, but to do it ideally did not work out either because of my own inattention, or because of the abundance of text problems in the conditions of which I was sometimes confused. In addition, in the normal SAT, every mistake you make is taken into account, so for 800 points you had to score everything perfectly.
Evidence-based Reading & Writing as always put me in a panic. As I already said, there were too many texts, they were designed for media and in total I could hardly get 700 in this section. It felt like this was the second TOEFL Reading, only harder - there are probably people who think the other way around. As for the essay, there was practically no power left for it at the end of the marathon: I looked at the general recommendations and decided that I would come up with something on the spot.
On the night of November 29, I received a notification in the mail that my results were ready. Without hesitation, I immediately opened the ETS website and clicked View Scores:
Unexpectedly for myself, I got 112/120 and even scored the maximum score for Reading. In order to apply to any of my universities, it was enough to get 100+ in total and score 25+ in each section. My chances for admission grew rapidly.
December 2, 2017, Saturday
Having printed out the Admission Ticket and grabbed a couple of pencils, I once again got to QSI International School Minsk, where this time there were much more people. This time, after the briefing, of course, in English, we were not taken to the office, but to the gym, where the desks had previously been arranged.
Until recently, I hoped that the Reading & Writing section would be easier, but a miracle did not happen - as in the preparation, I scambled through the text through pain and suffering, trying to meet the allotted time, and eventually answered something. With mathematics, it turned out to be tolerable, but as for the essay ...
I was surprised to find that you need to write it not on a computer, but with a pencil on paper. Rather, I knew about it, but somehow forgot and did not attach much importance. Since I didnât want to erase entire paragraphs later, I had to think in advance what idea and in what part I would state. The text that I had to analyze seemed very strange to me, and even at the end of my marathon from the tests with breaks in preparation, I clearly got a little tired, so I wrote this essay from ... in general, I wrote as best I could.
When I finally got out, I was happy as if I had already acted. Not because he wrote well - but because all these exams have finally ended. There was still a lot of work ahead, but no longer needed to solve heaps of meaningless tasks and parse huge texts in search of answers under the timer. So that the expectation does not bother you as much as I did in those days, we immediately transfer to the night when I received the results of my last test:
My first reaction was "it could have been worse." As expected, I failed reading (albeit not catastrophically), made a mistake in three places in mathematics and wrote an essay on 6/6/6. Wonderful. I decided that the reading shortage would be forgiven me as a foreigner with a good TOEFL, and that this part would not influence so much against the background of good enough subjects (in the end, I went there to do science, and not read letters from the founding fathers of the USA to each other) . The main thing is that after all the tests, Dobby was finally free.
December 2017
I agreed in advance with my school that in case of good test results, I will need their help in collecting documents. Someone may have problems at this stage, but I maintained fairly good relations with teachers and, in general, reacted positively to my initiative.
The following was to be obtained:
I want to give very useful advice right away: do all the documents in English . There is no point in making them in Russian, translating them into English, and even more so attesting all this for money from a professional translator.
Arriving in my hometown, the first thing I went to school and delighted everyone with the relatively successful test results. I decided to start with a transcript: in fact, this is just a statement of your grades for the last 3 years of school. I was given a flash drive with a table, in which there were my grades for each quarter, and after a couple of simple translations and frauds with tables, I got this:
From what you should pay attention to: in Belarus there is a 10-point scale, and this should be reported in advance, because not every selection committee will be able to correctly interpret the essence of your ratings. On the right side of the transcript, I posted the results of all standardized tests: I remind you that sending them> 4 costs a lot of money, and some universities allow you to send your scores along with the official transcript.
By the way, by what principle is the filing of the above documents:
And here the fun begins. Since no one from my school has ever worked with such a system, and I needed to keep the whole situation under control, I decided that the most correct way would be to do everything myself. To do this, I first started 4 e-mail accounts on Mail.ru:
Theoretically, every School Counselor and teacher has a bunch of students in this system who need to prepare documents, but in my case it was completely different. I personally controlled every stage of the filing of documents and acted on behalf of 7 (!) Completely different actors (I was soon added by my parents). If you come from the CIS, then get ready for the fact that you are most likely to have to do the same - you and only you are responsible for your receipt, and itâs much easier to hold the whole process in your hands than trying to get other people to do everything to deadlines. Moreover, you and only you will know the answers to questions that will be encountered in different parts of the Common Application.
The next step was to prepare Fee Waiver, which helped save me $ 1350 on sending profiles. It is available upon request from your school representative, in which he must explain the reason why the $ 75 Application Fee is a problem for you. You do not need to bring any proofs and attach bank statements: you just need to write the average income in your family, and there will be no questions. Exemption from the fee for paying an application is a completely legal procedure, and it should be used by everyone for whom $ 75 is really big money. Having put the seal on the resulting Fee Waiver, I sent it to PDF on behalf of my school on the admissions offices of all universities. Someone may ignore you (this is normal), but MIT answered me almost immediately:
When the applications for the wavers were sent out, the last step remained: to prepare 3 recommendations from the director and teachers. I think you will not be very surprised if I say that you also have to write these things yourself. Fortunately, my English teacher agreed to write me one of the recommendations on her own behalf, and also help with checking the rest.
Writing such letters is a separate science, and each country has its own. One of the reasons why you should try to write such recommendations yourself or at least participate in writing them is because your teachers are unlikely to have experience writing such papers for American universities. Itâs worth writing right away in English, so you donât bother with the translation later.
Key tips for writing letters of recommendation found on the Internet:
Since you will have three recommendations, you need to make sure that they do not talk about the same thing and reveal you as a person from different angles. Personally, I broke them like this:
All these letters should present you as an exceptionally strong candidate, but at the same time look realistic. I am far from an expert in this matter, so I can give only one general advice: do not rush. Such papers rarely come out ideal the first time, but you may be tempted to finish this as soon as possible and say: âAnd it will do!â Reread several times what you write and how it all adds up to the whole picture about you. Your image in the eyes of the selection committee directly depends on this.
December 2017
After I prepared all the documents from the school and letters of recommendation, the matter remained for small: write an essay.
As I said before, they are all written to special fields through the Common Application, and only MIT accepts documents through its portal. âWriting an essayâ would probably be too rude a description of what needed to be done: in fact, each of my 18 universities had their own list of questions that had to be answered in writing, keeping within a tight limit on the number of words. However, besides these questions, there is one common essay for all universities, which is part of the general Common App questionnaire. It, in fact, is the main one and requires the most time and effort.
But before we dive into writing huge canvases of text, I want to talk about another optional stage of receipt - an interview. It is optional for the reason that by no means all universities can afford to conduct interviews with a huge number of foreign applicants, and out of 18 I was offered only two interviews.
The first one was with a representative from MIT. My interviewee was a graduate student who, by chance, turned out to be very similar to Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, which only added to this whole process of soulfulness.
I did not prepare for the interview in any way, unless I thought a little over the questions that I would ask if I had such a chance. We talked quite lampily for about an hour: I talked about myself, my hobbies, why I want to go to MIT, etc. He asked about university life, scientific prospects for undergraduate students and all sorts of different things. At the end of the call, he said that he would give a good feedback, and we said goodbye. It is possible that this phrase is said to absolutely everyone, but for some reason I wanted to believe him.
There is nothing special to tell about the next interview besides the funny fact that it took me by surprise: I was visiting, and I had to talk to a Princeton representative on the phone while standing on the balcony. I donât know why, but talking on the phone in English always seemed to me much worse than video calls, although the audibility was almost the same.
To be honest, I donât know how important all these interviews play, but they seemed to me to be something created more for the applicants themselves: there is the opportunity to communicate with real university students you want to learn more about all sorts of nuances and make more conscious a choice.
Now about the essay: I calculated that in order to answer all the questions from 18 universities, I needed to write 11,000 words. On the calendar was December 27, 5 days before the deadline. It's time to start.
For your main Essay Essay essay (650 word limit), you could choose one of the following topics:
There was also an option to write something completely different, but I decided that the theme âRecount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.â How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? â It looked like a good opportunity to reveal my path from complete ignorance to the international Olympiad, with all the difficulties and excellence that met on the way. It turned out, in my opinion, pretty good. I really lived in the olympiads for the last 2 years of my school, my admission to a Belarusian university (what irony) depended on them, and leaving me just mentioning them in the form of a list of diplomas seemed something unacceptable to me.
There are many tips for writing an essay. In many ways, they intersect with those in the letters of recommendation, and I honestly can not give you better advice than to google it. The main thing is that this essay conveys your individual story - I dug quite a bit on the Internet and studied the main mistakes that applicants make: someone wrote about how cool their grandfather was and how he inspired them (this will make the admissions committee take your grandfather, not you). Someone poured too much water and went headlong into graphomania, the content of which was not so much (fortunately, I knew too little English to accidentally do this).
Checking my main essay again helped my English teacher, and it was ready before December 27th. It remained to write the answers to all other questions, which are smaller in volume (usually up to 300 words) and for the most part simpler. Here is an example of what came across to me:
Questions from the category âWhy% universityname%?â Were found on the list of every second university, so without shame and conscience I copied them and only modified them a little. In fact, many of the other questions also intersected, and after a while I slowly began to go crazy, trying not to get lost in a huge pile of topics and mercilessly copying the pieces of my beautifully written semantic pieces that could be reused.
Some universities directly asked (in forms) whether I belong to the LGBT community and offered to talk about this for a couple of hundred words. In general, given the progressive agenda of American universities, it was a great temptation to lie and compose something like an even more overwhelming story about a gay astronomer who faced Belarusian discrimination but still succeeded!
This all led me to one more thought: in addition to answering questions, you need to indicate your hobbies, achievements and all that in your Common App questionnaire. I wrote about diplomas, wrote about the fact that Duolingo Ambassador was, but most importantly: who and how will verify the accuracy of this information? No one asked me to download copies of diplomas or something like that. All things indicated that in my profile I could lie as I please and write about my nonexistent exploits and fictional hobbies.
This thought was funny. Why be the leader of a school boy scout group if you can lie about it and no one will ever know? Of course, some things can be checked, but for some reason I was firmly convinced that at least half of the essays from international students came with a lot of lies and exaggerations.
Perhaps this was the most unpleasant moment in writing an essay: you know that the competition is huge. You perfectly understand that between the mediocre student and the memorable child prodigy they will choose the second. You also understand that all your competitors are selling themselves to the fullest, and you have no choice but to enter this game and try to put every positive thing about yourself for sale.
Of course, everyone around you will tell you that you need to be yourself, but you yourself think: who needs the admissions committee - you, or a candidate who will seem stronger to them and will be remembered more than others? Itâs wonderful if these two personalities coincide, but if something taught me how to write an essay, then this is the ability to sell myself: I have never tried anywhere so much to please anyone like in that profile on December 31.
I remember a video where some of the guys involved in helping with admission spoke about the prestigious Olympiad, which was supposed to send no more than one person from school. So that their candidate could get there, they specially designed a whole school (!) With a couple of staff members and a single student.
All I am trying to convey is that when you enter the best universities, you will compete with young scientists, businessmen, and even to hell with whom. You just have to stand out at least something.
Of course, in this matter we must not overdo it and create a living image in which they will first of all believe. I did not write about what was not there, but I caught myself thinking that many things were deliberately exaggerating and constantly trying to guess where to show âweaknessâ and where not to show contrast.
After long days of writing, copy-paste and continuous analysis, my MyMIT profile was finally completed:
And on the Common App too:
Only a few hours were left until the new year. All documents have been sent. The realization of what just happened did not reach me right away: too much energy had to be given in the last couple of days. I did everything in my power, and most importantly, I kept my promise to myself on that sleepless night in the hospital. I reached the finals. All that remained was to wait. Nothing depended on me anymore.
March 2018
Several months have passed. In order not to be bored, I enrolled in front-end development courses at one of the local galleys, became moody a month later, and then for some reason took up machine learning and generally had fun as I could.
In fact, after the New Year's deadline, I had one more thing to do: fill out the CSS Profile, ISFAA and other forms about my family's income, which were required when applying for Financial Aid. There is absolutely nothing to tell there: just carefully fill out the paper, as well as download certificates of parental income (of course, in English).
Sometimes I was visited by thoughts about what I would do if I did. The prospect of going back to first year did not seem at all a step back, but an opportunity to âstart all over againâ and a kind of rebirth. For some reason, I was sure that I was unlikely to choose computer science as my specialty - after all, I studied at it for 2 years, although this was not known to the American side. The good news is that many universities provide quite a lot of flexibility in choosing courses that interest you, as well as various cool stuff like double major. For some reason, he promised himself to take care of the Feynman physics lectures over the summer if I get to some cool place - probably because of a desire to try myself again in astrophysics outside of school olympiads.
Time flew by, and the letter that arrived on March 10 took me by surprise.
I donât know why, but most of all I wanted to get to MIT - it so happened that this university had its own portal for applicants, its own memorable hostel, a tube interviewer from TBBT and a separate place in my heart. The letter arrived at 8 oâclock in the evening, and as soon as I threw it into our conversation with MIT Applicants (by the way, she managed to move to Telegram during the receipt), I realized that more than a year has passed since its inception (12/27/2016). It was a long way, and now I was not waiting for the results of the next test: in the next few weeks the outcome of my whole story, which had arisen on an ordinary evening in India in December 2016, should have been decided.
But before I could put myself in the proper mood, I suddenly received another letter:
That's what I did not expect that very evening. Without thinking twice, I opened the portal.
Alas, I did not enter kaltech. However, this was not too big a surprise for me - the number of their students is much smaller than in other universities, and about 20 of them take international ones. "Not fate," I thought, and went to bed.
It was March 14th. The letter with the decision on MIT should have arrived at 1:28 at night, and of course I was not going to go to bed early. Finally, it appeared.
I took a deep breath.
I donât know if this was an intrigue for you, but I didnât.
