Writing the US application essay - Commonapp

Every year, at the start of summer, students and parents alike in the US will start to plan for the upcoming application cycle, and the first hurdle to admissions is the Commonapp essay, the compulsory, 650 words essay that you must write if you are trying to apply to any Commonapp universities.

Now let us examine the prompts.

Prompt 1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. I believe the keyword here is meaningful. If your story is interesting and special enough without being meaningful, then it fails the prompt. This type of essay then is called a gimmick. A gimmick is fine and might even be clever to most people, but your audience being admission officers might be swift to throw your essay into the reject pile. You must answer how your talent, background etc. add meaning to your life? Does it give you purpose? Does it make you proud? How is it meaningful is essentially the main question to this prompt, if your essay answers that, then it can fall into this category already. This is a very wide scope topic that most of your essays can fall into.

Prompt 2. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? Basically, the idea here is to demonstrate how you fell to the bottomless pit and how you rise up again. Do you have that fighting spirit? Do you still continue after numerous failures and oppositions? Note that failures are not lack of opportunities, so the stories that you succeeded after given a rare opportunity does not fall into this category at all. This mistake is common to all the cliched sports essay where you won the game after being given a chance to leave the bench. Hence, you can only write about the times when you fail, and the time when you try again and succeeded. What is the connection between your earlier failure and your later success? How did the earlier failure affected you is also the key as you must show that your failure really lead to your success.

Prompt 3. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? The overarching concept in this essay prompt is you having to challenge a belief or idea on some grounds. Is it because they were false? Or simply wrong on moral grounds? Anyways, you have to showcase how you fought against the belief and your reason for doing so. I believe that this essay is the hardest to write, would you challenge my belief? Being controversial here is not a good strategy unless you make sense. You shouldn't have to invoke LGBT topics or condemn some religions to write this essay. Remember, the admission officer have their own beliefs as well as you do.

Prompt 4. Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. Now let us examine what is the problem here. The theme in this prompt is problems, be it a theoretical one, a personal one or a global one and how would you like to solve it. Of course, the problem must be a good one that deserves a story. This is more of a situational prompt and not one that you can easily relate to. However, in tackling the problem you must show optimism despite your failures or theoretical obstacles. Writing a pity essay is never suggested and will immediately be discarded by any competent admission officer.

Prompt 5. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family. Ahhhhh... transition from childhood to adulthood, AKA growth. And you will also need to discuss the catalyst for this growth, i.e. the event. How does this event makes you grow? In what ways are you older/better than before? And the term adulthood here probably means maturity so you will have to imply that in your essay as well. Also, death of a loved one, as impactful as it seems, is one of most cliched topics around, so do avoid on writing that one.

Basically these are my two cents on analyzing the Commonapp prompts. Of course, a good strategy is to just write the essay and see which prompt it fits but sometimes it does not fit any prompt at all, contrary to the belief that you can write anything for the Commonapp essay. With that in mind, I hope that the aspiring writer can hopefully generate some ideas for their own essays while avoiding the topics that are italicized above.

Writing the US application essay

Imagine this, it is pass 2 a.m., but you are not yet asleep. You wanted to put your struggles in the basketball competition as your essay topic, but after three sentences, the essay won't materialize. Suddenly sour grapes theory kicks in, the harsh training during last summer felt mediocre to the grandiose vision in your head. The sweat, the tears, the days where you had to argue with your mother to let you continue training seems mundane and insignificant now. If it was really that life-changing, why couldn't you squeeze a word out of that topic? That, you decided, cannot be suitable material for your golden ticket into the US universities. No, it wouldn't do. Silently, you lament on an hour lost in unproductive labour as you try another approach to craft your literary masterpiece. 

Welcome to US admission essays 101.

