211: Financial Aid Tips for International Students (and Their Counselors)

Ethan Sawyer  0:09  
This is Ethan Sawyer, aka College Essay Guy. My goal is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. One of the ways I do that is through this, the College Essay Guy podcast, where I interview brilliant minds in the college admissions world, analyze their genius and work to break it down for you into practical, actionable steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college or maybe helping somebody else. So this is the last episode in a three part series on paying for college. My guest is Joan lu a college counselor who has a giant heart to go with her giant brain. In this episode, she draws on her years of experience helping international students who need financial aid in order to attend college. In the US, we cover a range of topics that will apply to not just students, but also their counselors, including, first of all, how is the application process different for students who need financial aid for counselors. How is working with a full financial aid student different from working with other students? What are some common mistakes that students and counselors make when applying for financial aid? What do students need to know about getting full financial aid in the US? How do students figure out which schools actually meet full need and what that means? What can students and counselors do if a student doesn't get full need met? And where do you start? Thanks for being on this journey with me. Hope you enjoy. My guest today is Joan Lu who has been on the podcast before, but if you didn't hear that episode, here's her bio. Joan's a university advisor at United World College in Singapore. She's worked in the US, Turkey, England and Singapore as a college counselor. Last year, when 61 students in Nepal had their scholarships revoked by UT Tyler, she mobilized a global team of volunteer counselors to re seat students in new universities. To date, 56 students have been placed at New universities in five countries with financial aid and scholarships totaling over ten million the recipient of the Peggy Templeton award from the Council of international schools, Joan is well known for her fierce advocacy of high achieving, low income international students, as well as the counselors who support them. Joan, welcome back. Thanks,


Joan Liu  2:17  
Ethan, nice to be back. I'm curious


Ethan Sawyer  2:19  
just to hear kind of as we get into this, what is the latest? Give us the latest on the situation with Nepali students.


Joan Liu  2:28  
Oh, thank you for asking. Well, as you know, there were 61 kids who had the scholarship revocation. We found 60. We placed 56 a couple of kids are going into next year's fall matriculation cycle, but overall, I think the kids are doing really well, and some of the kids who we placed this year have been doing things like running for Senator at their respective universities. We have one student who got a National Math award at Central Michigan University and others who are doing really well. So overall, I think that they're really they're really taking advantage of the seeds that have been given to them and really thriving at their universities.


Ethan Sawyer  3:12  
Awesome. And for those of you who are interested in that story, you can check out the other podcasts we did on that topic. So talk to me about a little bit about your experience working with financial aid kids like, why are you interested in this demographic? Well,


Joan Liu  3:26  
I guess I'm interested in this demographic for a personal reason, because my my own dad and Ethan, you know this story, but my own dad was a full financial aid student. You know, he got his full scholarship to study in Canada, and so that really gave my family global mobility and social and financial opportunity, and that I am, I really feel like I'm the, I mean, my dad was the recipient of the scholarship, but I am the real beneficiary, and I was a full financial aid student in university, and it's just a population that I really feel Like counselors can, can really, really support, you know, there's, I work with a lot of different demographics here at UW C i for students who who are full fee paying students, I am more of a facilitator or a coach or a mentor, but for kids who need full financial aid counselors, play a different role. They can, they can really be catalysts in those students lives. They can accelerate generationally what was not originally possible for the student in that particular family.


Ethan Sawyer  4:29  
So how is the application process different for international students who need financial


Joan Liu  4:36  
aid? So I would say the application process is different in the three primary ways one the list of schools needs to be different, because less than 2% of the US market gives financial aid in the sense that they could meet 100% of demonstrated need. The application process for international students would also include financial aid forms that they would need to fill out, like the CS. Profile, or the IFA, FSA, the certification of finances. And then the other piece that I think is slightly different is that the school advocacy is, I mean, it's always been important, but it's really, really critically important for international students who need aid. You really can't do this process without an advocate. For


Ethan Sawyer  5:21  
those of you who are hearing some of these terms and thinking, I have no idea what that is, don't worry. It's all going to be defined on the show notes with in a little bit, we'll get into some of the step by step on like what to do with this, but we're kind of just setting context here. So stay with us and what is at stake, Joan, in your view, for a Financial Aid International kid?