Of course, it was sad, but not too bad - in the end, I still had as many as 16 universities. Sometimes my head was visited by especially bright thoughts:
Me: âIf you estimate that the admission rate for international students is somewhere around 3%, then the probability of entering at least one of the 18 universities is 42%. It's not that bad! â
My brain: âDo you understand that you are using the theory of probability incorrectly?â
Me: âI just wanted to hear something smart and calm down.â
After a couple of days, I received another letter:
It's funny, but already from the first lines of the letter it was possible to understand whether you were credited or not. If you watch those videos where people on the camera are happy to receive letters of enrollment, you will notice that they all begin with the word âCongratulations!â. There was nothing to congratulate me with.
And rejection letters kept coming. Here are a few more, for example:
I noticed that absolutely in each of them there was the same pattern:
In other words, "it is not in you." You do not need to be seven spans in your forehead to understand that such a polite answer is received by absolutely everyone who has not arrived, and even a complete idiot will hear about how well done he is and how sincerely sorry they are.
There will be absolutely nothing in your letter of refusal except your name. All that you get in the long months of your efforts and thorough preparation is a piece of hypocrisy a couple of paragraphs long, absolutely inhuman and uninformative, from which you wonât feel better. Of course, everyone would like to know the truth about what exactly made the selection committee take someone else, not you, but you will never know that either. It is important for each university to maintain a reputation, and the best way to do this is to organize a mass mailing without explaining any reasons.
The most annoying thing is that you canât even understand if someone actually read your essays. Of course, this is not announced, but by simple reasoning, we can conclude that in all top universities there are not physically enough people to pay attention to each candidate, and at least half of the applications are automatically filtered based on your tests and other criteria suitable for the university. You can put your soul into it and write the best essay in the world, but it will go into oblivion due to the fact that you wrote some SAT too poorly. And I very much doubt that this happens only in the admissions committees of undergraduate studies.
Of course, there are truths in the written part. According to the same admission officers, when it is possible to filter the pool of candidates to a tangible amount (say, at the rate of 5 people per place), then the selection process is not much different from randomization. As with many job interviews, it is difficult to predict how successful a future student will be. Given that most applicants are very smart and talented, in reality it may be much easier to toss a coin. No matter how much the selection committee wants to make the process as fair as possible, in the end, admission is a lottery, the right to participate in which, however, still needs to be earned.
March took its course, and every week I received more and more failures.
Letters came in a variety of places: at lectures, in the subway, in the hostel. I never read them to the end, because I knew very well that I would not see absolutely anything new or personal.
In those days I was quite apathetic. After refusals from koltech and MIT, I was not too upset, because I knew that there are as many as 16 universities in which you can try your luck. Each time I opened a letter with the hope that I would see inside the congratulations, and each time I found the same words there - âwe are sorryâ. That was enough.
Did I believe in myself? Perhaps yes. After the winter deadlines, for some reason there was a lot of confidence in me that I would at least go somewhere with my own set of tests, essays and achievements, but with each subsequent failure my optimism faded more and more.
Almost no one in my circle knew what was happening in my life in those weeks. For them, I have always been and remained an ordinary second-year student, without any intention of leaving school or leaving somewhere.
But one day my secret was in danger of being exposed. It was the most ordinary evening: a friend was doing some very important work on my laptop, and I was quietly pacing around the block when a notification about the next letter from the university suddenly appeared on the phone screen. The mail was just opened in the next tab, and any curious click (which is typical for my girlfriend) would immediately have torn the veil of secrecy from this event. I decided that I needed to quickly open the letter and delete it, until it attracted too much attention, but stopped halfway:
Heart beat faster. I didnât see the usual words âwe are sorryâ, I didnât see the indignation because of the huge pool of candidates or any kind of praise addressed to me, they simply and without any eyeliner told me that I did.
I donât know if it was possible to understand at least something from my facial expression at that moment - I probably didnât immediately realize that I had just read.
I could. All the failures that could come from the remaining universities no longer mattered, because no matter what happened, my life would never be the same again. To enter at least one university was my main goal, and this letter said that you can not worry further.
In addition to congratulations, the letter contained an invitation to participate in the Admitted Students Weekend - a 4-day event from NYU Shanghai, in which you could fly to China and get acquainted with your future classmates, take excursions and generally see the university itself. NYU paid for everything except the cost of the visa, but participation in the event was randomly played among students who expressed a desire to participate. After weighing the pros and cons, I registered in the lottery and won. The only thing I could not do yet was to see the amount of financial assistance that was provided to me. Some kind of bug appeared in the system, and financial assistance did not want to be displayed on the site, although I was sure that there would be the full amount from the principle meet full demonstrated need. Otherwise, enrolling me did not make sense.
Refusals from various other universities continued to come to me, but it was all the same to me. China, of course, is not America, but in the case of NYU, the training was completely in English and there was an opportunity to go to study at another campus for one year - in New York, Abu Dhabi or somewhere in Europe among partner universities. After some time, such a thing even came to me in the mail:
It was an official letter of enrollment! The envelope also included a comic passport, in English and Chinese. Although now everything can be done electronically, most universities still send out paper letters in beautiful envelopes.
The Admitted Student Weekend was supposed to take place only at the end of April, and in the meantime I just sat happy and watched various videos about NYU in order to get a better feel for the atmosphere there. The prospect of learning Chinese seemed intriguing to me rather than frightening - all graduates needed to learn it at least at the intermediate level.
Wandering around the open spaces of youtube, I came across a channel of a girl named Natasha. She herself was a NYU 3-4 year student and in one of her videos talked about her entry story. She herself passed all the tests a couple of years ago, just like me, and entered NYU Shanghai for full funding. The story of Natasha only added optimism to me, although I was surprised at how few views collect videos with such valuable information.
Time passed, and after about a week in my personal account finally appeared information about the fin. Help:
And here I am a little bit nutty. The amount I saw ($ 30,000) hardly covered half the full cost of tuition for the year. Something seems to have gone wrong. I decided to write to Natasha:
But shouldnât they just have to turn me around, knowing that I donât have that kind of money?
And here I realized where I miscalculated. NYU is almost the only university on my list that does not have the meet full demonstrated need criterion. Perhaps these things changed in the process of my receipt, but the fact remained: the shop was closed. For some time I tried to correspond with the university and asked if they would like to reconsider their decision, but everything was in vain.
Of course, I did not go to admitted students weekend. And refusals from other universities continued to go: in one day, I received 9 at once.
And nothing in these failures did not change. All the same general phrases, all the same sincere regret.
It was April 1st. Including NYU, at that time I was rejected from 17 universities - what a wonderful thing to collect. The last remaining university, Vanderbilt University, sent its solution just now. With an almost complete absence of at least any hope, I opened the letter, expecting to see a refusal there and finally close this long drawn-out story with admission. But there was no failure:
A spark of hope lit up in my chest. Waitlist is not the best thing that can happen to you, but this is not a failure. People from a whitelist begin to be recruited if the accepted students decide to go to some other university. In the case of Vanderbilt, who in one way or another was clearly not the No. 1 choice for most strong applicants, I decided that I had some chances.
Some friends of Ani were also sent to the whitelist, so it did not look like something completely hopeless. All I had to do was to confirm my interest and wait.
July 2018
It was a typical summer day at MIT. Leaving one of the instituteâs laboratories, I headed to the dormitory building, where all my belongings were already lying in one of the rooms. In theory, I could take my time and come here only in September, but decided to take the opportunity and arrive earlier as soon as they open my visa. Every day more and more international students arrived: almost immediately I met an Australian and a Mexican who, by pure chance, worked with me in the same laboratory. During the summer, even though most of the students were on vacation, life at the university was in full swing: studies, internships were carried out, and even a special group of MIT students remained who organized the reception of constantly visiting international students, gave them a tour of the campus and, in general, helped in every way in a new place.
For the remaining 2 months of the summer, I had to conduct something like my little research on the use of Deep Learning in recommendation systems. This was one of the many topics proposed by the institute, and for some reason it seemed to me very interesting and close to what I was doing in Belarus at that time. As it turned out later, for many of the children who arrived in the summer, the topic of research in one way or another affected machine learning, although these projects were quite simple and were more likely to be educational in nature. Perhaps you are already in the second paragraph interested in one obsessive question: how did I end up at MIT? Didnât I receive a letter of refusal back in mid-March? Or did I fake it on purpose to keep the intrigue?
And the answer is simple: MIT - Manipal Institute of Technology in India, in which I nevertheless ended up on a summer internship. Let's start again.
It was a typical summer day in India. The fact that this season is not the most favorable for the international Olympiad, I was convinced on my own skin: almost every day there was a shower, which always started in a matter of seconds, sometimes leaving no time even to open an umbrella.
I continued to receive messages that I was still on the Waitlist, and every couple of weeks I had to confirm my interest. Returning to the hostel and noticing another letter from them in the mailbox, I opened it and prepared to do it again:
So my story, one and a half years long, came to an end. Many thanks to everyone who has read up to this point, and I really hope that my experience has not become discouraging for you. At the end of the article, I would like to share some thoughts that arose during the writing of this article, as well as give a couple of tips to those who decide to act.
Perhaps someone is tormented by the question: what exactly was not enough for me? There is no exact answer to it, but I suspect that everything is quite banal: I was simply worse than the others. I am not a gold medalist of the intern in physics and not Dasha Navalny. I donât have any special talents, achievements or a memorable background - I am the most ordinary guy from a country unknown to the world who just decided to try his luck. I did everything in my power, but this was not enough against the background of the rest.
Why, then, after 2 years, I decided to write all this and share my failure? No matter how strange this may sound to someone, but I believe that in the CIS countries there are a huge number of talented guys (much smarter than me) who do not even suspect what opportunities they have. Entering a bachelor's degree abroad is still considered something absolutely impossible, and I really wanted to show that in reality there is nothing mythical and insurmountable in this process.
What did not work out for me does not mean at all that it will not work out for you, your friends or your children. A little about the fate of the characters featured in the article:
And finally, I want to give some general tips:
I sincerely would like this story to end with a happy ending, and my personal example would inspire you to exploits and accomplishments. I would like to leave a photograph at the end of the article against the background of MIT, as if saying to the whole world: âLook, this is possible! I succeeded, and you will succeed too! â
Alas, but not fate. Do I regret the time spent in vain? Not really. I perfectly understand that I would regret much more if I were afraid to try to implement what I really believed in. 18 failures hit hard enough on self-esteem, but even in this case, one should not forget about why you are doing all this. Studying at a prestigious university by itself, although it is a wonderful experience, should not be your ultimate goal. Do you want to gain knowledge and change the world for the better, as absolutely every applicant writes in his essays? Then the lack of a fashionable diploma from the ivy league should not stop you. There are many more universities available, and there are plenty of free books, courses, and lectures on the Internet to help you learn a lot from what you would be taught at Harvard. Personally, I am very grateful to the Open Data Science community.for his enormous contribution to open education and the ultimate concentration of smart people who can be asked questions. Anyone who is interested in machine learning and data analysis, but for some reason is still not there, I recommend joining immediately.
And for each of you who are eager to act, I want to quote from the answer of MIT:
The main purpose of writing this article was not to provide a full-fledged guide to entering one of the best universities in the world, but to share our own experience with all the discoveries, impressions, experiences and other not very useful things. Nevertheless, I tried to describe in as much detail as possible every step that anyone who decides to choose this difficult and risky path will have to face. It turned out quite a lot and meaningful, so stock up on tea in advance and sit back - my year-long story begins.
Small note
The names of some characters have been deliberately changed. Chapter 1 is an introduction and talks about how I got to such a life. You will lose little if you miss it.
Chapter 1. Prologue
December 2016
Day three
It was a typical winter morning in India. The sun had not yet really managed to rise above the horizon, and I and a bunch of people with the same type of backpacks were already loading on buses at the exit from the National Institute of Science, Education and Research (NISER). Here, near the city of Bhubaneswar in the state of Orissa, the 10th International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics was held.
We walked the third day without the Internet and gadgets. According to the rules of the competition, it was forbidden to use them for all ten days of the Olympiad in order to avoid the leakage of tasks from the organizers. However, almost no one felt this shortage on themselves: we were entertained in every way with events and excursions, one of which we all were headed together now.
There were a lot of people, and they came from all over the planet. When we looked at another Buddhist monument ( Dhauli Shanti Stupa ), built long ago by King Ashoka, Mexicans Geraldine and Valeria approached me, who collected the phrase âI love youâ in all possible languages ââin a notebook (at that time it was already about twenty) . I decided to do my part and wrote our âI love youâ along with a transcription that Valeria immediately uttered with a funny Spanish accent.
âI didnât think so the first time I heard these words from a girl,â I thought, laughed, and returned to the tour.
The December International Olympiad looked more like a protracted prank: all the members of our team studied for several months as programmers, were puzzled by the upcoming session and generally forgot astronomy. As a rule, such events take place in the summer, but because of the annual rainy season, it was decided to postpone the competition to the beginning of winter.
The first round began only tomorrow, but almost all the teams were here from the very first day. All but one - Ukraine. Ian (my teammate), as representatives of the CIS, were most concerned about their fate and therefore immediately noticed a new face among the crowd of participants. The Ukrainian team turned out to be a girl named Anya - the rest of her teammates could not get due to the sudden transfer of the flight, and they could not or did not want to spend even more money. Having captured her and the Pole with us, we together went in search of the guitar. At that moment, I could not imagine how fateful this chance encounter would turn out to be.
Day four.
I would never have thought that it is cold in India. The clock showed late evening, but the observation tour was in full swing. We were handed out leaflets with assignments (there were three of them, but the first was canceled due to the weather) and were given five minutes to read, after which we unanimously proceeded to a clean field and began to be near telescopes. We were supposed to set another 5 minutes before the start so that our eyes got used to the night sky. The first task was to visit the Pleiades and arrange the brightness of 7 stars, missed or marked with a cross.