I have to contend that the hardest part of the US application is not getting high enough SAT scores or all the other technical stuff, but rather the admission essay. Crafting the perfect admission essay is like climbing Mount Everest while holding your breath - needless to say, it is very hard. But before we start, we need to first define what is the perfect essay. Is it the essay that says your life story? Or is it the essay that the admission officers would like to see? But how do you know whether your life story is impressive enough. And how do you  know they will buy it. There is only one way to find out - but by your submission it would be too late.

However, we can also make smart guesses, by looking at essay samples of successful admits into top universities to sort of find a hidden pattern. One thing becomes apparent - they are impressive! Just a first hand look at some of the essays do either one of the two things - it either scares you away from applying to US universities at all or it gives you a glimpse of what you're aiming for. As much of these great essays are out there, there were also essays which were completely normal and perfectly within writable range but still get the writer into top universities, such as in the case of Kwasi Enin.

The truth is, the admission process is not that simple. Guided by their principle of "Holistic", the admission officers hope to build a balanced incoming class. They would be searching to fill their golden ratio of geeks to athletes, of guys to girls, of Hispanics to Caucasians, all in the best interest of the school. Take my school SUTD for example. As a tech school, we are already oversaturated with guys but surprisingly we still have a healthy 60:40 guys to girls ratio and everybody is happy. We think this is due to the administration's policy but we are not complaining. Put yourself in the admission officer's shoes, if all your top applicants are geeks, wouldn't you cut off a few to add a few non-science people? It is but a small sacrifice to diversity. 

Besides ethnicity, gender, the school also considers other things in their application pool. For example, if you are a star athlete in touch rugby and their rugby team has been rusting for all these years, you might be recruited to revive the team. Similarly, if your parents are alumni or made big donations to the university, you might also receive a small boost in your admission chances. This is what we term as legacy. All these hidden factors are also taken into account when the admission officers make their minds.

So the Chinese saying goes "知己知彼，百战不殆；不知彼而知己，一胜一负"  meaning that when we don't know a thing about our opponent yet having perfect knowledge of ourselves, we have at most a 50% of winning. And that exactly sums the whole essay writing process - we must do our best in our essays - the thing that we can control and hope for the best outcome. The things we can't control - like the competition or the officer's preference all boils down to luck. So to answer the question posted earlier, we must write the best essay that is impressive and never, ever write to please the admission officer. As much as you like to bend over backwards for them you must see that there is no way you can know what makes them tick. 

So how to write the perfect essay? It is certainly attainable, despite all your doubts and failures. The only constraint being time. If given enough time to write, rewrite and navel gaze, I am sure that you can write your essay. Every little failure builds towards the perfect final form. It is not back to square one every time but instead you would have taken an invisible leap forward. I used to quip to my friend that "in writing the essay, we are making progress by doing nothing." Every word deleted slowly builds up to that pinnacle, so don't give up. Do start early though, this time, procrastination is your biggest enemy. If you do not start early enough, you might not reach the state of enlightenment needed for the best essay in time. And in place of your masterpiece, you might be forced to submit something subpar, which you would not want to live with this uncertainty the rest of your life. (I didn't get into X University because of my crap essay...

I hope this post will shed some light on US College Essays. Start writing, boys and girls, everyone has to start somewhere.

SAT: Reasoning Test

If you must have known everything there is about SAT, think again. What does SAT stands for?

Well SAT does not stand for anything. It used to be Scholastic Aptitude Test before becoming Scholastic Asessment Test before representing nothing. Just like KFC. Anywayyyyyyysss, the SAT is an admission test that people must take in order to enter US universities as freshmen (Transfer students uses credit transfer systems which is another story). It is offered 7 times a year and is administered by Collegeboard. Today we will be talking about the SAT 1, or the SAT reasoning test. There were 3 parts to it - the maths section, the writing section and the critical reading section. There was a penalty of .25 for every answer that was wrong and they were scored upon 2400 (800 per section) . I used all these "were" and "was" because there is a new SAT coming right up.