Joan Liu  5:41  
Well, many financial aid international students are first gen. They are coming from low socio economic backgrounds where they don't have the means to attend college, sometimes even in their own country, let alone the United States. There's Global Mobility that's at stake for these students. Students also have employment at stake there, there. I mean, just looking at the Nepal group, for example, there are a lot of students whose families are from an agricultural background. They're farmers, right? So this is a catapult forward in terms of what is possible economically for the family and the community. And I also think that there's a generational impact. You know, these are students who, if they are the first ones to go to college the rest of that generation, then it becomes easier for for their subsequent family members and generations to to get access to college and education. And


Ethan Sawyer  6:35  
for counselors who work with students, how is working with a full financial aid student different from, say, working with students who do have the means


Joan Liu  6:43  
to pay for me, and this is really personal, but for me, the role is, when you're working with a full financial aid student, everything is at stake. So whether or not they go to college is at stake, whether or not they can get the money to go is at stake. Their family is at stake. And while I would say that for a fee paying student at those same things are at stake. They're just not, it's not sort of make it or break it right, because those maybe a fee paying students coming from already a, usually family that already has the means to pay. So I think that when I work with fee paying students, I think about, fit, right? Like I think about, you know, what's going to be it's that. It's that whole marriage metaphor, what, what is a good fit? And when I think about a financial aid student, I think more access, you know, where can they go? Where they can get both the money and they can get a great education? You know, I'll never forget I had this student from Ghana, and he had come to UWC and we put him on the football field, and he said to us, well, what do I do? Because he had never seen shoes with laces before. You know, this was this was the catapult. This is the huge chasm that he had to cross in order to be able to access education here. And when he went to college, I met him three years after he was matriculating and he was a junior, and I said, Well, what advice do you have for me? And he just said to me, honestly, these nuances that you were talking about between different liberal arts colleges I didn't really care about. He said, I just cared about going to college. You know, for me, it was I was either going to university or I wasn't. And in his case, he needed the whole at the time, it was like $250,000 to be able to access that in the United States. So I think that, as a counselor, the approach should be different, because there really are two different populations with two different types of needs. And I guess I would also say that full financial aid students sometimes can be really invisible in your population. They don't know what it is to always initiate conversations, to always be advocating for themselves. You know, they don't have parents who are at least in my school. They don't have parents who are speaking English, right? So it's just them. And so it's very easy, as a counselor, if you have a larger caseload, to just kind of almost forget that they're there. And so this is a population that's become more visible to me as I've understood their challenges and some of the things that they have to overcome in order to be able to just even fill out the financial aid form. Many people around the world don't have banks, right? And yet the financial aid form is asking for, you know, how much money do you have in the bank? And so just even translating one question so that it is understandable to a student, you know, or I had a Cambodian student whose parents were illiterate, how do they sign the form? Right? I mean, they've got to be able to sign off on the financial aid form. And so there are all these kinds of difficulties of and challenges that that full financial aid students face in just, you know, simple questions that that we would consider that make my role as a counselor particularly important for for this population, right?


Ethan Sawyer  9:58  
And given. Are the new challenges? Do you see the role as being different? Like, what are the differences in terms of the role?


Joan Liu  10:08  
I would say that for a full financial aid student, you can really be a catalyst or a destiny Bender, and I think for a fee paying student, you know, you are a facilitator, you're a coach, you're a mentor, you're a shepherd. But you know, when you're dealing with a fee paying student, you know that that student is going to go to college, so it's just a matter of which one, and for a full financial aid student, it's whether that generation is going to get access to college, really, right?


Ethan Sawyer  10:36  
One of the things that we've talked about before is taking, you said, like, a more high touch approach with some of these students, I


