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Music and Art at the Ukrainian Institute of America
Posted by oleg on November 26, 2002 at 00:35:10:
In Reply to: This anonymous is only partially correct. posted by Bohdan A. Oryshkevich on November 25, 2002 at 00:50:59:
if your list approaches 50 colleges, please post it. I personally know at least one Ukrainian in each of the schools listed. I did not want to argue about which schools are more receptive to the needs of Ukrainians. I simply wanted to help.
There are not full scholarships for MBA students or J.D. students in good business/law schools.
: This anonymous poster is only approximately correct.
: Actually, many of the colleges listed above are wrong. Many others are missing. Our list approaches fifty colleges or more. Much better lists are available in Ukraine especially in Kyiv than this author presented. But less so in the provinces where our students come from. Our students share these lists with their schools and friends. They are not secret.
: THERE ARE full scholarships for MBA students and for lawyers. There are even scholarships for MD PhD students. However, we do not work with graduate students at this time because of limitations. Our program is well known and respected in the Osvita centers in Ukraine.
: We also have lycees, gymnasia, and prep schools around the world where students from Ukraine can win scholarships and from which our students from Ukraine can apply to colleges. Our students have attended lycees in Canada, the USA, England and Switzerland for one or two years. From these lycees which use English, our students apply with support of the lycee. Most importantly, we provide ten years of expertise and the encouragement to the students who can make it. If you are applying in competition against some of the brightest students from around the world to highly selective places you can use all the help that you can get especially if it is FOR FREE.
: Actually, our program is very good in increasing colleges admissions. We increase the odds to a plurality of the chances of students to enter these and other those we select. Last year four of the eight who applied came to America or Switzerland to study. Two are applying after one year. One of our students in 2002 was the first student from Ukraine to have won a scholarship to this elite American college. We are hoping that a majority will win scholarships to colleges after they spend two or even three years applying.
: We select the students with promise after they apply to us as if to an American college. We test their English in their home town. We give them a two-week seminar on how to apply. We provide them with extensive materials. We pay for their exams in Ukraine and provide support for their work. We mail out their SATs and TOEFLs to colleges. We provide everything they need to apply except their own work. We provide testing several times so the investment in a student can go into a thousand dollars. Occasionally we find sponsors for travel and for other expenses. We invest upto $1,000 per student. WE CHARGE NO MONEY WHATSOEVER FOR ANYTHING THAT WE DO.
: We ARE increasingly known in American colleges. We provide brief recommendations of our students. We will also inform colleges if they do something dishonest. This year American colleges will be informed of our website.
: We regularly have to reject students who are very, very bright but exaggerate their credentials. This year we rejected a student with a TOEFL of 670 or so who wrote her own recommendation.
: Ukrainian students have developed a bad reputation for entering with false and other documents. So we are working to correct that reputation. We are not influencing the application but pre-screening the students. Colleges will be increasingly grateful for this.
: We take students from smaller cities mostly but not exclusively. Our four students who came to America and Switzerland this year are from Vinnitsa, Myrhorod, Poltava, and Dnipropetrovsk. Others are from Sevastopol, Kerch, Enerhodar, Haidach, and Donetsk. Some spent a year in the USA with the FSA and could not find any information on the program.
: Our students do extremely well. We currently have students from our program at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, and Rockefeller Universities in graduate school. Another student just finished a Ph.D in MIT.
: Students from Ukraine win scholarships on their own. Many have to borrow the money to apply and against greater odds win a scholarship. Our students take the SAT in Kharkiv every year and there are virtually NO OTHER students taking exams in that city which covers all of Eastern Ukraine when it is available there. By having the USA/USA Program we make certain that students who win scholarships SHARE THAT INFORMATION WITH their younger equally talented peers. Sadly, many Ukrainian students once they win that information. Others sabotage the applications of others.
: We are also making every effort to make their education relevant to Ukraine.
: Nothing is secretive about our program. It is common knowledge. It is one thing to know aerodynamics and another to create a successful airplane. The most practical advice is also the most useful.
: I would recommend that this anonymous poster share his name and expertise with us. That would boost our efforts. Alternatively, I would recommend that he shed his anonymity and share his success with other students by starting a program of his own and doing a better job than I do. I could use some competition. I want to retire from this.
: It is better to build a program than to expose it.
: The reality is that Ukrainians are suspicious of this program and Americans admire it.
: Our website http://www.ukrainianscholarships.org also provides significant strategic information on how to apply to American colleges. People from about thirty countries visit it every month.
: I welcome any criticism out there.
: Bohdan Oryshkevich
: usa.usa@attglobal.net
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