Most of the universities accept either SAT or ACT, its rival. In March 2016, SAT Reasoning Test changed into a different format, which will be explained below:

Old SAT Structure

Writing (800)

25 minutes essay question

35 minutes multiple choice section

Questions:

25 Improving Sentences questions

18 Identifying Sentence Error questions

6 Improving Paragraphs questions

Math (800)

3 sections of 80 minutes in total

Questions:

44 multiple choice questions and 

10 student-produced response questions (no penalty)

Critical Reading (800)

3 sections of 80 minutes in total

Questions:

25 Improving Sentences questions

18 Identifying Sentence Error questions

6 Improving Paragraphs questions

New SAT Structure

Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (800)

65-minute Reading section

35-minute Writing and Language section

Questions: 

52 Questions (Reading)

44 Questions (Writing and Language)

Math (800)

25-minute No Calculator section

55-minute Calculator section

Questions:

20 Questions (No Calculator)

38 Questions (Calculator)

The SAT has always been a pain in the ass due to its nature. Personally I think that there is a certain limit to the scores you are able to obtain there even if you study very hard. This is because SAT has been designed to test your English skills - something that you can't study or comprehend overnight. The ability to discern between good and bad English as well as the wide range of vocab one needs to ace the SAT needs months to be honed. To be honest, when I study for the SAT I took 3 whole months to do the 10 practice tests in the blue book. After all, the SAT used to be called the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Aptitude - a natural ability to do something.

In my time, I only studied from the Blue Book, which teaches you the theory of what the SAT is going to cover. As well as 10 free practice tests! 10 tests of 3 hours and 45 minutes each! Which will be roughly consuming 35 hours of your life. There are many SAT book publishers out there such as Kaplan, Princeton Review and Barron's which I find unnecessary. They are either too hard or too easy as compared to the actual test, and the Blue Book is already more than enough. If you still can't satisfy your lust for practices, you can actually try CrackSAT for 5 more free practices.

As I took the SAT in 2015, most of the tips that I learned from practicing the SAT most probably couldn't be applied now as the format is different, however, I still think some rule of thumb applies: you still have to be careful in Maths.

1. Study consistently. SAT is not something you can ace in a cramfest. You will need to be practicing one test under exam conditions every week at the bare minimum. One test is almost three hours mind you. By studying consistently, not only you can avoid the pressure of the incoming test, but also you will see improvements after your practices which you can measure. You can't really do that if you never practice that way.

2. Learn a new word everyday. In order to study for the SAT, you must equip yourself with the most sequestered and obscure words since antiquity. Whether it is by using flash cards or smartphone apps, learning a new word everyday is the only surefire way to master the SAT vocabulary. I downloaded an app on my phone with a quiz that tested every word that I have learnt for that day + all the words I have learnt before. That was my method in expanding my SAT vocab as well as my SAT scores.

3. Analyse. Each time you do a practice, don't just stop after finishing it. Go back to the questions that you answered wrongly and figure out the reasoning to the right answer. Often enough, you are making the same mistake over and over again. I did not analyze my answers in the writing session at that time and I paid dearly enough for my writing score were the lowest. Do not give up if you often hit a brick wall in your SAT scores. Chances are some mistakes you did in the practices lays undiscovered yet.

Well, that is my own take on acing the SAT test. Learn a new word daily, study consistently and analyse your answers. With all these steps, I still think that there is a physical limit to what a person can achieve on the SAT due to its heavy emphasis on the English Language. People from non-English speaking background are severely disadvantaged, don't you think? But remember in the end of the day, SAT is just a component of your "holistic" application credential, albeit an important part.

P/s: I did not comment on the essay section because there is a huge change in the format.

Project Insights initiated!

Hello dear readers, today I have decided to start a new project titled "Project Insight" - where I ask my peers to write articles on their thoughts and experiences in the college application process. All the while my blog deals with the nitty-gritty bits, the nuts and bolts, the "how" of the application process, Project Insight will be giving you some tips on answering the "why"s. Hopefully you will see their experience as being meaningful and embark on an educational journey of your own.