As soon as we went outside, everyone immediately began to look for the treasured point in the starry sky. What was our surprise when almost in the same place in the sky was ... a full moon! Having been delighted with the prudence of the organizers, a guy from Kyrgyzstan (their whole team shook hands with me at absolutely every meeting several times a day) together tried to make out at least something. Through pain and suffering, we still managed to find the very M45, and then disperse through telescopes.
Each had his own personal inspector, for one task - five minutes. For extra minutes, a fine was expected, so there was clearly no time to linger. Thanks to the equipment of Belarusian astronomy, in my life I looked at the telescope as much as 2 times (the first of them was on someoneâs balcony), so I immediately asked the expert to take the time and set to work. The moon and the object were almost at the zenith, so I had to dodge and crouch to visit the treasured cluster. It thrice ran away from me, constantly hiding from sight, but with the help of an additional two minutes I managed and mentally patted my shoulder. The second task was to use a stopwatch and a lunar filter to measure the diameter of the moon and one of its seas, detecting the time of passage through the telescope lens.
Having dealt with everything, with a sense of accomplishment, I got on the bus. It was late, everyone was tired, and by a lucky chance I was in place next to a 15-year-old American. The Portuguese is located in the back seats of the bus with a guitar (I'm not a big fan of stereotypes, but all the Portuguese there knew how to play guitars, were charisma and sang just great). Having penetrated the music and the magic of the atmosphere, I decided that I should socialize and initiate a conversation:
âWhat is the wether like in Texas?â My English said.
âSorry?â
âThe wether ...â I repeated less confidently, realizing that I had sat in a puddle.
âOhhh, the weather ! You know, it's kinda ... "
This was my first experience with a real American, and I screwed up almost instantly. The 15-year-old's name was Hagan, and the Texas accent made his speech a bit unusual. I learned from Hagan that, despite his young age, it was not the first time he participated in such events and that the training of their team took place at MIT. At that time, I had little idea what it was â I heard the name of the university several times in series or films, but that was where my meager knowledge ended. From the stories of my fellow traveler, I learned more about what kind of place it was and why he plans to go there (it seemed that the question of whether he would do it did not bother him at all). My mental list of âcool American universities,â which included perhaps Harvard and Caltech, was replenished with another name.
After a couple of topics, we shut up. Outside the window there was total darkness, melodious sounds of a guitar were heard from the rear seats, and your humble servant, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, went into a stream of incoherent thoughts.
Day Six
From morning to dinner the most merciless part of the Olympiad took place - the theoretical tour. I flunked him, it seems, a little less than completely. The tasks were solvable, but there was a catastrophic lack of time and, to be honest, brains. Nevertheless, I was not very upset and did not spoil my appetite before dinner, which went immediately after the end of the stage. Filling the tray with another portion of spicy Indian food on the buffet table, I landed on an empty seat. I donât remember what happened next - either Anya and I were sitting at the same table, or I just walked by, but out of the corner of my ear I heard that she was going to enter the USA.
And here I was triggered. Even before entering the university, I often found myself thinking that I would like to live in another country, and from afar I was interested in education abroad. To enter a master's program somewhere in the USA or Europe seemed to me the most logical step, and from many of my friends I heard that you can get a grant and study there for free. An additional interest in me was aroused by the fact that Anya clearly did not look like a person who entered graduate school after school. At that moment, she was in 11th grade, and I realized that I could learn a lot from her. In addition, as a master of social interactions, I always needed an iron excuse to talk to people or call them somewhere, and I decided that this was my chance.
Having gathered strength and having gained confidence in myself, I decided to catch it after dinner alone (it didnât work out) and invite me to take a walk. It was awkward, but she agreed.
Towards evening, we went to the hill to the center of meditation, from which a beautiful view of the campus and mountains in the distance. When you look back at these events after so many years, you realize that anything can become a turning point in a personâs life, even if it is an overheard conversation in the dining room. If I had then chosen another place, had not dared to speak, and this article would never have been published.
I learned from Ani that she was a member of the Ukraine Global Scholars organization, founded by a Harvard graduate and preparing talented Ukrainians to enter the best American schools (grades 10-12) and universities (4 years of undergraduate studies). The organizationâs mentors, who have come this way themselves, helped with collecting documents, passing tests (which they themselves paid for), and writing an essay. Instead, a contract was signed with the program participants, which obliged them to return to Ukraine and work there for 5 years after receiving an education. They took there, of course, by no means all, but most of those who reached the finals successfully entered one or several universities / schools.
The main revelation for me was that itâs quite possible for US schools and universities to enter and study for free, even if this is a bachelor's degree.
The first reaction on my part: âBut what, was that possible?â
It turned out you can. Moreover, in front of me was a man who had already collected all the necessary documents and was well versed in the matter. The only difference was that Anya went to school (this is often used as a preparatory stage before a university), but from her I also learned about the success stories of many people who worked their way to several Ivy League universities at once. I realized that a huge number of talented children from the CIS did not enter the United States, not because they were not smart enough, but simply because they did not even suspect that this was possible.
We sat on a hill in the center of meditation and met the sunset. The red disk of the sun, slightly obscured by the passing clouds, quickly descended over the mountain. Officially, this sunset became the most beautiful sunset in my memory and laid the foundation for a new, completely different stage in my life.
Chapter 2. Where is the money, Lebowski?
At this wonderful moment, I stop tormenting you with stories from my diary of the Olympiad, and we move on to the more reverent side of the issue. If you live in the United States or have long been interested in this topic, then most of the information in this chapter will not surprise you. However, for a simple guy from a province like me, this was that news.
Let's dig a little deeper into the financial aspect of state education. For example, take Harvard, known to everyone. The cost of a year of study at the time of writing is $ 73,800- $ 78,200 . Iâll immediately notice that I am from a simple
By the way, many Americans cannot afford this cost of education, and there are several main ways to cover expenses:
- Student Loan aka student loan or student loan. There are public and private. This option is quite popular among Americans, but it does not suit us, if only for the reason that for most international students it is not available.
- Scholarship aka scholarship - a certain amount paid by a private or public organization to a student right away or in parts based on his achievements.
- Grant - unlike scholarships, which in most cases are merit-based, paid on a need-based basis - they will give you exactly as much money as you do not have enough to pay.
- Personal Resource and Student Work - the money of the student, his family and the amount that he can potentially cover by working for some time on campus. Quite a popular topic for applicants for PhD and generally US citizens, but you and I should not count on this option.
Scholarships and grants are often used interchangeably and are the main way to receive funding for international students and US citizens.
Although the funding system is unique to each university, there is about the same list of frequently asked questions, which I will try to answer below.
Even if I get paid, how will I live in America?
It is for this reason that I entered the universities of California. Local laws are quite loyal to the homeless, and the cost of a tent and sleeping bag ...
Okay, joking. It was an absurd tip to the fact that American universities are divided into two types according to the completeness of the funding provided:
- Meet full demonstrated need (full funding)
- Do not meet full demonstrated need (partial funding)
Universities themselves determine what âfull fundingâ means to them. There is no single American standard, but in most cases you will be covered with studies, accommodation, meals, money for textbooks and moving - everything you need for a life and comfortable study.
If you look at the statistics of the same Harvard, it turns out that the average cost of training (for you), taking into account all types of financial aid, is already $ 11.650 :
The grant amount for each student is calculated based on his own income and his family's income. In short: to each according to his needs. On the website of universities, there are usually special calculators that allow you to estimate the size of the financial package that you will receive if you enroll.
The following question arises:
But how to avoid paying at all?
The policy (governing?) Of which of the applicants can count on full funding is determined by each university independently and posted on the site.
In the case of Harvard, everything is very simple:
âIf your familyâs income is less than $ 65,000 per year, you pay nothing.â
Somewhere on this line, the pattern breaks for most people from the CIS. If someone thinks I took this figure out of my head, here's a screenshot from the Harvard official website:
Particular attention should be paid to the last line - not all universities in principle are ready to provide such generous funding to international students.
Again, I repeat: there is no single standard for what full demonstrated need includes, but in most cases this is exactly what you think.
And so we smoothly approached the most interesting question ...
Won't universities enroll only those who have money to study?
Perhaps this is not entirely true. The reasons for this are discussed in more detail at the end of the chapter, but for now, itâs time for you and me to introduce another term.
Need-blind admission - a policy in which the financial situation of the applicant is not taken into account when deciding on his admission.
As Anna explained to me at one time, need-blind universities have two hands: the first one decides whether to enroll you based on your academic performance and personal qualities, and only then the second hand reaches into your pocket and decides how much money to give you.
In the case of need-sensitive or need-aware universities, your ability to pay for your studies will directly affect whether you will be enrolled or not. It is worth noting immediately a few possible misconceptions:
- Need-blind does not mean that the university will fully cover your tuition costs.
- Even if need-blind applies to international students, this does not mean that you have equal chances with the Americans: by definition, less places will be allocated for you, and the competition will be huge.
Now that you and I have figured out which universities are, let's create a list of criteria that the university of our dreams should meet:
- Must provide full funding ( meet full demonstrated need)
- Should not take into account the financial situation when deciding on admission ( need-blind )
- Both of these policies apply to international students.
You are probably thinking now: âIt would be nice to have a list where you could search for universities in these categories.â
Fortunately, such a list already exists .
It is unlikely that this will greatly surprise you, but only seven are among the âidealâ candidates from all over the USA:
It is worth remembering that, in addition to financing, when choosing a university, one should not forget about many other factors that also play a role. In chapter 4, I will give a detailed list of places I entered, and tell you why I chose them.
At the end of the chapter, I would like to speculate a little on one rather often raised topic ...
Despite official information and all other arguments, many people (especially in connection with the arrival of Dasha Navalny at Stanford) have a reaction:
All this lies! Free cheese happens only in a mousetrap. Do you seriously believe that someone will free then bring you from abroad, if only you study?
Miracles do not really happen. Most American universities really will not pay for you, but this does not mean that there are none at all . Let's look again at the example of Harvard and MIT:
- The Harvard University Fund, assembled as a single unit of 13,000 individual funds for 2017 amounted to $ 37 billion. Some of this budget is allocated annually for operating expenses, including professors' salaries and student grants. Most of the money is invested under the management of the Harvard Management Company (HMC) with a return on investment of an average of more than 11%. Following him are the funds of Princeton and Yale, each of which has its own investment company. At the time of writing this article, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Investment Management Company 3 hours as published a report for 2019, with a fund of $ 17.4 billion and roi 8.8%.
- Most of the money is donated by wealthy graduates and philanthropists.
- According to MIT statistics, students pay for tuition only 10% of the universityâs profits.
- Money is made, including on private research, commissioned by large companies.
The chart below shows what the MIT profit consists of:
Iâm all this to what - with a special desire, universities in principle can afford to make education free, although this will not be a sustainable development strategy. As a quote from one of the investment firms says:
The costs of the fund should be large enough to ensure that the university allocates the right resources to its human and physical capital, but not at the expense of the ability of future generations to do the same.They can and will invest in you if they notice the potential. The numbers above confirm this.
It is easy to guess that the competition in such places is serious: the best universities want the best students and attract them by all means. Of course, no one has canceled the receipt of a bribe: if the father of the applicant decides to donate a couple of million dollars to the university fund, this will surely redistribute the chances in an unfair way. On the other hand, for these few millions you can fully cover the training of a dozen geniuses who will build your future, so who is the loser from this - decide for yourself.
Summing up, most people for some reason sincerely believe that the main obstacle between them and the best universities in the USA is the overwhelming cost of training. And the truth is simple: you will act first, and grandmas are not a problem.
Chapter 3. Dementia and courage
March 2017
The spring semester is in full swing, and I'm in the hospital with pneumonia. I donât know how it happened - I walked along the street, didnât touch anyone, and then suddenly lay down for several weeks. Not having reached just a bit before my coming of age, I found myself in the children's department, where, in addition to the ban on laptops, an atmosphere of stagnation and unbearable melancholy reigned.
Trying to somehow distract myself from the constant droppers and oppressive walls of the chamber, I decided to plunge into the world of fiction and began to read âThe Trilogy of the Ratâ by Haruki Murakami. It was a mistake. Although I forced myself to finish the first book, I did not have enough mental health for the other two. Never try to escape from reality into a world that is even more despondent than yours. I caught myself thinking that since the beginning of the year I have not read anything except my diary from the time of the Olympiad.
Speaking of the Olympics. Unfortunately, I did not bring any medals, but I brought a storehouse of valuable information that I urgently needed to share with someone.Almost immediately after arrival, I wrote to a couple of my school friends, Olympiads, who, by coincidence, were also interested in studying abroad. After a short meeting in a cafe on the eve of the new year, we began to explore the issue more deeply. We even had a conversation called âMIT Applicantsâ, in which the communication was only in English, although out of the three, only I did.
Armed with Google, I began my search. I came across a lot of videos and articles about graduate and postgraduate studies, but I quickly found out that there is practically no normal information about entering the bachelor's degree from the CIS. All that was found then was terribly superficial âguidesâ with a list of tests and zero references to the fact that, in fact, you can get a grant.
After a while, I came across an article by Oleg from Ufawho shared his experience joining MIT.
Although there was no happy end in it, the most important thing was the real story of a living person who went through it all from beginning to end. Such articles on the Internet were rare, and during the time I received it, I scanned it about five times. Oleg, if you read this - hello to you and many thanks for the motivation!
Despite the initial fuse, during the semester, thoughts of my adventure under the pressure of the lab and social life lost their significance and receded into the background. All that I did then to realize my dream, I signed up for English three times a week, because of which I often slept for several hours and ended up in the hospital, where we are now.
On the calendar was the eighth of March. My unlimited Internet was unbearably slow, but somehow managed to cope with social networks, and for some reason I decided to send one of the free gifts on VKontakte to Anya, although we did not communicate with her since January.