Joan Liu  10:43  
look at their academic credentials, I say, here's a list of colleges that could offer you a particular point that you are at full financial aid, possibly because, for a student who needs full financial aid, they don't have a safety they don't have it. There's no such thing as a safety school. I mean, I guess a safety school would be going to school in another country or their own country, possibly. But I basically say, okay, here is the list. And I am almost like a dictator. So I really feel almost like, I mean, I guess the word would be aggressive, but I feel like I am dictating to that student. Okay, you are going to do early decision, and then you're going to do early decision two, and then you're going to do regular decision, and I'm just going to say to them here is what we think is the best strategy for you to get the amount of aid that you need. And so that whole idea of, well, you know, I have the luxury of deciding whether or not this is going to be my first choice, and do I want, you know, this particular liberal arts school or that particular liberal arts school? And I mean, I kind of throw a lot of that out the window, and I look at the schools that have the money, I look at this kid's academic credentials, and I don't let the student apply to schools that cannot meet the full need of the student. So I would say the list is critical, like I would call this under the bucket of list management, that's critical, I would also say, and many people might disagree with me here, to to in the same way that you look over the Common Application, or the same way that you were helping a student with the essay, to also have an understanding of financial aid forms and to look these over kids do not understand A lot of this. US centric language assets, you know, savings, all this kind of stuff. I mean, savings is a very American type of concept. So we ask students here at UWC to bring in their financial aid forms in grade 11 so that we know, are they a student who needs partial aid, or are they a student who needs full aid, and then we can sort of strategize, okay, well, then here's the list of schools that they need. If it's a student who is sort of middle income, partial aid, then we think, Okay, let's look at those schools that offer full tuition, or let's look at those schools that offer some sort of merit or tuition discount so that they can be able to meet the full cost. But at my school, we've kind of got the barbell. We've got kids who could afford the whole package of a US education, and then we've got kids who can afford nothing and who have never seen shoes, right? So that would be my approach, with kind of both ends of the spectrum. I'm


Ethan Sawyer  13:15  
hearing so far that some of the mistakes students make are, you know, applying to schools that don't offer full aid but offer full tuition, right? There's also the financial aid forms. Are there any others? I'm really into this list. Are there any other like common mistakes that you see students making in this area? First


Joan Liu  13:31  
of all, at some of the schools that are need aware and meet full need, you can actually see where else kids are applying, right? Because on the financial aid for me, will actually say to you, what other institutions are you applying for? And when I was in Turkey, I noticed that kids would basically write down the list in the order in which the kids wanted to go to a school, right? So in other words, they're kind of like listing all of their institutions in the order in which it matters to them, versus alphabetically. If you listed it alphabetically, nobody would be able to tell whether or not they could yield you, because they've listed them alphabetically. And yield becomes very important when it comes to financial aid. I mean, if you're going to spend a quarter million dollars on a kid, don't you want to hope that they can come to your institution? Right? So, you know, that's a mistake that I see that can be easily fixed. I also see Secondly, kids misunderstanding their chances of getting in. So they'll go after big name schools, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, right? And they will think, oh, you know, I have a chance of getting into these schools. Well, first of all, these schools are sitting at less than 5% and then they think, Oh, I have a better chance of getting into, like, the liberal arts college that none of my friends have heard about, but their chances of getting in are are equally as hard, if not harder, because when you see an acceptance rate that is an average rate, right? Like if we see an admit rate of 23% that's for you. That's an average but, but kids who need aid are kind of almost in a separate pool. So for example, at Lafayette university, there were 144 Nepali kids who applied for a seat, and only two got full financial aid. So those are the numbers. That's the math of international financial aid, you've got to be the best two out of 144 and I mean, there's a larger pool out there, right? There's not just Nepal, who's applying for financial aid. So kids, I think, don't understand that no matter where you apply, your chances of getting financial aid are astronomically difficult. They are more difficult than if you are a US citizen, they are more difficult than if you are in a priority population in the United States. They is the hardest bucket I would say, I mean, aside from DACA. So the odds are, as they say in The Hunger Games, are not in your favor. So you've got to be very, very careful about the list and managing your expectations. And I would also say another mistake is just focusing on the United States. It's not like the number of seats that are fully funded are growing each year. If anything, the number is decreasing and there are more students from outside the United States applying for that limited number of seats. So if you only have 2% of the US market that has at least one fully funded seat, and you have more and more kids each year applying for those seats, I would say there are an increasing number of schools around the world that are English medium schools that you can apply to, where you can get full financial aid. There are new schools popping up in Korea, for example. In India, there are some schools in Africa that are doing some really interesting things, like African Leadership University in Mauritius, and when we were tackling the whole Nepali crisis and the UT Tyler scholarship revocation. And because it was after May 1, we understood that it wasn't going to have to just be the United States. And so we looked also at Canada, we looked at Asia, we looked at Australia, we looked at Africa, we looked at Europe. So if you're a student who wants some global mobility, and you want to study in English, and you want to seek an education that you maybe can't find in your home country, I would say, look beyond the United States. Okay, so your list should include some schools in the United States, but also schools outside of the United States. And I think then you are maximizing your chances for getting a seat at a university for


Ethan Sawyer  17:39  
those students and counselors who are listening and going, Oh well, what are those schools that you know give full financial aid, and how much do they give, and all that, don't worry. We're going to get to that practical part in just a few minutes before we get there, though. Joan, what are some of the big mistakes that you feel like teachers and counselors make when they're working with students?