Many is better than one

Jon Elster (philosopher) once said that desires can be shaped by opportunities and vice versa. I guess my own desires were shaped by the opportunities opened to me when I was studying A-Levels. The sensation of coming from a small town and upgrading my ideals when I enter Sunway and meeting the geniuses was really an "eye-popper". That was my story, but have you heard about theirs? What inspired them to have such goals? I hope that blog will let you see education abroad as a feasible opportunity and therefore spark your desire for it.

Coincidentally the first person who volunteered an article also likes "Pi", he is non other than the genius Anzo Teh (One of the great people I met in Sunway). Receiving offers from MIT, Cambridge and Princeton, he instead chose to forgo all of them in lieu of University of Waterloo.

This is his story

Decisions, decisions, decisions

By Anzo Teh. Reposted with permission

The commitment date to US institutions hovers near, but I made a firm decision a month ago after receiving all decisions from the 15 universities that I’ve applied to (11 acceptances, 4 rejections).

I’m committing to the University of Waterloo.

Below is an excerpt of the whole process, tinged with the substantial pressure before happiness sank in much later.

1. The application process

Back in the good old days where we were ‘promised’ PSD scholarships by securing admissions into top 20 universities in my field, I joined my A-level comrades to strive hard in every aspect of application evaluation, and to decide between focusing on just a few top picks and trying our luck to more institutions in different corners of the world. My choosing of the latter added to me the toil of facing extra exams (like SAT) and admissions essays, the nervous feelings while sprinting against different sets of deadlines, and the fear upon shortcomings on every single application component and every single exam.

Come semester 3, the workload intensified until it culminated in October: early action for US apps, A2 exams, and Cambridge admission tests and interview. Cramming economics notes and handouts, battling with the clock while writing econs essays, frantically trying to complete my physics past years, chasing myself to fine-tune my college essays, and preparing for the interview at the same time was just too awful to describe here. I vivid remember how I increased my coffee dosage just to cope with all these and how I spent my final October weekend with my mentor to finalize my apps.
This application work subsided shortly then. Remarkably, PSD announced scholarship suspension (then restriction) in January. This prompted me to expedite my scholarship and admission applications to Waterloo. Thankfully, it finally ended on 9th February 2016 when I could officially sit back and wait for decisions.

2. College decisions

The first decision came earlier than expected: a rejection. I spent a few hours in paranoia, thinking of how one possible choice just vanished into thin air and worse still, worrying (mistakenly, though) that it may portend badly about my further applications. Luckily it didn’t last long when some good news appeared in my UCAS Track and in my email, and a month later I secured my first spot on PSD’s top 20 list. Well...gone were the PSD’s scholarships in January, but in February itself the full scholarships from Waterloo and HKUST assured me that everything would be okay.

Back in December, an email from Princeton extricated me from the anxiety of waiting as it instructed me to check my decisions in 5 days time. I woke up at 4am with my parents on the 17th after hours of insomnia, with eyes bleary and mind blurry. I then slumped into disbelief for a whole good week as an orange tiger with “CONGRATULATIONS” appeared on the computer screen, and couldn’t resist myself from sharing this news to my close friends who were with me when I suffered from mind-wreck during the application period. A similar decision got back to me as I accessed decisions.mit.edu on Pi Day 2016, where I suddenly felt the earth moving under my feet and my mind got ecstatic.

My decisions period ended with a few rejections, but I’m thankful for what I had.

3. Making up my mind

Admission talks attended in 2015 helped me to identify several top picks, which are further winnowed by the mixed admission decisions and scholarship packages. Come mid-March, only three are left in my hand:all are attractive in their own ways.