Word for word, we talked about life and I found out that in a few days she should receive answers regarding her admission. Although there are no strict rules in this regard, most American schools and universities publish decisions at about the same time.
Every year, Americans look forward to mid-March with impatience, and many write down their reaction to letters from universities, which may turn out to be both congratulations and refusals. If you are interested in how it looks, then I suggest youtube through the query âCollege Decision Reactionsâ - be sure to look to get a feel for the atmosphere. Especially for you, I even picked up a particularly striking example:
That day we talked with Anya until nightfall. I again clarified what things I would have to hand over and whether I correctly imagined the whole process. He asked a bunch of stupid questions, weighed everything and just tried to understand if I had any chances. In the end, she went to bed, and I lay for a long time and could not sleep. Night is the only time in this hell when you can get rid of the endless cry of children and collect thoughts about the important. And there were many thoughts:
What will I do next? Do I need all this? Will it work for me?
Probably, such words sounded in the head of absolutely every healthy person who had ever decided on such an adventure.
It is worth paying attention once again to the current situation. I am an ordinary first-year student at a Belarusian university, who is overcoming the second semester and somehow trying to pull up her English. My goal is an exorbitant goal - to enter the first year at a good American university. I didnât consider the option of transferring somewhere: for transfer students, funding is almost not allocated, there are much fewer places, and in general I need to break my university, so the chances in my case tended to zero. I perfectly understood that if I did, it would be only for the first year in the fall of next year. Why do I need all this?
Everyone answers this question in their own way, but I saw for myself the following advantages:
- The Harvard diploma was clearly better than the diploma of the place where I studied.
- Education too.
- An invaluable experience living in another country and finally free English.
- Communication. According to Ani, this is almost the main reason that everyone comes - the smartest people from all over the world will study with you, many of whom will later become millionaires, presidents and blah blah blah.
- A great opportunity to once again be in that multicultural atmosphere of smart and purposeful people from all over the world, into which I plunged into the international Olympiad and which I sometimes missed.
And here, when drooling joyfully begins to drain onto the pillow from the anticipation of happy student everyday life, another sarcastic question creeps up: do I have any chances?
Well, everything is not so clear here. It should be borne in mind that in the best American universities there is no system of âpassing pointsâ or a list of points for which you are guaranteed to be enrolled. Moreover, the selection committee never comments on its decisions, which makes it impossible to understand what exactly led to the refusal or admission. Keep this in mind when you come across the services of âpeople who know what to do and will help you for a modest amount.â
Success stories are too few to clearly judge who will be taken and who is not. Of course, if you are a doppelgĂ€nger without hobbies and with poor English, then your chances tend to zero, but what if you? If you are a gold medalist at the International Physics Olympiad, then the universities themselves will begin to contact you. Arguments like âI know a guy who has a * list of achievements *, and he wasnât taken! So, they wonât take you either â, they donât work either. If only because the criteria in addition to academic performance and achievements are much greater:
- How much money is allocated for scholarships to international students this year.
- What a competition this year.
- The way you write your essays and be able to âp (p) give yourselfâ - many ignore this point, but it is extremely important for the selection committee (which literally everyone says).
- Your nationality. Itâs no secret that universities are actively trying to maintain diversity among their students and are more likely to take people from underrepresented countries (for this reason, African applicants will be easier to do than Chinese or Hindus, who are annually huge flow)
- Who exactly will be this year in the selection committee. Do not forget that they are also people and the same candidate can make a completely different impression on different university employees.
- Which universities and specialties you apply to.
- And a million others.
As you can see, there are too many random factors in the admission process. In the end, they will judge âwhich candidate is neededâ there, and your task is to prove yourself to the maximum. What exactly made me believe in myself?
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- 11 . , , â â. : , X . - - , , . , : , , , .
- Unlike Oleg, I was going to not repeat his mistakes and apply to several (at the end of 18) universities at once. This significantly increases the likelihood of success in at least one of them.
- Since the very idea of ââentering the USA from Belarus seemed crazy to me, I was almost sure that I would not meet much competition among compatriots. Hoping this is not worth it, but unspoken ethnic / national quotas could also play into my hands.
In addition to all this, I did my best to at least roughly compare myself with the acquaintances of Ani or Oleg from the article. I did not derive much benefit from this, but in the end I decided that on the basis of my academic achievements and personal qualities, I have at least some non-zero probability of going somewhere.
But this is not enough.All these ghostly chances could appear only on the condition that I would ideally pass all the tests that I need to prepare for, write excellent essays, prepare all the documents, including teachers' recommendations and translations of grades, do not do any stupid things and have time for everything deadlines on the eve of the winter session. And all for what - to give up your current university halfway and enter the first year again? Since I am not a citizen of Ukraine, I will not be able to become part of the UGS, but I will compete with them. I will have to go all the way all the way from beginning to end, hiding the fact of my studies at the university and not understanding whether I am moving in the right direction. I have to kill a lot of time and effort, spend a lot of money - and all this only in order to get a chance to fulfill a dream that a couple of months ago was not even a trace. Is it worth itIndeed?
I could not answer this question. However, in addition to dreams of a brighter future, a much stronger and obsessive feeling arose in me that I could not get rid of - the fear that I would miss my chance and regret it.
No, the worst thing is that I will never even know if I really had this opportunity to radically change my life. I was afraid that everything would be in vain, but I was even more afraid to frighten in the face of the unknown and miss the moment.
That night I promised myself: no matter what it costs me, I will go to the end. Let absolutely every university to which I submit documents refuse me, but I will achieve this refusal. Dementia and courage overwhelmed your faithful storyteller at that hour, but in the end he calmed down and went to bed.
After a couple of days, I got this message in the LAN. The game was on.
Chapter 4. Making Lists
August 2017
Having returned from numerous travels and having a rest from the session, I decided that it was time to start doing something before the studies began. First of all, I had to decide on the list of places I was going to go to.
The most recommended strategy, which is often found, including in the guides for graduate studies, is to choose N universities, 25% of which will be âUniversities of your dreamsâ (like the same ivy league), half will be âaverageâ, and the remaining 25 % will be safe options in case you fail to get into the first two groups. The number N usually varies from 8 to 10, depending on your budget (more on that later) and the time you are willing to spend on preparing applications. In general, this is a good method, but in the case of me he had one fatal flaw ...
Most middle and weak universities simply do not provide full funding for international students. Let us recall once again which universities from chapter 2 are our ideal candidates:
- Need-blind.
- Meet full demonstrated need.
- International Students are eligible for No. 1 and No. 2.
Based on this list , only 7 universities across America meet all three criteria. If you filter out those that do not fit my profile, only Harvard, MIT, Yale and Princeton will remain out of seven (I rejected Amherst College because it was described on Russian Wikipedia as a âprivate liberal arts universityâ, although in fact there there is everything that I needed).
Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton ... What connects all these places? Right!They are very, very hard to get at all for everyone, including international students. According to one of the many statistics, the admisson rate in the undergraduate MIT is 6.7%. In the case of international students, this figure drops to 3.1% or 32 people per place. Not bad, right? Even if we omit the first paragraph from the search criteria, the harsh truth still opens up to us: to qualify for full funding, you have no choice but to enter the most prestigious universities . Of course, in all the rules there are exceptions, but at the time of my receipt I did not find them.
When it becomes approximately clear where you want to go, the algorithm for further actions is as follows:
- Visit the universityâs website, which is usually google from the first request. In the case of MIT, this is www.mit.edu .
- , ( computer science /).
- Undergraduate Admissions Financial Aid , . .
- â FAQ , â2. ( WARNING! undergraduate () graduate ( PhD) admissions. , , .. graduate students ).
- - , . MIT sfs@mit.edu financial aid mitintl@mit.edu international admissions (, ).
- Make sure that you have looked well for information and read all possible FAQs before resorting to step 5. There is nothing wrong with asking, but it is very likely that most of your questions already have answers.
- Find out a list of everything you need to provide for admission from another country and in order to apply for fin. help. As you will soon realize, almost all universities have the same requirements, but this does not mean that they do not need to be read at all. Very often, representatives of the selection committee themselves write that âa test called X is very undesirable, itâs better to pass all of Yâ.
All I can advise at this stage is do not be lazy and do not be afraid to ask questions. Studying your abilities is the most important stage of admission, and with a high probability you will spend several days sorting it out.
By the time of the deadline, I entered 18 universities:
- Brown university
- Columbia university
- Cornell university
- Dartmouth college
- Harvard university
- Princeton University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Yale university
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
- Stanford University
- New York University (including NYU Shanghai)
- Duke University (including Duke-NUS College in Singapore)
- University of Chicago
- Northwestern university
- John Hopkins University
- Vanderbilt university
- Tufts university
The first 8 are Ivy League universities, and all 18 are in the top 30 universities in the United States by National Universities rating. So it goes.
The next thing was to figure out what tests and documents are needed to submit to each of the above places. After long wanderings around university sites, it turned out that the list was something like this.
- Fully completed e-mail application form.
- Results of standardized tests (SAT, SAT Subject and ACT).
- The result of the English proficiency test (TOEFL, IELTS and others).
- A transcript of school grades for the past 3 years in English, with signatures and seals.
- Documents on the financial condition of your family, if you are applying for funding (CSS Profile)
- Letters of recommendation from teachers.
- Your essays on topics suggested by the university.
It's simple, isn't it? Now more about the first points.
Application form
For all universities except MIT, this is a single form called Common Application. In some universities, alternatives are available, but there is no point in using them. The entire process of joining MIT goes through their MyMIT portal.
The cost of applying to each university is $ 75.
SAT, SAT Subject and ACT
All of these are standardized American tests of the type of the Russian Unified State Examination or the Belarusian Central Testing Center. SAT is a bit of the most general math and English test, and is required by all universities except MIT.
SAT Subject tests deeper knowledge in a subject field, for example, physics, mathematics, biology. In most universities, they are indicated as optional, but this does not mean that they do not need to be taken . Itâs critical for you and me to confirm that we are smart, so itâs imperative that everyone who is planning to enter the United States pass SAT Subjects. Usually everyone passes 2 tests each, in my case they were physics and mathematics 2. But more on that later.
When entering the MIT, you do not need to pass the usual SAT (TOEFL instead), but 2 subject tests are mandatory.
ACT is such an alternative to regular SAT. I did not give it, and I do not advise you.
TOEFL, IELTS and other English tests
If you have not studied in the English-language school for the past few years, absolutely everywhere you will require a certificate of knowledge of the English language. It is worth noting that the test of knowledge of English is the only test where in many universities there is a mandatory minimum score that you need to score.
Which test of all should I choose?
TOEFL. At least for the reason that many universities do not accept IELTS and other analogues.
What is the minimum TOEFL score needed for my application to be reviewed?
Each university has its own requirements, but in most of them at the time of my admission they asked 100/120. The threshold score in MIT is 90, the recommended one is 100. Most likely, over time, the rules will change and in places you will not even meet any âpassing scoreâ, but I highly recommend not to fail this test.
Does it matter if I pass the test at 100 or 120?
With a very high probability, no. Any point from a hundred will be good enough, so it does not make much sense to retake the test in order to beat out the speed sooner.
Registration for tests
To summarize, I needed to pass SAT, SAT Subjects (2 tests) and TOEFL. As subjects on subjects, I chose Physics and Mathematics 2.
Unfortunately, making the admission process will not work completely free. Tests cost money, and for international students no waivers are supposed to be taken for free. So how much is all this fun ?:
- SAT with Essay - $ 112. (65 $ test + 47 $ international fees).
- SAT Subjects - $ 117 ($ 26 registration + $ 22 each test + $ 47 international fees).
- TOEFL - $ 205 (this is at the time of delivery in Minsk, but in general the prices are)
Total comes out $ 434 for everything. Together with each test, 4 free sendings of your results directly to those places that you specify are attached to you as a gift. If you have already researched university sites, you may have noticed that in the section with the necessary tests they always give their TOEFL and SAT code.
Absolutely every university has such codes, and 4 of them you need to specify when registering. Oddly enough, you have to pay for sending to each additional university. One TOEFL Score Report will cost you $ 20, for SAT with Essay and SAT Subjects for $ 12.
By the way, I couldnât resist and didnât spoil you now: they also take money for sending each CSS Profile, which is needed to confirm that you are poor and need financial help from the university! $ 25 for the first and $ 16 for each subsequent.
So, to summarize another small financial result when entering 18 universities:
- Testing will cost $ 434
- Filing - $ 75 each - in the amount of $ 1350
- Send CSS Profile, SAT & SAT Subject Reports, as well as TOEFL to each university - ($ 20 + 2 * 12 $ + $ 16) = $ 60 - in total it will cost somewhere around $ 913 if you subtract the first 4 free universities and take into account cost of the first CSS Profile.
Total admission will cost you $ 2697 . But do not rush to close the article!
Of course I did not pay that much. In total, my admission to 18 universities cost $ 750 (400 of them I once gave for tests, another 350 - to send the results and CSS Profile). A nice bonus is that you do not need to give this money in one payment. My admission process lasted six months, I paid for tests in the summer, and for sending the CSS Profile in January.
If the amount of $ 2700 seems tangible enough to you, then you can absolutely legally ask universities to provide you with Fee Waiver, which allows you not to pay $ 75 for sending an application. In my case, I got a waver in all 18 universities and did not pay anything. More on how to do this in the following chapters.
There are also wavers for TOEFL and SAT, however, they are no longer distinguished by universities, but by the CollegeBoard and ETS organizations themselves, and unfortunately we are not available to us (international students). You can try to trick them, but I didnât.
As for sending Score Reports, here you have to negotiate with each university separately. In short, you can ask them to accept the unofficial test results on one sheet together with the grades, and in the case of enrollment - to confirm. Somewhere 90% of universities agreed, so on average for each additional university they had to pay only $ 16 (and even then, some universities like Princeton and MIT take other financial forms).