Joan Liu  17:58  
So I guess I would say on the US side, if you're a counselor who's working at a school, you've got international students, whether you're working at a public or private school, the student sometimes comes to you in grade 11 or grade 10. They're not completing their full education with you. And so one thing I often see is that you maybe don't know or the student hasn't presented any information that would give you the narrative of their life before they entered the West. And so sometimes I see recommendations that are almost presenting the student as their life just started here, right in the West. That's when their narrative began or and I think this is very unintentional, presenting the student as a stereotype and not really pulling out the uniqueness of a student. So here's, here's a, here's a good example of that, that one time a counselor said to me, because it was like, April 1, oh, you know, my students didn't get in. Can you look at my recommendations? It was a US based counselor, and I looked at the recommendations, and the students were from Africa, and so there were just a lot of stereotypes in the recommendation that, I think that the counselor didn't even realize that they were perpetuating, you know, and so really trying to get down to the uniqueness of a student, and I think that that that is one thing that is a mistake that's that's unintentionally made and and then I would say counselors not feeling that they can take a heavy hand with list management. I think as a counselor, you can fully say to a student, you know, we really strongly recommend that you are applying to these schools or that is not a school that offers full financial aid. You can't apply there, you know, don't even try. Like, I think it's okay to be that dictatorial when so much is at stake. So there are probably a lot of people who will disagree with me, but I I feel that this is, this is an important piece. I understand. There are students who don't have the luxury of choice, in the sense that they they don't have the luxury of understanding the nuances of research. You know. You have students who come here in grade 11 from like Sierra, Leone, Pakistan, Afghanistan. You know, they are not where the rest of the population is in terms of information, education. And so I think it's okay to kind of, as a counselor, be like, here, let me do some of the legwork for you. And, you know, look at this particular list. I guess the other thing would be counselors feeling like they have no right to look at financial aid documentation. And I would say that, because financial aid documentation is so important to the students, narrative and their and your understanding of what they need, you know, being able to kind of see okay, what exactly is a student dealing with? What are their challenges? I think it's okay to look at financial aid documents when the student gives you permission to a lot of counselors will say, well, but it's a privacy matter, blah, blah, blah. But if a student fills out their financial aid documentation wrong, which I have, I've seen, then you're dealing with a gap, and that's that you got to get involved. Anyways, you know, I had a student from the Sutton trust in the UK in 2014 get a $7,000 gap times four. You know, that's a lot of money that was exceeded. What that family, what his particular family, earned in just one year. So looking at the financial aid documents, you know, trying to see if all the numbers make sense, this is really helpful to the student.


Ethan Sawyer  21:14  
In the end, Joe, what are some things students can do to help their counselors advocate for them.


Joan Liu  21:21  
Okay? If you're an international student and you need full financial aid, here is what I would suggest that you do. Okay, first of all, if you don't have a counselor, find an advocate. So if you are listening from another country outside the United States, your best advocate would be your Local Education USA office. This is a free arm of the US State Department that is tasked with helping and supporting exactly you you who do not have a counselor, okay, if you do have a counselor and you're in a school in the United States, one thing that you can do for yourself is to write down the narrative of your life before you go and see your counselor, just You know where you were born, what your parents do, what you want to study, how many brothers and sisters you have, you know, just biographical, almost like details of yourself, and give it to your counselor in writing, so that your counselor can just quickly look at it and understand where you are coming from, also the curriculum that you were studying. You know, a lot of counselors in the United States, you know, why would they know what the WASC is in Africa? Or why would they know what, what a levels were outside of the United States? And so you need to kind of try to explain to them what curriculum you're coming from. I mean, think of yourself as almost like a reverse educator. Here's what your counselor needs to know about your background in order to be able to help you Okay? And then I would say the other thing is, if you have a transcript that is in another language, have that transcript, ask the school if there is somebody at the school who can translate this, or work together with your school to get a a translation of your transcript, so bring your original in, or have your former school send it to your current school in the in its original language, and then have it translated.