I consequently devoted the final days in March just to evaluate these three universities, weighing not only on what each could offer me, but also on whether the difference in cost of attendance would tip the balance. While I had a preliminary decisions, new opinions everywhere made to re-evaluate my thoughts as the balance went shaky: did I miss out something?

The deadline of reply to Waterloo’s scholarship drew near, and I forced myself to be resolute, being as rational as possible in my evaluation. That’s when the decision on Waterloo was made clear of itself: a not-so-orthodox decision given what I had. Reluctant to say goodbye to the other two, but I felt relieved from this dilemma when I accepted my offer two days before the deadline.

4. Thoughts

The journey of settling myself into a university has been long and tumultuous, and without the people around me I wouldn’t be at where I am right now. Holding acceptances and scholarship letters with me has been a fantasy for me; it’s real now.
I shall therefore express my gratitude to them, including but not limited to: my family members (especially my parents), mentor, teachers, coaches, comrades and friends for their advice, help, recommendations, support and care.

As I kept saying that I’m extremely lucky upon these acceptances, it’s because I’m really lucky to have you all to lend a hand when I need you the most.

On a side note, I understand that my decision on Waterloo may be surprising, but let me assure you that this has been done after conducting thorough analyses. If this sounds surprising (or even disappointing) to you, then I can only promise that I will stay well and thrive there, just like how I should be if I were to accept other offers.

Time to move on, and I’m looking forward to the new journey ahead!


P/s: Anzo blogs too. Follow him if you think he is awesome!

This is the new direction my blog will be taking, a tag team combo of my own technical know how with the stories from my peers. I guess if Anzo could come to such a great decision, none of us can complain if we were not given the best slice of the pie. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please comment below. And if you like this story, please spread the word!

Commonapp

Today we will be introduced to the US counterpart to UCAS. Meet Commonapp! (CA)

For those who wants to study in the US, you will have undoubtedly heard of this name. Yes, you will have to spend the few months before the January deadline dating this website. You will upload your documents, enter your details, describe your extracurricular activities, divulge your SAT scores -  basically telling Commonapp everything they are interested in which they will then relay on to the schools. Yes, Commonapp is the eyes and ears of Big Brother and also an extremely useful portal. Basically they streamlined most of the application into a website which is extremely useful. You can apply to as many universities as you want in Commonapp unlike UCAS which only allows 4-5 unis.

Disclaimer: Not every university uses Commonapp. Only more than 600 of the 4000 plus of the US unis are affliated with Commonapp but that is most of the well known ones. The university of California (UC) system employs an application system of their own, so does the University of Illinois and University of Texas - basically most state universities do not use Commonapp. However, sharp-eyed applicants might also notice that MIT also does not use Commonapp. And the reason is, according to some MIT employee: "There is nothing common about MIT."

Ok, not to digress, let me first identify a few common problems Malaysian applicants might face in Commonapp. First, you must have at least 3 teachers who are willing to stand by as your referee and your counselor. The counselor's job is to provide a background or context to your application. Where does the applicant come from? How is he like in person? What are his ideals? These are the gaps that the counselor is supposed to plug in to further the admission officers' imagination. Besides the main counselor recommendation, most schools require extra recommendation from the teachers, which will add value to the application. Like UCAS, your referee will be given links to upload your recommendations but unlike UCAS, they get to answer a few questions about you (Rate your attitude in class as compared to the other students). This questions were previously unknown to me until my teacher told me about it. And probably unknown to you too until you read this out. More about value and context soon.

More mystery than meets the eye

For most Malaysians who applied after their pre-university studies, you have to explain the gap that you took after SPM. Never ever say that you did nothing but "量地" (Measuring the land area) at home. So for SPM leavers, find a job, invest in your hobby, backpack around Malaysia, whatever it is make sure that you did something to keep yourself busy as you will need to talk something about the gap that you had. For me, I was conscripted into the Malaysian National Service and I wrote about the experience in my essay. Also, for those pre-university students, senior secondary leaving examinations means the A-Levels or equivalent exams that you took. If you are applying after SPM, you need not fill in this part (but still remember to find something useful to do during the holidays).

