I’m in Secondary School. How can I prepare to win a university scholarship to the US?
This is the first key question* to ask when you are thinking about trying to study in the US — how can I prepare? Because most US universities that give scholarships to international students take only between 10 and 25 percent of the students who apply, you will probably need to work hard to apply as a qualified applicant for at least one year (and if possible for two or three years) before you finish secondary school in order to show the US schools which give full scholarships that you are prepared to study in the US system — that you are someone who is ready to come and study at the level of the schools where you are applying not only for admission but also to win a scholarship.
It can take years to prepare to apply to universities in the US as a qualified candidate. Most secondary school students in the US prepare indirectly for about 4 years before they apply, with about six months of direct prep and four months to do a good job writing the applications.
Do you think it would be reasonable for this process to take less time for you? Still, even if you are already in S-5 or S-6, there are many things you can do now to start to prepare to apply as a qualified applicant.
So what should you do?
1) Get great grades and national exam results.
Do as well as you can both at school and on the national exams. This shows international schools you are a hard-working person who they should consider for a scholarship. In particular, don’t give up on your secondary grades during Senior 6, because you think only national exams count for your next opportunity. Your grades in Senior 6 are as important as your national exam results, and sometimes more so!
If you do have a weak year for grades or a national exam result that is less than outstanding, don’t worry too much about it. Because the next parts of this list are even more important than your grades: you need 1) to work on improving your English until it is as good as possible, both to show that you are ready to come to the US and 2) to do well on the international exams you will need to take!
So the first thing to know is: study as well at you can for school, and don’t give up on your grades during S-6!
2) Get great English
While secondary grades and national exam results are important, they are not the most important factor in this process. If you want to win a scholarship to a university to the US, it is often your level of English that will help you succeed. There are only 4 parts to a language: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
You need to be as good as possible in these 4 skills in order to convince a US school that you are someone who is qualified to attend their school — that the US university can be sure you will come to the US and do very well in your studies.
We will talk about what you can do to improve your English in number 4), but for now, let’s talk about why your English needs to be outstanding:
3) Get great results on the necessary international exams that are required by the school where you want to apply for a scholarship.
Usually, this means you need to get a great score on the TOEFL (600 or more to apply to all of the schools that can give you a full scholarship) and a good score on the SAT, which is written for students who have studied in the US system and is a more difficult exam than the TOEFL.
However, different schools have different requirements for admissions and scholarships, and these requirements may change over time. When you are ready to apply, or a year beforehand as you start to prepare actively for this process, you should check the websites of the schools you are interested or put the name of the school plus ‘international undergraduate admission requirements’ into Google.
But to have the best chance of winning a scholarship, it is safe to say that your test scores should be as good as you can possibly get — first because this (your test results on TOEFL and other required international exams) is how schools will tell the difference between you and other international students (and then between you and other students from Africa, and finally between you and other students from your region); and second because the better your test results on the necessary international exams, the better your chances of being accepted to the best US schools which have the best scholarship funding for international students (including up to full scholarships if they accept you and you need that amount);
4) Work as hard as you can to improve your English.
This is the key factor in helping you be able to succeed at the international exams, first because the TOEFL is a test of English written to evaluate international students’ speaking, reading, writing and listening abilities, and then because the SAT (or other international exams required by the schools where you apply, such as the ACT or SAT Subject Tests) are written 1) for students who have studied in the US secondary system, 2) for students who speak English as a native language, and 3) to show universities how well-prepared the students who are applying to the are to come and study in the US system.
So you need to work very hard over as much time as you have (1 year, if you are now starting Senior 6; 3 years, if you are lucky enough to be just now starting Senior 4) to make your English as good as it can possibly be — to make your English so good that it convinces a university in the US you are ready to come to school and do well there!
How to start?
Reading: Read as much as you can in English. Try to read things you enjoy or find interesting about 80 or 90 percent of the time, then read things you find somewhat difficult the rest of the time. After a while, as you practice and read a lot, the things you find difficult will become easier and you will replace them with new books and websites that are harder for you!
The key thing to know about reading, about learning English and about preparing for university in general is that it’s a function of how hard you work — of how much time you put into it. If you work on your English as much as you can, within 6 months or one year you should be a much more competitive student applicant for international schools.
At Bridge2Rwanda Scholars, most of our students improve their TOEFL exam scores from below 550 to above 600 after 6 to 8 months of intense classes and a great deal of reading and writing work outside of class. But if you can start to prepare now, you should be able to get the same result by the time you finish secondary school, which will give you extra time to prepare to do well on the SAT and at university in the US.
The second thing you should know is that learning English that will help you get ready to study in the US should not be hard. On the contrary, it should be a process that you enjoy.
Read as much as you can – books, magazines, stories, newspapers, essays, websites and more
Listen to the radio in English — do you understand what they are saying? Great. Now can you write it down, word for word (with correct spelling and grammar)? Can you answer questions about the story you heard?
Write – Look online at possible TOEFL essay questions. To start, you can find 10 sample topics here:
http://www.learn4good.com/languages/toefl/writingtopics.htm. Make sure you understand the organization of an essay, and practice writing an answer to each of these questions. Also practice by writing letters to friends (especially native English speakers) or even keeping a journal for yourself in English.
In your letters and journal, focus on articulating your ideas, varying sentence structure, and using correct grammar and vocabulary. Have a native English speaker look over your work, and ask him to point out any parts that are unclear, weak, or confusing.
Speak — some of the best universities in the US require interviews, so you need to be able to have an interesting conversation in English, to express yourself, understand and respond to whatever the other person is asking you.
The best way to do this is to practice. If you don’t know any native English speakers, set aside some time with friends to practice speaking only in English. However, if you do know some native English speakers (specifically from North America), talking to them is the most helpful way to improve your spoken English (and it is good listening practice also).
5) Okay, I want to bring my English up to the best possible level – where can I do all of this?
www.time.com
www.bbc.co.uk
www.theeastafrican.co.ke
www.allafrica.com
www.wikipedia.org
www.dictionary.com
www.reference.com
www.smh.co.au
www.voa.gov
http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/
www.npr.org [listen to radio stories while reading “Transcripts”]
www.bartleby.com
www.nytimes.com
www.newyorker.com
Do it yourself: Type “short stories online” or “e-books online” or “essays online” into Google! Whatever you are interested in, you can find it online if you look.
6) Check your progress from time to time
Take a practice TOEFL and see how you do, then study for a few months and take it again to see how much you have improved.
When your TOEFL score is above 550, take a practice SAT and begin to prepare for this test as well.
When you have a practice TOEFL above 550 and an SAT above 1400, check back to this space for particular tips on how to improve — but the key is to keep improving your English!
When your official TOEFL is above 605 and your official SAT is above 1600, contact our team and we will help you prepare further to make sure you are ready for school in the US and to apply.
7) I want to take a practice TOEFL exam. How can we organize this?
If you want to see how good your English is as measured by a TOEFL practice test, please have your school designate a person (or a few teachers) to make an appointment to visit our center to learn how to administer a practice TOEFL exam. We will train teachers for free on condition that they offer the practice exams to students for free as well (less any necessary fees for photocopies and other costs of administering the test). They can contact us at scholars [at] bridge2rwanda.org and should include ‘Practice TOEFL training’ in the subject line.
Good luck, and let us know if you have any questions!
*The second key question, once you are very well-prepared, is “How can I apply to the top schools in the US, where if I get in I know I will get enough scholarship?”
We will address this in a future column, but for now please focus on preparing (since if you are not well-prepared, you cannot succeed at these applications). If you are already well-prepared (official TOEFL of more than 605, official SAT of more than 1650) and can apply as a qualified student, please contact us for free university application counseling and assistance.
Further Reading:
Can I win a University Scholarship to the US?
http://en.igihe.com/spip.php?page=fotora&id_article=1867
If you can pay something for your studies each year, you should look at this page which has a range of different university scholarship options throughout the US.
But again, bear in mind, most scholarships advertised here are partial, so you will usually have to pay something each year: http://www.educationusa.info/financial-aid