Ethan Sawyer  23:11  
And what are some things counselors can do to be better advocates for full financial aid students


Joan Liu  23:18  
make it part of the system to get the financial aid documentation earlier, rather than at the point at which the student needs it. So if there's any way that you can even have it be just in the same way that maybe you're asking a student for a questionnaire, or you're asking, I know, private schools ask for, sometimes parent questionnaires, or kids to fill out an extensive survey, ask for the student to fill out an old IFA FSA in grade 11, work with the student to really manage their list, make sure that the that the kid has checked all the schools to see if they offer full need, not just full tuition, but full need. We I've had a couple kids come up and say, Well, no, but it says full tuition. And I was like, but you gotta also live, you gotta also live at the dorm. So, you know you can, you can kind of teach. If you got a huge caseload, you could bring all those kids together just take one session and go through what they need to know to kind of manage it themselves. Or if you're a counselor with a smaller caseload, you can kind of go through it like piece by piece with a kid, and then I would just say, really, try to think about as a counselor, getting the background of the student so that you know what the expectations of the family are. You know how much money you're dealing with. And then try to get the kid to understand that really, the biggest piece is the money piece. You know, they've got to be flexible and let go. I think of sort of, I mean, kids will have only heard of a couple of schools if they're coming from outside the United States and they're now in your school. So really, having them understand that the money piece is critical and that they need to be flexible and coachable so that you. Everybody can win in the end, Joan


Ethan Sawyer  25:02  
say, I'm a student who needs full financial aid. I'm an international student. What do I need to understand about just how financial aid works in the US?


Joan Liu  25:11  
Okay? There's basically, like three buckets of how money works. Okay? This is bucket number one, you could apply for a merit scholarship that covers everything. Okay, so this would be like, almost like a Presidential Scholarship, like an example would be the Jefferson scholarship at UVA or Morehead Kane scholarship at UNC Chapel Hill. These are scholarships that don't take into account whether or not you need financial aid. They're just based on your merit, Merit defined as you know, your academics, your contribution, your leadership, so on and so forth. Okay, so that's like bucket number one, okay. The other way in which you could get full financial aid somewhere is to apply to a school that offers what we call quote need based, but meets full need unquote money. Okay, so this would be, there are many like, for example, liberal arts colleges, selective universities that offer to meet the full demonstrated need that you have as a student. So if you could only afford, for example, $5,000 they would meet your need up to $5,000 that makes sense, okay? But they will also run their own process of figuring out what you need. So what you say you need may not be what they determine that you need based on your financial aid documentation, okay, and this is why I really recommend a lot of eyes on your financial aid documentation. Okay, so that's the second bucket, right? These are schools that are paying attention to your need. You get in that that, in and of itself, says, Okay, you have merit to get in. And now we're going to fill, we're going to remove the financial aid barriers that you have so that you can come and attend here, right? The third bucket would be what I will call the hybrid bucket. So this is the combination bucket. These are schools that have full tuition scholarships and then also have some sort of need aware process, so that, on the school's end, they are pulling together pieces from different Money, Money buckets, so to speak, so that you can get a full package, right? So maybe they have, like, Merit money, and then they've got money set aside, also for financial aid, and they're there. I mean, you don't need to know this as a student, but they're kind of putting things together so that you can have a full


Ethan Sawyer  27:26  
package. And if I'm that same student, I'm wondering, Okay, so tell me finally, how do I figure out which schools are giving all the money? How do I figure out, for example, which schools meet full need? Yeah,