Next, the "honors" system is also something that we need to leave blank as it is only implemented in the US. It is not the "anugerah-anugerah"(awards) that we receive at school. We also need to publish our SAT scores and IELTS here. Note: Colleges will still want you to submit the SAT score electronically. There is no escaping that (I know some of you will want to know this). However, if you think that you are too poor to pay for the college application fees, you can e-mail your college to check your SAT scores for you. Also, you can ask your counselor to apply for a fee waiver, especially when you're applying to a lot of schools. One college application fee costs about $80 and sending one score via collegeboard is about $10 so this fee waiver will actualy help to cut a lot of your costs.

The activities section, begs the question, what are the actions, that gains admissions? 

Well, the truth is, everyone will be talking about the latest solution that they invented, the villages they adopted in Africa as well as the various academic Olympiads they won. We are talking about global competition here. Hence don't bother mentioning an activity unless it adds value to your essay. By this time, you should be able to grasp the abstract notion of a holistic application. All of the parts add together to build a true and concrete picture of yourself. BS too much in one part, and your application won't glue together. Hence, just write the activities that you think will build a good image of whom you want to portray as. Basically, we need to emphasize quality over quantity - even I didn't use all the 10 slots. Be descriptive as you talk about the activities and refrain from weird acronyms

For the essay in Commonapp, I will be talking about it in later posts but you must know that there exists an extra comment essay where you can continue to write about additional information that you feel might not be covered in your application (surprise!). I strongly discourage applicants to use this part as the admission officers reading your application is already bogged down with so much work that they will barely give it a skim-through. Although most of you have already Googled the prompt for the schools, there are actually additional questions in the college section (more surprises!). These questions are usually under 50 words, hence they don't show up as the college's supplementary essay but still they are important. For my Stanford application, I had to spend more time answering 8 of these short questions. That is something new that you need to know.

Still feeling confused about Commonapp? Any questions. If not, as always I will leave you with a few tips.

TIPS:

1. Start early.

2. Apply for fee waiver.
3. Sign into Commonapp to see for yourself

Have a nice day :)

An intro to 'Murica!

America~~~~~~~~ the land of the free
except for college education

A lot of people don't actually know what the US university's admission process is about, much less the whole US education system. Most of the parents in Malaysia can only stereotype based on what they see on media. Much partying, much booze, much guns and not much studying, hence it has been frowned upon by those who prefer the more academically rigorous UK education system. But US is more than just a 'wild country', it is also an intellectual hotbed where many of the latest advancement in technology and most of the startups were founded. Going to the US to study is slowly gaining traction in Malaysia with the emergence of the IB (International Baccalaureate) and ADP (American Degree Transfer Programs). But first, what does a US education looks like?

Curriculum: 

The curriculum of the US higher education is different from those offered in the UK. Most of the universities employ a liberal arts first year where you can happily just go and join as many classes you want and gain credits according to the number of hours you attended. The lecture and tutorial system is about the same but the exams are more spread out. 

Types of Universities:

First of all, before everything else, we need to know what are the types of US universities out there. There are mainly two big groups - state schools and private schools. State schools usually have the name of the state attached to them such as the University of California Berkeley, however some of the private schools name themselves after their state as well. Besides, state schools offer lower tuition fees to the residents of their state, thus making it more popular and thus bigger than most of the private schools. State schools are usually more diverse and vibrant due to this, although private schools might offer a more close-knitted community and more focus on the students.

Under this umbrella of state and private schools, we have different types of schools in the US. First of all, we have the normal universities. Then we also have the technical schools like MIT or Caltech with an emphasis on the technology (Institute of Technology duh). Community colleges are universities that provides 2 years of an undergrad education, after which students can further their studies to get their degree by transferring to a normal college just like Malaysia's ADP program. Last but not least, we have the liberal art colleges, which employs the Socratic method - or in simple terms, focus on discussions and debate. People study exotic subjects in the liberal arts such as oriental tea-making and end up with a degree specializing in, well, the liberal arts. Liberal arts has been well known to produce well rounded graduates but they usually don't show up in higher education rankings due to the lack of research work.

