Sibi starts college - 2

There is an extensive support system available in the country for those who chose to pursue studies abroad. We extensively did a lot of research ourselves but also validated and took advise from a group of these institutions which helped in making decisions at various stages.

One of the very first thing we did was to attend the events organized by IDP in various places in the city. They are good because they give a chance to meet with the university representatives (not necessarily the ones we chose to apply - but still it gives a general idea of what to expect). IDP is also one of the institutes authorized to conduct IELTS in India (the other being the British council) and so they help out on the preparations for IELTS as well as in understanding the admission requirements etc of the universities.

The other entity we relied on was USIEF. They organize fairs and have tons of material to understand the application and admission process. They have a center in the US embassy in Chennai and they engage heavily through social media as well.

Once we finalized the universities, started following the university social media handles as well - this is needed as a lot of reminders on the dates and other important updates are posted consistently. All the universities that we were checking on had a very active social media presence. Some, like Memorial University in Canada, send their admission officers independently to India and unless you follow them in Twitter, you may never get to know of this.

Overall, I found the entire application process to be very stressful. Even with all the preparations, the requirements for each university was different - some wanted the transcripts notorized, some to upload, some to send a copy by mail, some to get it evaluated with a third party educational consultant (which costs a bomb!) - all these within the 12 unis we chose to apply. Teacher recommendation letters had similar combinations as well. Added to this, sending the original 10th mark sheets (later, 11th and 12th as well) by mail to IERF for evaluation and and getting it back by mail without losing it, adds to shatter whatever fragile peace of mind that is left.

I should thank the entire teaching staff of AMM School and the principal Mrs. Mahalakshmi - for their continuous support during the entire process to provide the recommendation letters on paper or typing that in the system for some applications and all in between. Their patience to take in every request and process them within the short time frame every time is not something that every school administration does.

And BYU had an additional requirement to have an interview done with the LDS Church officials followed by a phone interview with the Bishop in Salt Lake city as well. The entire leadership team at the LDS church in Chennai - especially the president, Prince Jayakaran,  were very helpful in completing the recommendations (after much challenges in the system) and also in the days afterward in terms of connecting us with the other students in the university. The whole process would've fallen to pieces without their timely assistance.

All this was approximately from October - December 15, 2018 when most of the application deadlines were. While we tried to keep Sibi's involvement minimal, it was not possible as he has to write the essays, following on recommendation letters at school and be generally involved.

However, it was a relief to have submitted the application for all the universities that we wanted to apply. BYU had one extension to December 18 for submission and we submitted on December 18 evening (thanks to some last minute push by J).

After that, it is time to wait for the results and at times, additional requests for information on submitted documents. These requests came in from almost all the universities for us and we kept responding to be on time.

If the application process for stressful, waiting for the decisions to come in was super stressful. Iowa State was the first one to send the acceptance (they have a mandate to accept everyone, so its not a great secret!).

Then came the acceptance from Memorial University - our first choice in Canada. That kept the backup plan on a strong place and so we were pretty certain that some more are going to come through. By January, we had acceptance from Iowa State, Memorial, Calgary, Saskatchewan, BYU - Idaho and an admittance to the PSA program in TAMU. TAMU was a disappointment as we were expecting a direct admittance and not through PSA.

SUNY applications were rejected as they were not 'complete' with supporting documentation - we never really found out what was missing as the common application system hands over the control to the universities at some point and they just update the status and getting a clear understanding of what went wrong was not possible (for us at least!).

Finally the acceptance letter from BYU came through on Feb 16, 2019. At that point, we know that the process is complete for us. 

Sibi starts college - 1

Sibi is starting college this week. In USA. At Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

None of the sentences are as difficult to type in as the above ones. It means Sibi is going to start his life and is going to own up a large chunk of his life from this point onwards. It will be something we will have to deal with in the coming months - getting used to his absence at home. And that is going to be very difficult.

But I started writing this not to mope but to explain the super-exciting, roller-coaster ride of the lifetime we've had till he had his acceptance letters coming in starting Feb 2019.

It has always been our intention to send him back to US for his college. No special reasons except that the college environment is more conducive for someone of Sibi's temperament and that I wanted him to avoid the stale university environment in India.

That leaves out Sibi's wishes as to where he wants to study. So we've always kept that option open - in case, he decided to be in India for his studies, we didn't want to stop him from that as well. So he did his 3 year FIITJEE and hated it - so he dropped out of it by the time he finished his 10th. Anyway, he didn't want to focus on IITs or NITs.

He went on a trip to UK in 2017 - during his 10th holidays - all alone and loved it. He spent a month with my brother but managed to roam around solo to so many places, he became comfortable with the whole environment.

That and the fact that we've always asked him to focus on going to US for his studies mean that by the time he started his 11th, we started the process of getting him to US for his under graduate degree.

We targeted Dec 2017 as the time for his first attempt for SAT and decided that he will take it by self-study and nothing more. I got his these wonderful preparation books from The College Panda by Nielson Phu and I actually spent sometime studying those and I can say (Sibi agrees!) that they are much better than any of the other books out there.

By this time, Sibi has decided to do Mathematics and while we asked him to consider some other options as well, he declined and so we now started looking for colleges all around the world. We started with the first excel sheet of all the colleges/universities which are of interest. We also included details like entry criteria, tuition and other expenses and importantly, how the college fares in the various rankings published.

By this time, SAT was completed with an above average score. We had no idea what the score means and we wanted to decide on some universities and then decide whether there needs to be a re-write. The focus shifted to IELTS (which is a requirement for the Canadian universities) and targeted to complete that by May 2018.

After a few iterations of the college list over a few months, we ended up deciding to focus on US and Canada. And decided to focus on the universities in places I am familiar with so that I will have a way to evaluate during my trips to US. So, that ended up with the states of NY, CA and a few in the Midwest.

One of the universities I know of was the BYU - due to my trips to Lehi, UT and I started looking into the aspects of the university as well. The other universities which we wanted to focus were the SUNY, Albany and Buffalo, Iowa, TAMU, Memorial University and UNB in Canada. We added a few more later as well based on recommendations.

Selecting a group of colleges to apply to can be traumatizing. There is always a better college you chose to bypass and there is always someone who points that out. But after agonizing over a few times, you make your peace with that. For Sibi, thankfully, he was focused on Memorial and BYU - Provo and the rest were all back up options. However, we felt it important to chose the universities early so that there is a better chance of getting acceptance.

Sibi was in 12th standard by this time and we didn't want to disturb him very much. Meanwhile, I have to learn about FAFSA and a whole lot of details about Foreign Tax returns and Federal conversion rates and had a lot of misgivings about what I understood versus what was expected.

The applications for the Fall semester open approximately one year before for most universities and most close within a 8-10 weeks time frame. And that is not a lot of time if one is applying for multiple universities as the application demands of each university varies. The transcripts from Ninth standard to Eleventh standard, multiple recommendation letters, a whole lot of essays, the extra curricular activity lists and details with even dates , the scholarship application that need to be submitted simultaneously and the essays for that - the list is endless.

We did end up submitting about 10 applications for 12 universities (SUNY and Texas had a common application system for multiple universities). Sibi wrote about 10+ essays on various topics and write-ups on activities and other related questions. He wrote an equal number of essays for the scholarship applications in multiple universities. That puts an added strain to kids in the middle of the 12th standard.