To summarize, the minimum cost of admission is the cost of passing tests ($ 434, if you are not an Englishman and have not passed SAT before). For each additional university you will most likely have to pay $ 16.
More information about tests and registration here:
SAT & SAT Subject - www.collegeboard.org
TOEFL - www.ets.org/toefl
Chapter 5. Getting Started
August 2017
Having decided on the list of universities (at that time there were 7-8 of them) and realizing which tests needed to be passed, I immediately decided to register for them. Since TOEFL is quite a popular thing, I easily found a test center in Minsk (based on the Streamline language school). The exam takes place several times a month, however, it is better to register in advance - all places may be occupied.
Registration with SAT was more complicated. Outside of the USA, the exam took place only a few times a year (I was very lucky that it was generally conducted in Belarus), and of the nearest dates there were only two: October 7 and December 2. I decided to take the TOEFL somewhere in November, since the results usually take from 2 weeks to a month to get to universities.
By the way, about the choice of dates: usually when you enter American universities there are two ways to submit:
- Early Action - early submission of documents. The deadline for it is usually November 1, and the result you will get in January. This option usually assumes that you already know exactly where you want, and therefore many universities oblige you to enter only one university for early action. I do not know how strictly controlled the observance of this rule is, but it is better not to cheat.
- Regular Action is a regular deadline, as a rule it is everywhere on January 1.
I wanted to go to the Early Action at MIT for the reasons that when considering the Early Action, most of the budget for international students has not yet been spent, and there will be more chances to get there. But, again, these are rumors and conjectures - official university statistics are trying to convince you that there is no difference in which of the deadlines to act, but who knows how it really is ...
In any case, by the deadlines by November 1 I didnât have time in any way, so I decided not to curry favor and act like everyone else - according to Regular Action until January 1.
Based on all this, I signed up for the following dates:
- SAT Subjects (Physics & Math 2) - November 4.
- TOEFL - November 18th.
- SAT with Essay - December 2.
It was 3 months to prepare for everything, and 2 of them went in parallel with the semester.
Having estimated the approximate amount of work, I realized that you need to start preparing right now. There are quite a few stories on the Internet about Russian schoolchildren who, thanks to the greatest Soviet education system, are carrying American tests to the nines with their eyes closed - and so, I'm not one of them. Since I enrolled in my Belarusian university through a diploma, I practically did not prepare for the CT and for two years I forgot everything. The main directions for development were three:
- English (for TOEFL, SAT and essay writing)
- Math (for SAT and SAT Subject)
- Physics (SAT Subject only)
English at that time was somewhere at the B2 level. The spring courses were a great success, and I felt quite confidently right up until the moment I began to prepare.
Sat with essay
What is so special about this test? Now let's figure it out. I note that until 2016 the "old" version of SAT was surrendered, which you can still stumble on training sites. Naturally, I handed over and will talk about a new one.
In total, the test consists of 3 parts:
1. Math , which in turn also consists of 2 sections. The tasks are quite simple, but the problem is that there are too many of them. The material itself is elementary, but itâs very easy to make a mistake by inattention or to understand something wrong in a limited time, so I would not recommend writing it without preparation. The first part is without a calculator, the second is with it. The calculations, again, are elementary, but sly instances are rarely found.
What annoyed me the most was text tasks. Americans like to give something in the spirit of "Peter bought 4 apples, Jake 5, and the distance from Earth to the Sun is 1 AU ... Count how many apples ...". There is nothing to solve, but you need to spend time and attention reading the conditions in English to understand what they want from you (believe me, in a limited time this is not as easy as it seems!). In total, the mathematical sections contain 55 questions, which take 80 minutes.
How to prepare: Khan Academy is your friend and teacher. There are a lot of trial tests that are made specifically for preparing for the SAT, as well as instructional videos on all the necessary math. I always advise you to start with tests, and then finish what you did not know or forget. The main thing you should learn is to quickly solve simple problems.
2. Evidence-Based Reading & Writing . It is also divided into 2 sections: Reading and Writing. If about mathematics I didnât worry about the word at all (although I knew that I would fall inadvertently), then this section made me depressed at first glance.
In Reading, you need to read a huge number of texts and answer questions about them, and in Writing, do the same and insert the necessary words / swap sentences to make it logical and so on. The problem is that this section of the test is fully designed for Americans who write, speak and read books in English all their lives. The fact that this is your second language does not bother anyone. You will have to take this test along with them, although you will obviously be in an unequal position. Honestly, quite a lot of Americans manage to write this section poorly. It still remains a mystery to me.
Every fifth text is a historical document from the history of the formation of the United States, where the language used is particularly elegant. There are also texts on near-scientific subjects and excerpts straight from fiction, where you will sometimes curse the eloquence of the authors. They will show you the word and offer to choose the most suitable synonym for the style of 4 options, while you do not know any of them. You will be forced to read huge texts with a bunch of rare words and answer non-obvious questions about the content in a time that is hardly enough to read. You are guaranteed to suffer, but eventually get used to it.
For each of the sections (math and English), you can score 800 points maximum.
How to prepare: God help you. Again, at Khan Academy there are tests to be solved. There are quite a few life hacks on going through Reading and how to quickly extract the essence from the texts. There are tactics that suggest starting from questions, or reading the first sentence of each paragraph. You will find them on the Internet, as well as lists of rare words that are worth learning. The main thing here is to keep within the time limit and not get carried away. If you feel that you spend too much on one text, move on to the next. For each new text, you should have a clearly worked out mechanism of action. Practice.
3. Essay. If you want in the USA, write an essay. You are given some text that you need to âanalyzeâ and write a review / answer to the question. Again, on a par with the Americans. For the essay you get 3 grades: Reading, Writing, and Analysis. There is nothing special to say, there is enough time. The main thing is to understand the text and write a structured answer.
How to prepare: read on the Internet about what they usually want to hear from you. Practice writing, keeping up to date and maintaining structure.
Rejoiced at the easy math and depressed by the Writing section, I realized that it makes no sense to start preparing for SAT in mid-August. SAT with Essay was my last test (December 2), and I decided that I would be preparing hard for the last 2 weeks, and before that my training was closed by TOEFL and SAT Subjects Math 2.
I decided to start with SAT Subjects, and I postponed TOEFL on later. As you already know, I chose Physics and Math 2. The number 2 in mathematics means increased complexity, but this is not entirely true if you know some of the features of SAT Subjects.
Firstly, the maximum score for each of the exams is 800. Only in the case of Physics and Mathematics 2, there are so many questions that you can score 800 by making a couple of mistakes, and this will be exactly the same maximum score. It is nice to have such a reserve, and Mathematics 1 (which would seem to be simpler) does not have it.
Secondly, Math 1 contains a lot more text tasks, which I really disliked. Under the pressure of time, the language of formulas is much more pleasant than English, and indeed, entering MIT and passing Math 1 is somehow solid (do not give it up, kotans).
Having learned the contents of the tests, I decided to start by refreshing the material. This was especially true of physics, which had a good time forgetting itself after school. In addition, I needed to get used to the terminology in English, so as not to get confused at the most important points. For my purposes, the courses in Mathematics and Physics at the same Khan Academy perfectly fit - it is nice when one resource covers all the necessary topics. As in my school years, I wrote a compendium, only now in English and more or less accurately.
At that time, my friend and I learned about polyphase sleep and decided to conduct experiments on ourselves. The main goal was to rebuild your sleep cycles so as to win as much free time as possible.
My mode was this:
- 21:00 - 00:30. The main (core) part of sleep (3.5 hours)
- 04:10 - 04:30. Short sleep (nap) # 1 (20 minutes)
- 08:10 - 08:30. Short sleep (nap) # 1 (20 minutes)
- 14:40 - 15:00. Short sleep (nap) # 1 (20 minutes)
Thus, I slept not 8 hours, like most people, but 4,5, which won me an additional 3.5 hours to prepare. Moreover, since the intervals of short dreams of 20 minutes were spaced throughout the day, and I did not sleep most of the night and morning, the days seemed especially long. We also almost did not drink alcohol, tea and coffee, so as not to disturb sleep, and called each other on the phone if someone suddenly decided to oversleep and go off schedule.
In just a couple of days, my body completely adapted to the new regimen, all drowsiness was gone, and productivity due to an additional 3.5 hours of life increased several times. Since then, I look at most people sleeping for 8 hours as losers, who spend a third of their time in bed every night instead of teaching physics.
Okay, just kidding.Naturally, no miracle happened, and already on the sixth day I chopped off for the whole night and turned off absolutely all alarms in unconsciousness. And the rest of the days, if you look at the magazine, it was not much better.
I suspect that the reason for the failure of the experiment was that we were young and stupid. The recently released book âWhy we sleepâ by Matthew Walker, by the way, rather confirms this hypothesis and hints that it will not work out to outwit the system without destructive consequences for itself. I advise all novice biohackers to familiarize themselves with it before trying something like this.
This is how the last month of my summer before the second year passed: for preparing for passing tests for schoolchildren and methodically searching for places for admission.
Chapter 6. Self-tutor
The semester began on schedule, and there was even less free time. To finish myself off completely, I signed up for the military department, which pleased me with the morning construction every Monday, and to the theater-goer, where I had to fulfill my potential and finally play the tree.
Along the way, in preparation for subjects, I tried not to forget about English and actively looked for opportunities to practice spoken language. Since there are indecently few conversation clubs in Minsk (and the time in them is not the most convenient), I decided that it would be easiest to open my own directly in the hostel. Armed with the experience of my sensei from spring courses, for each lesson, I began to come up with various topics and interactivities so that I could not only communicate in English, but also learn something new. In general, it turned out pretty well and for some time up to 10 people came stably there.
A month later, a friend of mine threw me a link to the Duolingo incubator, in which Duolingo Events began to develop actively. So I became the first and only Duolingo Ambassador in the Republic of Belarus! My âdutiesâ included conducting various language meetings in the city of Minsk, no matter what it means. I had a database of mailing addresses of users of the application with a certain level in my city, and soon I organized my first event, having agreed with one of the local coworking.
What was the surprise of the people who came there when, instead of the American expected and the representative of Duolingo, I went out to the audience.
At the second meeting, in addition to a couple of my classmates whom I invited (then we watched a movie in English), there was only one guy who left after about 10 minutes. As it turned out later, he came only to meet my pretty friend again, but that evening, alas, she did not come. Realizing that the demand for Duolingo Events in Minsk, to put it mildly, is low, I decided to limit myself to a club in a hostel.
Probably not many people think about this, but when your goal is so far and unattainable, it is very difficult to maintain high motivation all the time. In order not to forget about what I am doing all this for, I decided to regularly motivate myself with at least something and sat down on a video from students about their life at universities. This is not the most popular genre in the CIS, but in America there are enough such bloggers - just enter on youtube the request âA Day in life of% universityname% Studentâ, and you will get not one, but several beautiful and pleasantly shot videos about student life for by the ocean. Especially the aesthetics and differences of the universities there came to me: from the endless corridors of MIT to the ancient and majestic Princeton campuses. When you decide on such a long and risky journey, dreaming is not what is useful - it is vital.
It also helped that my parents surprisingly positively reacted to my adventure and strongly supported, although in the realities of our country it is very easy to stumble upon the opposite. Many thanks to them for this.
November 4 was rapidly approaching, and every day I more and more scored on my labs and gave myself to training. As you already know, I successfully scored on SAT and there were three main goals: TOEFL, SAT Subject Math 2 and SAT Subject Physics.
I sincerely do not understand people who hire tutors for all of these tests. For my preparation for SAT Subjects, I used only two books: Barron's SAT Subject Math 2 and Barron's SAT Subject Physics. They contain all the necessary theory, the knowledge of which is tested on a test (briefly, but Khan Academy to help), many test tests that are as close as possible to reality (Barron's SAT Math 2, by the way, is much more complicated than a real test, so if you are without any problems cope with all the tasks there, then this is a very good sign).
The first of the books I read Math 2, and I can not say that I was too easy. In the math test, there are 50 questions for which 60 minutes are given. Unlike Math 1, there is already trigonometry and very, very many tasks on functions and their diverse analysis. Also included are limits, complex numbers and matrices, but, as a rule, at a very simple level, so that everyone can master. You can use a calculator, including a graphical one - this can help you quickly solve many problems, and even in the book of Barron's SAT Math 2 itself in the section of answers you often see something like this:
Or like this:
Yes, it is possible that some of the tasks are literally designed for you to use a sophisticated calculator. I am not saying that they cannot be solved analytically at all, but when you have been given a little more than a minute for each of them, frustration is inevitable. Read more about Math 2 and solve the probe here .
As for physics, the opposite is true: you are forbiddenuse the calculator, the test also takes 60 minutes and it contains 75 questions - 48 seconds each. As you may have already guessed, there are no cumbersome computational problems, and knowledge of general concepts and principles is tested mainly throughout the course of school physics and not only. There are also questions from the category of âwhat law this scientist discovered hereâ. After Math 2, physics seemed too easy to me - partly due to the fact that Barron's SAT Math 2 is an order of magnitude more complicated than a real test, and partially because almost all physics questions required you to recall a couple of formulas and substitute there are numbers in them to get an answer. This is very different from what they check on our Belarusian central heating center. Although, as is the case with Math 2, be prepared for the fact that some issues are not covered by the CIS school curriculum.Read more about the structure of the test and solve the probehere .
As with all American tests, the hardest part is the time limit. It is for this reason that it is extremely important to solve probes in order to get used to the pace and not be dumb. As I already said, Barron's books give you everything to prepare and write a test perfectly: there is a theory, and trial tests, and answers to them. My preparation was very simple: I solved, looked at my mistakes and worked on them. All. The books also have enough life hacks on how to properly allocate your time and approach problems.
One very important thing to remember: SAT is not an exam, but a test. In most questions, you have 4 possible answers, and even if you do not know which one is correct, you can always try to guess it. The authors of SAT Subject do their best to convince you not to, because for each incorrect answer, in contrast to the missed one, a penalty is imposed (-1/4 point). For the answer you get (+1 point), and for skipping 0 (then these points, using a clever formula, are transferred to your final speed, but this is not about that). By simple thinking, we can conclude that in any situation it is better to try to guess the answer than to leave the field empty, because by exception, you are likely to narrow the space of possible correct answers to two, and sometimes even one. Usually,in every question there is at least one absurd or too suspicious answer, so in general, random on your side.
To summarize all of the above, the main tips are:
- Make a guess, but an educated one. Never leave cells empty, but guess wisely.
- Decide as much as possible, keep track of time and work on bugs.
- In no case do not bot what you definitely will not need. Itâs not your knowledge of physics or mathematics that is tested, but the ability to pass a specific test.
Chapter 7. Test Day
There were 3 days before the tests, and I was in a somewhat lethargic state. When preparation is delayed and mistakes become more accidental than systematic, you realize that you are unlikely to be able to squeeze out something else useful.
My math probes gave results in the region of 690-700, but I reassured myself that the real test should be easier. As a rule, I did not have enough time on some issues that were easily solved by graphing calculators. The situation with physics was much nicer: on average, I dialed all 800 and was mistaken only in a couple of tasks, most often by inattention.
How many points do you need to get to enter the best universities in the USA? For some reason, most people from the CIS countries like to think in terms of âpassing pointsâ and believe that the probability of success is measured by the results of entrance tests. In contrast to this thinking, almost every prestigious university that respects itself insists on the same thing on its website: we do not consider candidates only as a set of numbers and pieces of paper, each case is individual, and an integrated approach is important.
Based on this, we can draw the following conclusions:
- No matter how many points you score. It is important what kind of person you are .
- You are a person only if you typed, scored 740-800.
So it goes. The harsh reality is that 800/800 in your pocket will not make you a strong candidate - they only guarantee that you are not worse than everyone else in this parameter. Remember that you are competing with the best minds around the world, so the answer to the argument âI have good speed!â Is simple: âwho doesnât have it?â. A pleasant trifle is that, after a certain threshold, the points do not really matter: no one will turn you around because you scored 790, not 800. Due to the fact that almost all applicants have high results, this indicator ceases to be informative and you have to read questionnaires and understand what they are like as people there. But there is a flip side: if you got 600, and 90% of applicants - 760+, then what is the point of the admissions committee to spend your time on you if they have a lot of talented guys who are tired enough to pass the test well? Of course, no one explicitly talks about this, but I assume that in some cases your application may simply be filtered out due to weak indicators and no one will even read your essays and figure out which person is behind them.
What is the competitive score in this case? There is no definite answer to this question, but the closer to 800, the better. According to old statistics from MIT, 50% of applicants had a result in the range of 740-800, and I aimed there too.
November 4, 2017, Saturday
According to the regulations, the doors of the test center opened at 07:45, and the test itself began at 08:00. It was necessary to bring along two pencils, a passport and a special Admission Ticket, which I printed in advance and even in color.
Since the fate of my admission directly depended on this day, I was afraid to be late and woke up somewhere at 6. I went to the other end of the city to a place called âQSI International School of Minskâ - as I understand it, this is the only school in Belarus, where only foreigners are taken and where training is conducted entirely in English. I arrived there about half an hour before the right time: not far from the school there were all sorts of embassies and private low-rise buildings, there was darkness all around, and I decided not to wind up circles and turn over the notes again. In order not to do this on the street with a flashlight (besides, it was rather cold in the morning), I wandered into the children's rehabilitation center nearby and sat in the reception room. The guard was very surprised at such an early visitor, but I explained that I had an exam in the next building and began to read. They say that before death you will not breathe, but to refresh some formulas in my head seemed to me quite a good idea.
When the clock showed 7:45, I hesitantly went to the gate of the school and, at the invitation of the next guard, proceeded inside. Apart from me, there were only organizers inside, so I sat down on one of the empty seats and with extreme curiosity began to wait for the rest of the participants in the test.
By the way, there were about ten of them. The funniest thing would be to meet one of his university friends there, catch the surprise on their face and silently throw a sneaky smirk, as if to say: âYeah, I got! I know what you are doing here! âBut this did not happen. Everyone who passed the test turned out to be Russian-speaking, but with the Belarusian passport was just me and another guy. Nevertheless, the entire briefing was conducted entirely in English (by the same Russian-speaking school workers), apparently so as not to deviate from the rules. Since the dates for SAT delivery in different countries are different, some people came from Russia / Kazakhstan just to take the test, but many were school students (albeit Russian-speaking) and personally knew the proctors.
After a little verification of the documents, we were taken to one of the spacious classes (visually, the school mowed everything under the American one), handed out forms and conducted another briefing. You write the test itself in large books, which can also be used as a draft - they contain the conditions of several Subjects at once, so you will be told to open it on the page of the desired test (if I remember correctly, you can register for one test, but pass in general the other is a restriction on the number of tests per day).
The instructor wished us good luck, wrote down the current time on the board, and the test began.
I was the first to write mathematics, and it really turned out to be much easier than in the book on which I was preparing. A Kazakh woman at a neighboring desk, by the way, had the legendary TI-84 (a graphing calculator with a bunch of bells and whistles), about which they often wrote in books and spoke in a video on YouTube. There are limitations on the functionality of the calculators, and they were checked before the start of the test, but I had nothing to worry about - my old man didnât know how much, although we went through more than one olympiad together. In general, during the test I did not feel an urgent need to use something more sophisticated and even finished ahead of time. They recommend filling out the form at the end, but I did it on the go, so as not to linger, and then just returned to those answers that I was not sure about.
During the break between the tests, some students of that school discussed how much they have on the normal SAT and who will go where. According to the prevailing feelings, these were far from those guys who were worried about the issue of financing.
The next one was physics. Everything turned out to be a little more complicated here than in the trial tests, but I was very pleased with the question about the detection of exoplanets. I donât remember the exact wording, but it was nice to apply knowledge from astronomy at least somewhere.
After two tense hours, I handed over my forms and left the audience. For some reason, I wanted to learn a little more about this place on the shift: after talking with the employees, I realized that most of the participants are children of various diplomats, and for obvious reasons, many of them are not eager to enter local universities. Hence the demand for SAT. Thanking them mentally for not having to go to Moscow, I left school and drove home.
This was just the beginning of my month-long marathon. Tests were conducted at intervals of 2 weeks, and test results, too. It turns out that no matter how badly I write SAT Subjects right now, I still need to get ready for TOEFL in full force, and no matter how badly I pass TOEFL, I wonât know about it until the time I pass SAT with Essay.
There was no time to rest, and, returning home that day, I immediately began intensive preparation for TOEFL. I will not go into its structure in detail here, since this test is very popular and is used not only for admission and not only in the USA. Let me just say that there are also sections Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking.
In Reading, you still had to read a bunch of texts, and I did not find a better way to prepare, except to train to read these texts, answer questions and learn words that may come in handy. There were a lot of word lists for this part, but I used the book â400 Must-have words for TOEFLâ and applications from Magoosh.
As with any test, it was fundamentally important to familiarize yourself with the type of all possible questions and study the sections in detail. On the same Magoosh site and in YouTube there is a fairly comprehensive amount of training materials, so finding them is not difficult.
Most of all, I was afraid of Speaking: in this part I had to either answer a relatively random question to the microphone, or listen / read the passage and talk about something. It's funny that often Americans do not pass TOEFL by 120 points precisely because of this section.
I particularly remember the first part: you are asked a question, and in 15 seconds you should come up with a detailed answer almost a minute long. Then they listen to your answer and evaluate it by connectedness, correctness and everything else. The problem is that very often you cannot give an adequate answer even in your own language, let alone in English. During the preparation, I especially remembered the question: âWhat was the happiest moment in your childhood?â - I realized that I didnât have enough 15 seconds even to remember something that I could talk about for a minute as a happy childhood moment.
Every day for those two weeks I took a study room in a dormitory and wrapped endless circles around it, trying to learn how to answer these questions intelligently and fit exactly in a minute. A very popular way to answer them is to create a template in your head according to which you will build each of your answers. Usually it contains an introduction, 2-3 arguments, and a conclusion. All this is glued together with a bunch of passing phrases and speech turns, and, voila, you blabbed something for a minute, even if it looks strange and unnatural.
I even had ideas for a video a la CollegeHumor on this subject. Two students meet, one of the other asks:
- Hi, how are you doing?
- I think that I'm fine today for two reasons.
First, I ate my breakfast and slept quite well.
Second, I have finished all my assignments, therefore, I am free for the rest of the day.
To sum it up, for these two reasons I think that I'm fine today.
The irony is that youâll have to give roughly such unnatural answers - I donât know how the conversation goes with a living person during IELTS, but I hope that everything is not so bad.
My main training manual was the notorious book âCracking the TOEFL iBTâ - it has everything that can be useful, including a detailed test structure, various strategies and, of course, probes. In addition to the book, I also used various exam simulators, which I could find on torrents for the TOEFL simulator request. I advise everyone to go through at least a couple of tests from there in order to better feel the time frame and get used to the interface of the program with which you have to work.
I didnât have any particular problems with listening, as everyone speaks relatively slowly, clearly and with a usual American accent. The only problem was not to miss words or details that could later become the subject of questions.
I wasnât particularly prepared for writing, except that I remembered another popular structure for constructing my essay: an introduction, a few paragraphs with arguments and a conclusion. The main thing is to pour more water, otherwise you wonât get the right amount of words for good points.
November 18, 2017, Saturday
On the night before the teflon, I woke up about 4 times. The first time was at 23:40 - I decided that it was already morning, and went to the kitchen to put a kettle, although only then I realized that I had slept only two hours. The last time I dreamed that I was late for him.
The excitement could be understood: after all, this is the only test that you will most likely not be "forgiven" if you write it for less than 100 points. I reassured myself that even if I dialed 90, I would still have a chance to enter MIT.
The test center was cleverly hidden somewhere in the center of Minsk, and again I was one of the first. Since this test is much more popular than SAT, there were more people here. I even stumbled upon a guy whom I saw 2 weeks ago when passing subjects.
In this cozy room in the Streamline Minsk office, we were waiting for the whole crowd to register (as I understand it, many of those present were familiar and went there for TOEFL preparation courses). In one of the frames on the wall, I saw a portrait of my teacher from spring English courses, which gave me confidence in myself - although this test requires very specific skills, it still checks the knowledge of the language with which I had no particular problems.
After some time, we took turns starting to go into the audience, take pictures on a webcam and sit down at computers. The start of the test is not synchronous: as soon as you sit down, then you start. For this reason, many tried to go in the beginning, so as not to be distracted when everyone around started talking, and they still only have Listening.
The test began, and I immediately noticed that instead of 80 minutes, I had 100 for Reading, and instead of four texts with questions, five. This happens when one of the texts is given as experimental and not evaluated, though you will never know which one. I just hoped that it turned out to be the text in which I would make the most mistakes.
If you are not familiar with the order of sections, then they go like this: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing. After the first two - a 10-minute break, where you can leave the audience and stretch out. Since I was not the first to go, by the time I finished listening (but there was still time for the section), someone nearby began to answer the first questions from Speaking. Moreover, several people began to respond at once, and by their answers I was able to understand that it was about children and why they love them.
By the way, I didnât really like children, but I decided that it would be much easier to take and argue the opposite position to myself. Often in TOEFL recommendations you are advised not to lie and answer honestly, but this is sheer nonsense. In my opinion, you need to choose the position that you most easily come to open and justify, even if it is completely opposite to your personal beliefs. You must make this decision in your head for the time when the question sounds. TOEFL forces you to give detailed answers even where there is nothing to say, and therefore I'm sure that people lie and come up with it every day. The question in the end turned out to be something like a choice of three activities for the summer student side job:
- Counselors at the summer children's camp
- Geek in some library
- Something else
Without hesitation, I began to rub in the detailed answer about my love for children, how interesting I am with them and how we always get along. It was a blatant lie, but I'm sure I got the maximum score for it.
The rest of the test passed without any incidents, and after 4 hours I still broke free. The feelings were debatable: I knew that everything went by no means as smoothly as I wanted, but I did everything I could. By the way, in the morning of the same day I received the results of SAT Subjects, but I decided not to open them before the test, so as not to get upset.
Previously, having gone to the store for Heineken for the promotion, to immediately celebrate / remember the result, I clicked on the link in the letter and saw this:
I was so glad that I even took a screenshot without waiting for the disappearance of âPress F11 to exit full screenâ. It was not perfect speed, but with them I was no worse than most of the strongest candidates. It was up to the surrender of SAT with Essay.
Since the results of TOEFL will be known only on the eve of the next test, the voltage did not drop. The next day, I went to Khan Academy and began to intensively solve tests. Everything was simple enough with mathematics, but to do it ideally did not work out either because of my own inattention, or because of the abundance of text problems in the conditions of which I was sometimes confused. In addition, in the normal SAT, every mistake you make is taken into account, so for 800 points you had to score everything perfectly.
Evidence-based Reading & Writing as always put me in a panic. As I already said, there were too many texts, they were designed for media and in total I could hardly get 700 in this section. It felt like this was the second TOEFL Reading, only harder - there are probably people who think the other way around. As for the essay, there was practically no power left for it at the end of the marathon: I looked at the general recommendations and decided that I would come up with something on the spot.
On the night of November 29, I received a notification in the mail that my results were ready. Without hesitation, I immediately opened the ETS website and clicked View Scores:
Unexpectedly for myself, I got 112/120 and even scored the maximum score for Reading. In order to apply to any of my universities, it was enough to get 100+ in total and score 25+ in each section. My chances for admission grew rapidly.
December 2, 2017, Saturday
Having printed out the Admission Ticket and grabbed a couple of pencils, I once again got to QSI International School Minsk, where this time there were much more people. This time, after the briefing, of course, in English, we were not taken to the office, but to the gym, where the desks had previously been arranged.
Until recently, I hoped that the Reading & Writing section would be easier, but a miracle did not happen - as in the preparation, I scambled through the text through pain and suffering, trying to meet the allotted time, and eventually answered something. With mathematics, it turned out to be tolerable, but as for the essay ...
I was surprised to find that you need to write it not on a computer, but with a pencil on paper. Rather, I knew about it, but somehow forgot and did not attach much importance. Since I didnât want to erase entire paragraphs later, I had to think in advance what idea and in what part I would state. The text that I had to analyze seemed very strange to me, and even at the end of my marathon from the tests with breaks in preparation, I clearly got a little tired, so I wrote this essay from ... in general, I wrote as best I could.
When I finally got out, I was happy as if I had already acted. Not because he wrote well - but because all these exams have finally ended. There was still a lot of work ahead, but no longer needed to solve heaps of meaningless tasks and parse huge texts in search of answers under the timer. So that the expectation does not bother you as much as I did in those days, we immediately transfer to the night when I received the results of my last test:
My first reaction was "it could have been worse." As expected, I failed reading (albeit not catastrophically), made a mistake in three places in mathematics and wrote an essay on 6/6/6. Wonderful. I decided that the reading shortage would be forgiven me as a foreigner with a good TOEFL, and that this part would not influence so much against the background of good enough subjects (in the end, I went there to do science, and not read letters from the founding fathers of the USA to each other) . The main thing is that after all the tests, Dobby was finally free.
Chapter 8. The Man-Swiss Knife
December 2017
I agreed in advance with my school that in case of good test results, I will need their help in collecting documents. Someone may have problems at this stage, but I maintained fairly good relations with teachers and, in general, reacted positively to my initiative.
The following was to be obtained:
- A transcript of grades for the last 3 years of study.
- The results of my tests on the transcript (for universities that allowed to do so)
- Fee Waiver Request, so as not to pay Application Fee at $ 75 per application.
- Recommendation from my School Counselor.
- Two recommendations from teachers.
I want to give very useful advice right away: do all the documents in English . There is no point in making them in Russian, translating them into English, and even more so attesting all this for money from a professional translator.
Arriving in my hometown, the first thing I went to school and delighted everyone with the relatively successful test results. I decided to start with a transcript: in fact, this is just a statement of your grades for the last 3 years of school. I was given a flash drive with a table, in which there were my grades for each quarter, and after a couple of simple translations and frauds with tables, I got this:
From what you should pay attention to: in Belarus there is a 10-point scale, and this should be reported in advance, because not every selection committee will be able to correctly interpret the essence of your ratings. On the right side of the transcript, I posted the results of all standardized tests: I remind you that sending them> 4 costs a lot of money, and some universities allow you to send your scores along with the official transcript.
By the way, by what principle is the filing of the above documents:
- You, as a schoolboy, take tests, register on the Common App website, fill out information about yourself, fill out the general application form, select the universities you are interested in, indicate the mailing address of your School Counselor and teachers who will give recommendations.
- Your School Counselor (in American schools this is a special person who should be involved in your enrollment - I decided to write the director of the school), receives an invitation to the mail, creates an account, fills out information about the school and uploads your grades, gives a brief description in the form of a form with questions about student and uploads his recommendation in PDF. He also endorses the studentâs request for Fee Waiver, if one has been made.
- Teachers who have received a recommendation request from you do the same, unless they download grade transcripts.
And here the fun begins. Since no one from my school has ever worked with such a system, and I needed to keep the whole situation under control, I decided that the most correct way would be to do everything myself. To do this, I first started 4 e-mail accounts on Mail.ru:
- School Counselor (, ).
- ( â1)
- ( â2)
- ( , Fee Waiver)
Theoretically, every School Counselor and teacher has a bunch of students in this system who need to prepare documents, but in my case it was completely different. I personally controlled every stage of the filing of documents and acted on behalf of 7 (!) Completely different actors (I was soon added by my parents). If you come from the CIS, then get ready for the fact that you are most likely to have to do the same - you and only you are responsible for your receipt, and itâs much easier to hold the whole process in your hands than trying to get other people to do everything to deadlines. Moreover, you and only you will know the answers to questions that will be encountered in different parts of the Common Application.
The next step was to prepare Fee Waiver, which helped save me $ 1350 on sending profiles. It is available upon request from your school representative, in which he must explain the reason why the $ 75 Application Fee is a problem for you. You do not need to bring any proofs and attach bank statements: you just need to write the average income in your family, and there will be no questions. Exemption from the fee for paying an application is a completely legal procedure, and it should be used by everyone for whom $ 75 is really big money. Having put the seal on the resulting Fee Waiver, I sent it to PDF on behalf of my school on the admissions offices of all universities. Someone may ignore you (this is normal), but MIT answered me almost immediately:
When the applications for the wavers were sent out, the last step remained: to prepare 3 recommendations from the director and teachers. I think you will not be very surprised if I say that you also have to write these things yourself. Fortunately, my English teacher agreed to write me one of the recommendations on her own behalf, and also help with checking the rest.
Writing such letters is a separate science, and each country has its own. One of the reasons why you should try to write such recommendations yourself or at least participate in writing them is because your teachers are unlikely to have experience writing such papers for American universities. Itâs worth writing right away in English, so you donât bother with the translation later.
Key tips for writing letters of recommendation found on the Internet:
- List the strengths of the student, but not a list of everything that he knows or knows.
- Show his most outstanding achievements.
- Support paragraphs 1 and 2 with stories and examples.
- Try to use powerful words and phrases, but avoid cliches.
- Emphasize the uniqueness of achievements against the background of other students - âthe best student in the last few yearsâ and the like.
- Show how the studentâs past achievements will definitely lead to his future success, and what prospects await him.
- Show what contribution the student will make to the university.
- Fit it all on one page.
Since you will have three recommendations, you need to make sure that they do not talk about the same thing and reveal you as a person from different angles. Personally, I broke them like this:
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All these letters should present you as an exceptionally strong candidate, but at the same time look realistic. I am far from an expert in this matter, so I can give only one general advice: do not rush. Such papers rarely come out ideal the first time, but you may be tempted to finish this as soon as possible and say: âAnd it will do!â Reread several times what you write and how it all adds up to the whole picture about you. Your image in the eyes of the selection committee directly depends on this.
Chapter 9. New Year
December 2017
After I prepared all the documents from the school and letters of recommendation, the matter remained for small: write an essay.
As I said before, they are all written to special fields through the Common Application, and only MIT accepts documents through its portal. âWriting an essayâ would probably be too rude a description of what needed to be done: in fact, each of my 18 universities had their own list of questions that had to be answered in writing, keeping within a tight limit on the number of words. However, besides these questions, there is one common essay for all universities, which is part of the general Common App questionnaire. It, in fact, is the main one and requires the most time and effort.
But before we dive into writing huge canvases of text, I want to talk about another optional stage of receipt - an interview. It is optional for the reason that by no means all universities can afford to conduct interviews with a huge number of foreign applicants, and out of 18 I was offered only two interviews.
The first one was with a representative from MIT. My interviewee was a graduate student who, by chance, turned out to be very similar to Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, which only added to this whole process of soulfulness.
I did not prepare for the interview in any way, unless I thought a little over the questions that I would ask if I had such a chance. We talked quite lampily for about an hour: I talked about myself, my hobbies, why I want to go to MIT, etc. He asked about university life, scientific prospects for undergraduate students and all sorts of different things. At the end of the call, he said that he would give a good feedback, and we said goodbye. It is possible that this phrase is said to absolutely everyone, but for some reason I wanted to believe him.
There is nothing special to tell about the next interview besides the funny fact that it took me by surprise: I was visiting, and I had to talk to a Princeton representative on the phone while standing on the balcony. I donât know why, but talking on the phone in English always seemed to me much worse than video calls, although the audibility was almost the same.
To be honest, I donât know how important all these interviews play, but they seemed to me to be something created more for the applicants themselves: there is the opportunity to communicate with real university students you want to learn more about all sorts of nuances and make more conscious a choice.
Now about the essay: I calculated that in order to answer all the questions from 18 universities, I needed to write 11,000 words. On the calendar was December 27, 5 days before the deadline. It's time to start.
For your main Essay Essay essay (650 word limit), you could choose one of the following topics:
There was also an option to write something completely different, but I decided that the theme âRecount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.â How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? â It looked like a good opportunity to reveal my path from complete ignorance to the international Olympiad, with all the difficulties and excellence that met on the way. It turned out, in my opinion, pretty good. I really lived in the olympiads for the last 2 years of my school, my admission to a Belarusian university (what irony) depended on them, and leaving me just mentioning them in the form of a list of diplomas seemed something unacceptable to me.
There are many tips for writing an essay. In many ways, they intersect with those in the letters of recommendation, and I honestly can not give you better advice than to google it. The main thing is that this essay conveys your individual story - I dug quite a bit on the Internet and studied the main mistakes that applicants make: someone wrote about how cool their grandfather was and how he inspired them (this will make the admissions committee take your grandfather, not you). Someone poured too much water and went headlong into graphomania, the content of which was not so much (fortunately, I knew too little English to accidentally do this).
Checking my main essay again helped my English teacher, and it was ready before December 27th. It remained to write the answers to all other questions, which are smaller in volume (usually up to 300 words) and for the most part simpler. Here is an example of what came across to me:
- Caltech students have long been known for their quirky sense of humor, whether it be through planning creative pranks, building elaborate party sets, or even the year-long preparation that goes into our annual Ditch Day. Please describe an unusual way in which you have fun. (200 words max. It seems I wrote something cringed)
- Tell us about something that is meaningful to you and why. (100 to 250 words is an awesome question. You donât even know what to answer.)
- Why yale?
Questions from the category âWhy% universityname%?â Were found on the list of every second university, so without shame and conscience I copied them and only modified them a little. In fact, many of the other questions also intersected, and after a while I slowly began to go crazy, trying not to get lost in a huge pile of topics and mercilessly copying the pieces of my beautifully written semantic pieces that could be reused.
Some universities directly asked (in forms) whether I belong to the LGBT community and offered to talk about this for a couple of hundred words. In general, given the progressive agenda of American universities, it was a great temptation to lie and compose something like an even more overwhelming story about a gay astronomer who faced Belarusian discrimination but still succeeded!
This all led me to one more thought: in addition to answering questions, you need to indicate your hobbies, achievements and all that in your Common App questionnaire. I wrote about diplomas, wrote about the fact that Duolingo Ambassador was, but most importantly: who and how will verify the accuracy of this information? No one asked me to download copies of diplomas or something like that. All things indicated that in my profile I could lie as I please and write about my nonexistent exploits and fictional hobbies.
This thought was funny. Why be the leader of a school boy scout group if you can lie about it and no one will ever know? Of course, some things can be checked, but for some reason I was firmly convinced that at least half of the essays from international students came with a lot of lies and exaggerations.
Perhaps this was the most unpleasant moment in writing an essay: you know that the competition is huge. You perfectly understand that between the mediocre student and the memorable child prodigy they will choose the second. You also understand that all your competitors are selling themselves to the fullest, and you have no choice but to enter this game and try to put every positive thing about yourself for sale.
Of course, everyone around you will tell you that you need to be yourself, but you yourself think: who needs the admissions committee - you, or a candidate who will seem stronger to them and will be remembered more than others? Itâs wonderful if these two personalities coincide, but if something taught me how to write an essay, then this is the ability to sell myself: I have never tried anywhere so much to please anyone like in that profile on December 31.
I remember a video where some of the guys involved in helping with admission spoke about the prestigious Olympiad, which was supposed to send no more than one person from school. So that their candidate could get there, they specially designed a whole school (!) With a couple of staff members and a single student.
All I am trying to convey is that when you enter the best universities, you will compete with young scientists, businessmen, and even to hell with whom. You just have to stand out at least something.
Of course, in this matter we must not overdo it and create a living image in which they will first of all believe. I did not write about what was not there, but I caught myself thinking that many things were deliberately exaggerating and constantly trying to guess where to show âweaknessâ and where not to show contrast.
After long days of writing, copy-paste and continuous analysis, my MyMIT profile was finally completed:
And on the Common App too:
Only a few hours were left until the new year. All documents have been sent. The realization of what just happened did not reach me right away: too much energy had to be given in the last couple of days. I did everything in my power, and most importantly, I kept my promise to myself on that sleepless night in the hospital. I reached the finals. All that remained was to wait. Nothing depended on me anymore.
Chapter 10. First Results
March 2018
Several months have passed. In order not to be bored, I enrolled in front-end development courses at one of the local galleys, became moody a month later, and then for some reason took up machine learning and generally had fun as I could.
In fact, after the New Year's deadline, I had one more thing to do: fill out the CSS Profile, ISFAA and other forms about my family's income, which were required when applying for Financial Aid. There is absolutely nothing to tell there: just carefully fill out the paper, as well as download certificates of parental income (of course, in English).
Sometimes I was visited by thoughts about what I would do if I did. The prospect of going back to first year did not seem at all a step back, but an opportunity to âstart all over againâ and a kind of rebirth. For some reason, I was sure that I was unlikely to choose computer science as my specialty - after all, I studied at it for 2 years, although this was not known to the American side. The good news is that many universities provide quite a lot of flexibility in choosing courses that interest you, as well as various cool stuff like double major. For some reason, he promised himself to take care of the Feynman physics lectures over the summer if I get to some cool place - probably because of a desire to try myself again in astrophysics outside of school olympiads.
Time flew by, and the letter that arrived on March 10 took me by surprise.
I donât know why, but most of all I wanted to get to MIT - it so happened that this university had its own portal for applicants, its own memorable hostel, a tube interviewer from TBBT and a separate place in my heart. The letter arrived at 8 oâclock in the evening, and as soon as I threw it into our conversation with MIT Applicants (by the way, she managed to move to Telegram during the receipt), I realized that more than a year has passed since its inception (12/27/2016). It was a long way, and now I was not waiting for the results of the next test: in the next few weeks the outcome of my whole story, which had arisen on an ordinary evening in India in December 2016, should have been decided.
But before I could put myself in the proper mood, I suddenly received another letter:
That's what I did not expect that very evening. Without thinking twice, I opened the portal.
Alas, I did not enter kaltech. However, this was not too big a surprise for me - the number of their students is much smaller than in other universities, and about 20 of them take international ones. "Not fate," I thought, and went to bed.
It was March 14th. The letter with the decision on MIT should have arrived at 1:28 at night, and of course I was not going to go to bed early. Finally, it appeared.
I took a deep breath.
I donât know if this was an intrigue for you, but I didnât.
Of course, it was sad, but not too bad - in the end, I still had as many as 16 universities. Sometimes my head was visited by especially bright thoughts:
Me: âIf you estimate that the admission rate for international students is somewhere around 3%, then the probability of entering at least one of the 18 universities is 42%. It's not that bad! â
My brain: âDo you understand that you are using the theory of probability incorrectly?â
Me: âI just wanted to hear something smart and calm down.â
After a couple of days, I received another letter:
It's funny, but already from the first lines of the letter it was possible to understand whether you were credited or not. If you watch those videos where people on the camera are happy to receive letters of enrollment, you will notice that they all begin with the word âCongratulations!â. There was nothing to congratulate me with.
And rejection letters kept coming. Here are a few more, for example:
I noticed that absolutely in each of them there was the same pattern:
- We are very, very sorry that you cannot learn from us!
- We have a bunch of applicants every year, we physically cannot enroll everyone, and therefore we did not enroll you.
- It was a very difficult decision for us, and it in no way says anything bad about your intellectual or personal qualities! We are very impressed with your abilities and achievements, and we have no doubt that you will find a cool university.
In other words, "it is not in you." You do not need to be seven spans in your forehead to understand that such a polite answer is received by absolutely everyone who has not arrived, and even a complete idiot will hear about how well done he is and how sincerely sorry they are.
There will be absolutely nothing in your letter of refusal except your name. All that you get in the long months of your efforts and thorough preparation is a piece of hypocrisy a couple of paragraphs long, absolutely inhuman and uninformative, from which you wonât feel better. Of course, everyone would like to know the truth about what exactly made the selection committee take someone else, not you, but you will never know that either. It is important for each university to maintain a reputation, and the best way to do this is to organize a mass mailing without explaining any reasons.
The most annoying thing is that you canât even understand if someone actually read your essays. Of course, this is not announced, but by simple reasoning, we can conclude that in all top universities there are not physically enough people to pay attention to each candidate, and at least half of the applications are automatically filtered based on your tests and other criteria suitable for the university. You can put your soul into it and write the best essay in the world, but it will go into oblivion due to the fact that you wrote some SAT too poorly. And I very much doubt that this happens only in the admissions committees of undergraduate studies.
Of course, there are truths in the written part. According to the same admission officers, when it is possible to filter the pool of candidates to a tangible amount (say, at the rate of 5 people per place), then the selection process is not much different from randomization. As with many job interviews, it is difficult to predict how successful a future student will be. Given that most applicants are very smart and talented, in reality it may be much easier to toss a coin. No matter how much the selection committee wants to make the process as fair as possible, in the end, admission is a lottery, the right to participate in which, however, still needs to be earned.
Chapter 11. We are truly sorry
March took its course, and every week I received more and more failures.
Letters came in a variety of places: at lectures, in the subway, in the hostel. I never read them to the end, because I knew very well that I would not see absolutely anything new or personal.
In those days I was quite apathetic. After refusals from koltech and MIT, I was not too upset, because I knew that there are as many as 16 universities in which you can try your luck. Each time I opened a letter with the hope that I would see inside the congratulations, and each time I found the same words there - âwe are sorryâ. That was enough.
Did I believe in myself? Perhaps yes. After the winter deadlines, for some reason there was a lot of confidence in me that I would at least go somewhere with my own set of tests, essays and achievements, but with each subsequent failure my optimism faded more and more.
Almost no one in my circle knew what was happening in my life in those weeks. For them, I have always been and remained an ordinary second-year student, without any intention of leaving school or leaving somewhere.
But one day my secret was in danger of being exposed. It was the most ordinary evening: a friend was doing some very important work on my laptop, and I was quietly pacing around the block when a notification about the next letter from the university suddenly appeared on the phone screen. The mail was just opened in the next tab, and any curious click (which is typical for my girlfriend) would immediately have torn the veil of secrecy from this event. I decided that I needed to quickly open the letter and delete it, until it attracted too much attention, but stopped halfway:
Heart beat faster. I didnât see the usual words âwe are sorryâ, I didnât see the indignation because of the huge pool of candidates or any kind of praise addressed to me, they simply and without any eyeliner told me that I did.
I donât know if it was possible to understand at least something from my facial expression at that moment - I probably didnât immediately realize that I had just read.
I could. All the failures that could come from the remaining universities no longer mattered, because no matter what happened, my life would never be the same again. To enter at least one university was my main goal, and this letter said that you can not worry further.
In addition to congratulations, the letter contained an invitation to participate in the Admitted Students Weekend - a 4-day event from NYU Shanghai, in which you could fly to China and get acquainted with your future classmates, take excursions and generally see the university itself. NYU paid for everything except the cost of the visa, but participation in the event was randomly played among students who expressed a desire to participate. After weighing the pros and cons, I registered in the lottery and won. The only thing I could not do yet was to see the amount of financial assistance that was provided to me. Some kind of bug appeared in the system, and financial assistance did not want to be displayed on the site, although I was sure that there would be the full amount from the principle meet full demonstrated need. Otherwise, enrolling me did not make sense.
Refusals from various other universities continued to come to me, but it was all the same to me. China, of course, is not America, but in the case of NYU, the training was completely in English and there was an opportunity to go to study at another campus for one year - in New York, Abu Dhabi or somewhere in Europe among partner universities. After some time, such a thing even came to me in the mail:
It was an official letter of enrollment! The envelope also included a comic passport, in English and Chinese. Although now everything can be done electronically, most universities still send out paper letters in beautiful envelopes.
The Admitted Student Weekend was supposed to take place only at the end of April, and in the meantime I just sat happy and watched various videos about NYU in order to get a better feel for the atmosphere there. The prospect of learning Chinese seemed intriguing to me rather than frightening - all graduates needed to learn it at least at the intermediate level.
Wandering around the open spaces of youtube, I came across a channel of a girl named Natasha. She herself was a NYU 3-4 year student and in one of her videos talked about her entry story. She herself passed all the tests a couple of years ago, just like me, and entered NYU Shanghai for full funding. The story of Natasha only added optimism to me, although I was surprised at how few views collect videos with such valuable information.
Time passed, and after about a week in my personal account finally appeared information about the fin. Help:
And here I am a little bit nutty. The amount I saw ($ 30,000) hardly covered half the full cost of tuition for the year. Something seems to have gone wrong. I decided to write to Natasha:
But shouldnât they just have to turn me around, knowing that I donât have that kind of money?
And here I realized where I miscalculated. NYU is almost the only university on my list that does not have the meet full demonstrated need criterion. Perhaps these things changed in the process of my receipt, but the fact remained: the shop was closed. For some time I tried to correspond with the university and asked if they would like to reconsider their decision, but everything was in vain.
Of course, I did not go to admitted students weekend. And refusals from other universities continued to go: in one day, I received 9 at once.
And nothing in these failures did not change. All the same general phrases, all the same sincere regret.
It was April 1st. Including NYU, at that time I was rejected from 17 universities - what a wonderful thing to collect. The last remaining university, Vanderbilt University, sent its solution just now. With an almost complete absence of at least any hope, I opened the letter, expecting to see a refusal there and finally close this long drawn-out story with admission. But there was no failure:
A spark of hope lit up in my chest. Waitlist is not the best thing that can happen to you, but this is not a failure. People from a whitelist begin to be recruited if the accepted students decide to go to some other university. In the case of Vanderbilt, who in one way or another was clearly not the No. 1 choice for most strong applicants, I decided that I had some chances.
Some friends of Ani were also sent to the whitelist, so it did not look like something completely hopeless. All I had to do was to confirm my interest and wait.
Chapter 12. Wheel of Samsara
July 2018
It was a typical summer day at MIT. Leaving one of the instituteâs laboratories, I headed to the dormitory building, where all my belongings were already lying in one of the rooms. In theory, I could take my time and come here only in September, but decided to take the opportunity and arrive earlier as soon as they open my visa. Every day more and more international students arrived: almost immediately I met an Australian and a Mexican who, by pure chance, worked with me in the same laboratory. During the summer, even though most of the students were on vacation, life at the university was in full swing: studies, internships were carried out, and even a special group of MIT students remained who organized the reception of constantly visiting international students, gave them a tour of the campus and, in general, helped in every way in a new place.
For the remaining 2 months of the summer, I had to conduct something like my little research on the use of Deep Learning in recommendation systems. This was one of the many topics proposed by the institute, and for some reason it seemed to me very interesting and close to what I was doing in Belarus at that time. As it turned out later, for many of the children who arrived in the summer, the topic of research in one way or another affected machine learning, although these projects were quite simple and were more likely to be educational in nature. Perhaps you are already in the second paragraph interested in one obsessive question: how did I end up at MIT? Didnât I receive a letter of refusal back in mid-March? Or did I fake it on purpose to keep the intrigue?
And the answer is simple: MIT - Manipal Institute of Technology in India, in which I nevertheless ended up on a summer internship. Let's start again.
It was a typical summer day in India. The fact that this season is not the most favorable for the international Olympiad, I was convinced on my own skin: almost every day there was a shower, which always started in a matter of seconds, sometimes leaving no time even to open an umbrella.
I continued to receive messages that I was still on the Waitlist, and every couple of weeks I had to confirm my interest. Returning to the hostel and noticing another letter from them in the mailbox, I opened it and prepared to do it again:
All hopes were dead. The latest failure put an end to this story. I took my finger off the touchpad - it was all over.
Conclusion
So my story, one and a half years long, came to an end. Many thanks to everyone who has read up to this point, and I really hope that my experience has not become discouraging for you. At the end of the article, I would like to share some thoughts that arose during the writing of this article, as well as give a couple of tips to those who decide to act.
Perhaps someone is tormented by the question: what exactly was not enough for me? There is no exact answer to it, but I suspect that everything is quite banal: I was simply worse than the others. I am not a gold medalist of the intern in physics and not Dasha Navalny. I donât have any special talents, achievements or a memorable background - I am the most ordinary guy from a country unknown to the world who just decided to try his luck. I did everything in my power, but this was not enough against the background of the rest.
Why, then, after 2 years, I decided to write all this and share my failure? No matter how strange this may sound to someone, but I believe that in the CIS countries there are a huge number of talented guys (much smarter than me) who do not even suspect what opportunities they have. Entering a bachelor's degree abroad is still considered something absolutely impossible, and I really wanted to show that in reality there is nothing mythical and insurmountable in this process.
What did not work out for me does not mean at all that it will not work out for you, your friends or your children. A little about the fate of the characters featured in the article:
- Anya, who inspired me on this whole thing, successfully completed 3 classes of an American school and is now studying at MIT.
- Judging by her YouTube channel, Natasha graduated from NYU Shanghai, having studied for a year in New York, and is now studying for a master's degree somewhere in Germany.
- Oleg is engaged in computer vision in Moscow.
And finally, I want to give some general tips:
- Start as early as possible. I know people who have been enrolling since the 7th grade: the more time you have left, the easier it will be for you to prepare and work out a good strategy.
- Do not give up. If you havenât done the first time, you can still do the second or the third.If you demonstrate to the admissions committee that you have grown a lot over the past year, then there will be much more chances. If I started to enter in the 11th grade, then by the time of the article, this would be my third attempt. You do not need to retake the tests.
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- If you are from Ukraine, try UGS or other non-profit organizations that can help you. I do not know analogues in other countries, but most likely they are.
- Try looking for private grants or scholarships. Universities may not be the only way to get money to study.
- If you undertook to act - believe in yourself, otherwise you simply donât have enough strength to bring this matter to the end.
I sincerely would like this story to end with a happy ending, and my personal example would inspire you to exploits and accomplishments. I would like to leave a photograph at the end of the article against the background of MIT, as if saying to the whole world: âLook, this is possible! I succeeded, and you will succeed too! â
Alas, but not fate. Do I regret the time spent in vain? Not really. I perfectly understand that I would regret much more if I were afraid to try to implement what I really believed in. 18 failures hit hard enough on self-esteem, but even in this case, one should not forget about why you are doing all this. Studying at a prestigious university by itself, although it is a wonderful experience, should not be your ultimate goal. Do you want to gain knowledge and change the world for the better, as absolutely every applicant writes in his essays? Then the lack of a fashionable diploma from the ivy league should not stop you. There are many more universities available, and there are plenty of free books, courses, and lectures on the Internet to help you learn a lot from what you would be taught at Harvard. Personally, I am very grateful to the Open Data Science community.for his enormous contribution to open education and the ultimate concentration of smart people who can be asked questions. Anyone who is interested in machine learning and data analysis, but for some reason is still not there, I recommend joining immediately.
And for each of you who are eager to act, I want to quote from the answer of MIT:
"Regardless of which letter awaits you, please know that we think you're simply fantastic - and we can't wait to see how you change our world for the better."
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