Of course there is also the Ivy League - a group of eight old, distinguished colleges and universities in the East, known for their ivy-covered brick buildings. The members of the Ivy League are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities; Dartmouth College; and the University of Pennsylvania. They used to compete in an American Football league together, but now they are the cream of the crop of higher education in the US. We also call some top schools like Stanford "Ivy-standard".

US Universities Admissions:

It might be known by some people that US admissions is very 'Mafan' (troublesome). First you have to take the admission test known as SAT and/or ACT. Not to mention the English Proficiency test TOEFL or IELTS. Not to mention the essays. Or the recommendations. It sounds like a ton of work, and it is. You also have different school using different portals and having different requirements in which you have to individually fulfill. So yes, going to US to study is not for the faint-hearted. You need to be committed in order to prevail. More on these on the next few posts.

Besides that, US universities looks for something that is different from what the UK universities are looking for. UK unis typically only wants an essay from your teacher, a recommendation from your lecturer and your grades. Nothing more. US unis however want to know you as a human being. The more functional you are, the more likely you'll get admitted. Perfect grades doesn;t mean anything to them. A keyword here is 'holistic'.

holisticcharacterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

The US university admissions process is a mystifying one. Your application will be judged by a small team of admission officers, who reads through tens of thousands of such applications every admission cycle. My definition of holistic is thus, make your application stand out while being humble and true to yourself. If it happens that in your application year, there were a lot of applicants who wrote about their solo performances, and you wrote about yours too, then your application will be downgraded; if the universities need swimmers and you happened to represent your nation in synchronized swimming, you will immediately enter. There is sort of an element of luck in the whole application process. 

Finances and living costs:

Here is another factor that potential students might worry. Actually most of the top schools in the US are so rich that they don't really care if you are paying fees or not. The endowment given by their alumni is just too much! Here we have two categories of schools, those that are need-blind, which views your admission and your finances separately; and need-aware which sees your finances as part as your application. Hence you must be careful to apply for cash in need-aware schools as they will judge your application differently and deliberately. Of course, who would want to immediately accept a student screaming "I need money"? Costs of studying in the US is undoubtedly high, even after financial aid by the universities. This is because financial aid by the universities are calculated based on not just your family income but also your family's property as well, meaning that they might expect you to mortgage your property to finance your studies there. There are a couple of reasons to this: First they value the education you are getting heavily meaning that you can easily repay the debts after you graduate. Secondly, they are simply 大牌 (big card- essentially meaning prestigious) enough to do that. Majority of the students in 'Murica take loans.

There is really no space to talk about the whole US university application process here, but here's to give you a brief run through. I would really recommend anyone who is interested to visit USAPP's website or to just Google and find out more about prospective unis. US offers a wide scope education and for those who couldn't stand another 4 years of their life being chained to the final exam, US might just be the place for you. Also, just before I end, I have to tell you something very important. Life-changingly important: START EARLY !

Any questions? Feel free to ask.

So you think you can apply to Cambridge? Round 3!

The Interview:

Tongue-tied, drenched in sweat, few hundred applicants to Cambridge each year had to face the famed fear-inducing interview. According to the video of the interview webpage, the Cambridge interviewers are generally nice and tries to put the applicants at ease; they are looking at your thinking processes, your knowledge in the field of study and your application of that knowledge.

~The Interview~

The format of the interview is a mano-el-mano interview, where you will face some of the faculty of Cambridge in a 20 minute mental smackdown. Unlike most interviews, the interview will have some written questions where you have to draw graphs, solve IQ problems and also some weird questions you have never seen before. Examples for the interview questions have included: Why do bullets spiral? (Engineering), how do you measure the mass of a human head? (Medic) and how do you explain complex numbers in everyday terms? (Mathematics) And unlike Oxford (Another dastardly tricky interviewer), Cambridge interviews most of it applicants as long as you meet the minimum requirements.

The interview is purely academic, so if you are the sort that likes to read encyclopedias and those Horrible Science series, then it will definitely be at advantage for you. Having lots of these general knowledge really helps; or else how are you going to answer the "Why do bullets spiral?" question if you don't know about the rifling of guns? I think Cambridge really appreciates the type of people who are innately curious explorers and creative thinkers, so don't stay confined within your A-Levels syllabus. Read more in the field that you are intending to study. And practice on this.

I also think that the interview is not something that you can prepare beforehand; it takes months and maybe years to have the knowledge foundation to face off with the Cambridge interviewers. And basically they can ask you anything under the sun - from programming robots to explaining jet engines to describing wind turbines - so how are you going to prepare for it? Of course, the brushing up of your A-Levels studies is a must, but then again, you can't exactly prepare for the onslaught of weird questions that will definitely appear. It is unpredictable.

Take me for an example, I tried my best in preparing for the interview by borrowing a book on gadgets and science and really tried my best to cover as much ground as possible. I learnt about the inner workings of washing machines, guns, gyroscope, the Hubble space telescope, wind turbines (it's mentioned twice for a reason) etc. I also went for  a mock interview organised by Mabecs (the UK educational counselor remember?) which I did pretty well. I think that the mock interview was pretty well done, as its simulation of a Cambridge interview was accurate. I remember trepidation, sweat oozing under armpits and shaky limbs, but also confidence in what I'm talking about and calm thinking. I was tested on something I didn't learn before in my mock interview, but still I answered in a placid manner, which was so much different from my performance in the real interview.

The real thing:

I went for my interview two days after my written tests, and it was held at home ground - Sunway College. My interview starts at roughly noon time but I went there around 30 minutes earlier. I was wearing suit and tie but instead of accentuating my confidence, they hid my fears. After waiting for some time, I was called to the interview room.

For the first few minutes, the interview went quite smoothly, the interviewer asked me for my details and my background and said that I have done my work. Then he (the interviewer) asked me about my  interests in engineering and it all went downhill from there.

Him: So what are you interested to do in engineering?
Me: Power, energy. The transformation of energy from one form to another through machines.
Him: Give me an example of such machines.
Me: Wind turbines.

As you can see, I sort of dug my own grave. To be honest, I know quite a bit about wind turbines but I could never predict the direction that the interview would go. First the interviewer asked me to describe a workable dynamo, which gave me a sweat because it was SPM work and I have just all but forgotten about it. However the next part was the hardest as I was asked to design the dynamo in different ways. But (some sort of) common sense helped me along the way. However I was so nerve-wrecked by the dynamo question that later I started fumbling throughout. The stern face of the interviewer didn't help either.

When I got back, I immediately googled "I failed the Cambridge interview. What to do next?" The results were encouraging. Majority of the answers say that the perception of your performance is quite subjective, basically, there is no RIGHT and no WRONG. The interviewers are looking at your thinking pattern and how you tackle problems using your knowledge. You could be answering questions wrongly all the time but if you are barking up the right tree you can still get in.

However, for my case, I was rejected by Cambridge in the end, though some of my friends who got the same interviewer got in. So I guess that some mistakes are costly in the end.

So what do you think? Please comment below.

UPDATE:

I saw this every interesting post on Quora the other day and I think it is worth sharing out to the students out there. It is about the apparent high acceptance rate of Oxbridge as compared to the Ivies. Anzo, one of my PI writers had suggested that in order to apply to Cambridge, one has to be confident of scoring 4A* in their A-Levels exams. Best of luck to those who are applying to Cambridge this year.