Joan Liu  27:35  
okay, so number one, which I would say, is, I think that I personally feel the best resource out there is the Jenny Kent list. And I know you've had Jenny on Jenny and Jeff on your podcast before, I think they've done such an amazing job. I mean, it's so manual, what they have done to pull out all the data from all these common data sets from universities, but it's a really comprehensive and accurate list, and you can sort the list, okay? So you could, once you get the list, you can, like, you can go to their website, and I'm sure you're gonna put it in the show notes, but you can sort the list, and you can see, okay, where are the schools that are giving really robust need based packages, right? Then, the other thing I would say is go to your local Education USA office. So let's say you're in Paraguay, you go to your local Education USA office, or you write them an email, or you sit in on one of their webinars, and you try to get a sense of like, what are the schools that are coming to your country, that are offering aid, and schools that come and visit your country, there is a chance that they have some sort of scholarship to offer, otherwise they would be visiting your country. So I mean, schools kind of keep in mind where they can and cannot fund students. And so then I would also say, you go and you do significant research. So you go to individual school websites, and you look to see their financial aid page, and you see, okay, are they offering scholarships? You know, what do I need? I will say that for any student who needs full financial aid, there is what I would consider to be hidden costs. Okay, so this is really important to know, even if you got a seat and you got a full financial aid package, okay, whether it was a merit, full Merit Scholarship, or a need based aid package, or some sort of hybrid, you still need some amount of capital, because you've got things like service fees, student visa fees. If you're coming from outside the United States, you're flying to the United States right. There are some costs that are associated with this that I would say will probably run you something like 3000 to 5000 USD. So this is important to know, because I think sometimes the other thing is that once students have gotten the miracle seat and and a fully funded seat, they're suddenly like, Oh my God, I've got to, I've got to take care of the plane costs. So yes, you do. So, so these are things to kind of keep in mind. The other thing I would recommend is, when you look at the list, let's say you're looking at Jenny kins list, really look at where there are the most robust financial aid packages, and think less about the name and more about access. You know, if these are schools that have committed to being able to fully fund an international student, then these are schools that have supported international students in the past. They have services for international students. They've made a commitment to you all. So I would say, think less about the name and more about you know, what can this school offer me and and, and not get caught up in in let's just call it the prestige game. This is not to say that there aren't wonderful schools that are super selective and that have a brand name. I mean, that's that's fine, but there are going to be more students in the world applying to those schools, and fewer, fewer students applying to sort of lesser known schools. So I would say go after where you can have full access to the university.


Ethan Sawyer  31:01  
So Joan, what happens if a student ends up with nothing or, let's say, not enough financial aid? What you know, in that case, can a student or a counselor do


Joan Liu  31:10  
things that I've seen students and counselors do I think have been very effective, is one to make it public. So if a counselor can get on a listserv and ask questions, or ask if there's anybody still offering aid, so on and so forth. I think that that's really helpful. I think if the gap is small, the gap can be fund raised to some extent, Ethan I almost feel like we're living in a world where we should expect to fundraise a little bit, you know, like the flight at least. Because I just think that it's you've got to have some amount of capital for this to work. And so if the school can rally around this, or the kid can fund raise or crowdsource, I would say, if you're a counselor, to ask admin for help. I am thinking of a counselor in Canada. He had a student who had a small gap, he literally went to his board and asked for help. And because of that question that he asked, that student is going to school next year in Canada, in Canada. And you know, there are ways in which a student can pay this back, you know it so, for example, I mean, you can get creative. You can say, okay, you know, we'll give you this amount of money work for us and do these tasks before you leave. I mean, there's, there are just different ways in which to think about money, right? Like, okay, it's so. Because I think sometimes people think, Oh, well, this is just free money that I'm giving the kid. Well, okay, well, then have the kid be an intern in your office, and then give them the money as almost payment, something I don't really, you know, even, I guess I will say, I don't really accept that. When people say, well, nothing can be done. You know, they just don't have the $2,000 that they need to get on a flight. I think that it can be done. I think it requires an acceptance that there's additional work that you're willing to take on. But I, I think that that work, in the end, can change a life. So if, and if you can't do the work, maybe you can assemble a team, you know, so oftentimes, like within Nepal situation, we just, we assembled a team of like eight women, and we just went after we just went after it. And so I think that assembling a team, getting other people on board, getting your admin to help, if admin won't help, asking people specifically, would you be willing to fund a flight, having the students themselves fundraise, like teaching them how to do that. And maybe that's part of the process, and maybe that's where we're going in this profession, right? Because every year I see people not able to go to college because of maybe one 2000 less than $5,000 but I feel like that should not stand in the way of a student's education. And so maybe there will come a day when, when part of our job is or part of a school's job is thinking about like how to teach kids how to fundraise as like a skill for the future, right? I mean, there was all these things now about entrepreneurial studies and Leadership Studies. But there's also the big, the big issue of money. So say, I'm an


Ethan Sawyer  34:06  
international student, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need financial aid, but I have no idea where to start. Give me the practical step by step. What do I do?


