Studying Abroad, The Mini-Series. Part 2: The Plan

Hi there. Hope the holidays are going well. Last time, I talked, well, wrote about finding your "why" as a prospective applicant, you know, the thing that drives you. And now that we've addressed that let's look at the practicality of the situation.

images from toolshero and insidehighered

In the last blog, I vaguely mentioned the main steps one would need to take when applying to studying abroad but now we are going to look at another crucial part of the application. The timeline. And yes, I know, I should probably get on with it and talk about the SAT and TOEFL but knowing the timeline of applications is very crucial to apply. Just like in Nigeria when we write WAEC in either May/June or September/October so that we can resume in November (of course, that is if ASUU lets us), schools abroad also have their own specific timeline. Since I'm in the US, most of my tips would be related to US schools and application requirements but once in a while, I'll talk about schools in the UK and Canada too.

Now back to the discussion, timeline. Applying to schools in the US is like having a job with shifts, when your shift is over, another person takes over. If it is a 24-hour job, there's always someone on shift. If it is a 9 to 5 job, then you have the morning and evening shifts. Schools in the US are just like that. They have a timeline. The admissions process takes at least 9 months to a whole year so if you want to do this, it's not just about writing the SATs next month then applying, there is a whole process to make sure that your transition is smooth.

This is why you might have noticed that the people who apply after their WAEC exams in ss3 resume later than their counterparts who would usually resume Nigerian Unis around January. To make it more relatable, let's take a student who graduated from secondary school this year. They are the set of 2020. They finished around this October (even though they were supposed to have finished around July side but COVID). Now if this student decides that they want to go abroad, they will resume next year in August, that is August 2021. This is called the Fall Semester. Fall basically starts in August and ends in December. The Spring Semester starts in January and ends in May. Note, this process is roughly the same for everyone whether you just graduated secondary school or you're already in a Nigerian Uni. Once you decide, just start working towards the next cycle and you'd be fine.

Most students who are applying to college apply to resume in the Fall Semester. Most international students also apply to resume in the Fall Semester because this is the application season that has around 90-95% of the scholarships. Most schools that will offer international students scholarships to resume in the Fall (August) do not have scholarships for the Spring (January) so take note of this. However, it is not impossible to resume in January just that the application process is not necessarily shorter, it just means you just have to start preparing from the previous year in January, and that your scholarship search will be a little harder.

So back to this student, they take their SATs (by the way, SAT mean Scholastic Assessment Test, this is like their WAEC), apply to the schools they like, and for scholarships if necessary. This will happen between August and December for them, although some students can start around May just before or maybe in between their WAEC (SATs are on Saturdays, and it's only one day so it doesn't usually affect WAEC). This is where I guess it is a little tricky. SAT scores are really important in your admissions process so you want to make sure you have a good score because this also correlates to scholarships. Now this means that you could take the SAT as many times as you want until you get your desired score. (There's no limit on how many SATs you can take.) So depending on what score you want and what score you have, you can spend around 6 months taking your SATs because they are not administered every month. This can lengthen or shorten your admissions process by around 2 or 3 months.

Ok back to the story, then they wait for their admission decisions. This happens from December to April. This is when the school tells you whether you've been admitted or not and how much your scholarship package is. After, the visa application and document processing happen from May to July. Then you can leave for your school anytime from as early as May ending or June beginning to August (so you can resume in August). How early you can leave depends on when you get your visa and ticket so you might want to keep that in mind. Also, the US has a policy that international students cannot be in the country for more than 90 days before they resume. So if you are supposed to resume on August 20. You can't be in the US before May 20. Of course, this is usually not a problem since visa stuff usually takes a whole month anyway so you needn't worry about this. Just some side info.

And voila, once you're in school, the orientation starts and you're officially an international student. After 9 to 12 months of good effort, you can finally relax. (well until midterms)

Of course, I know that I might have breezed over a couple of things in this post but the purpose was to give a bird's eye view of the situation. In the coming posts, I will be taking each step and expanding on it so we wouldn't get tripped by any of the fine print stuff.

I hope you enjoyed or learned something from today's blog. As usual, if you have questions or thoughts, the comments section is open below.

I hope that you're staying safe and jolly this season. 2020 is almost over. You're almost there. Until next time.

Thanks for reading.

Kamikun.