Joan Liu  34:15  
Okay, you start with your school, and you ask your school, who in the school is the unofficial counselor, because many, many, many students outside of the United States don't have counselors. Okay? And then after that, if there's no unofficial person who has taken this on, you go to your Education USA country site there. There is an Education USA office in most places in the world, if not, then find the one that's closest to you. So okay, if you're in Togo and Togo doesn't have an education US office, you go to the one in Ghana. In other words, try to find an advocate, okay? Or maybe there's a local international school that's next to you. Try to find somebody who is willing to at least give you a little bit of guidance. It's. But I would say impossible to do this on your own. The other thing that you could do is you could look at some what I guess I would call them, like bridging programs, like my school, United World College, we take students in grade 11 on full scholarship. The African Leadership Academy also selects for great students on the continent and brings them in in grade 11. So grade 11, bridge to Rwanda, if you're in Rwanda, I mean, there are some access programs, in other words, that function almost like the CBOs in the United States, if you can get into one of those programs, that can also make the path to getting to the United States a little bit easier. And yeah, yeah. And then I would just say, really have a bias to action, you know, do small things that move things forward. So ask everybody you know, you know, reach out to people who you know, who have gone to the United States before. There's a huge in Vietnam peer group. It's like a peer to peer counseling group where kids who have made it to the United States have this huge Facebook group, and they are helping younger students with some information. So I think that all of these things can help maximize your chances of getting further in this process. So in the same way, I feel that getting to the Olympics is monumentally difficult, and I am sure there are people in the world who get to the Olympics on their own, but boy, does it help to have a coach. So I think as much as you can, trying to find somebody who has knowledge is helpful to you. Because the thing about the US process that differentiates it from other processes around the world is that it requires third party endorsement, right? It requires teacher recommendations, it requires a council recommendation. It requires school profile, some sort of narrative about your school, so that people understand your context. It. There's only so far that you're going to be able to get on your own. I think that some kids are able to do it, I think that if you can find there are some Education USA offices that run a competitive college club. It's called a CCC, or an opportunity Funds Program, where they select and then they give guidance to kids who are particularly competitive and who they think they can they have a chance at getting a seat. So I think that, by all means, try. But I guess if you are doing this on your own, I would also say, really, take a look, not just at the United States, you know, also take a look at Canada and other places in the world that they can give you what you want, and that can sort of increase your odds of, I guess I would say going abroad, right? Global Mobility.


Ethan Sawyer  37:46  
Joan, what do you want students who are international students seeking full financial aid? What do you


Joan Liu  37:53  
want them to know? I I want them to know that there are some really terrific resources out there, like the Jenny Kent list, like the Education USA offices around the world, and that there is an ecosystem actually out there that I'm hoping that they can be able to tap into. So do the hard work, do the legwork, be proactive. Be willing to put the hours in, and you will increase your chances of being successful, just in the same way that somebody who is like, wants to get to the Olympics will put in the hours to run those marathons, to put in the hard work to lift those weights. You know, there's no shortcut to this. So that would be my advice to international students and and also to wish them luck, because I think that, like, I mean, just to kind of bring this around. Ethan, I'm ethnically Taiwanese, I'm but I was born in the United States. I feel like I've had enormous opportunity in my life, but that only really came because my dad was able to get a scholarship. And he got a scholarship because there was a friend who told him he didn't have a college counselor. There was a friend who told him about a scholarship at University of Alberta at the time, and my dad acted on that, and that action propelled what was possible for me. And so I guess I would just say, have a bias towards action. You know, keep moving forward, whatever small steps you can take and follow leads. Good luck to everybody out there who's listening, who's an international student. And my best to all of you,


Ethan Sawyer  39:21  
John, thank you so much. Thanks for listening. So from the world of financial aid, we turn in the next two episodes to the world of homeschooling and self directed learning. First, you'll hear some advice for homeschooling students and their families from homeschooling expert Becca orlofsky, and then you'll hear my interview with one of the rising stars of the self directed learning movement, Mr. Blake bowls. We'll talk about why you can quit high school and be okay. Sound interesting? I hope so. Be well. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai