ALFRED BOLL: Good morning and good evening to our viewers from around the world. My name is Alfred Boll and I represent Education USA and
the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.
The goal of today’s Facebook Live is to answer questions international students may have when it comes to
financing U.S. studies. Our goal at Education USA is to provide international
students like you with the information you need to find the right U.S. college or university for your study
in the United States. There are 550 Education USA advisors at 435 centers in
180 countries and territories around the world offering free advising services to help you.
If you have questions, please post them at any time during the program in the comments section below
and we’ll do our best to answer them. I’m excited to introduce our speakers, who collectively
have a lot to share about financing U.S. studies. Joining us virtually is Katy Beczak.
Katy has spent the last 12 years working in graduate and international enrollment management.
She is the currently the Assistant Director of International Outreach and Admission at the Rochester Institute o
f Technology.
Welcome, Katy. Also joining us virtually is Dana Vera. Dana is an international student from Paraguay and is
currently a senior at Smith College in Massachusetts. Welcome, Dana.
In our studio, we have Lucy Pham. Lucy is an international student from Vietnam and is currently a freshman at New York University’s
Washington, D.C. campus. Welcome. LUCY PHAM: Thank you. ALFRED BOLL: Katy, I’d like to start a discussion
with you. Can you tell us some of the things international students should consider when preparing for studying
here in the United States? KATHERINE BECZAK: Yes absolutely. First of all, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Thank you so much for having me today. I’m especially happy to be here because one of the number one questions that I get from prospective
international students who wanna study in the U.S. is about financing their education; about
affordability; and also the availability of scholarships. So today I’m going to share a couple of different
options that are out there to help fund your undergraduate and graduate studies in the U.S., and hopefully be able to answer any questions that you have
about those items. First, I think some of the major challenges for
international students include issues of affordability, so the ability to pay for full-time
tuition in the United States, and also struggles with understanding the total cost of attendance for
programs in the United States. A lot of U.S. universities and colleges calculate costs differently than universities abroad, and so being able to
understand in depth the full scope of the cost of an education can be challenging for international students who are looking at U.S. funding o
pportunities
for the first time. So my number one point to international students who
are looking at study abroad opportunities is to do your research and to start researching early.
And there are many, many resources out there that are available to you to help you decide not only what program
is academically the best fit for you and what institution you will be successful at, but also what universities
and colleges are going to meet your needs in terms of funding and affordability.
So I’m gonna start there with a couple of different aids that you can use to start with your research so
you can proactively begin your college search. There a number of different organizations out there that
do provide resources that you can search based upon the availability of scholarships, the cost of attendance and other factors as well.
So one of those is the Institute for International Education – IIE.
They have a funding website that’s fully searchable. The website is fundingusstudy.org, and that
website lets you search for scholarships, search for international student loans, and really investigate what
different opportunities are out there to help you fund your education. It’s a great resource.
The slide that’s being shown now is the International Education Financial Aid website – IEFA.org –
and both of these are great tools for you so that you can search for colleges by many different factors;
by geographic region in the U.S., so if you know you wanna study in the East Coast you can look in your
search there, and then you can narrow down the search by the different degree programs that are offered
and the funding that’s available. This is really helpful because the application process is a timely and costly endeavor.
There are applications fees associated with each application you submit for colleges and universities
and it takes a lot of time to prepare those applications, too. So when you’re applying you wanna make sure that you are
applying to universities that are viable options for you and that will be able funding at the level
that you need. So that’s a great place to begin your studies. Now, as far as funding suggestions, there are a lot
of different opportunities out there, and I’m gonna start by talking about need-based aid that is
available to international students and this is something that you’d also want to investigate
depending on the university that you’re looking at. There are a lot of institutions that offer need-based financial aid, there are some that don’t,
so that’s something you wanna look at early on in your search process. The institutions that do accept and offer need-based
aid would be able to notify early in the process and there are a couple of forms that you would
wanna be aware of. The first is the CSS profile which is the College Scholarship Service Form.
That’s a form that you would submit through the College Board. There’s a small cost associated with submitting
this profile and, basically, it takes about 45 minutes to complete and it’s something you would do with your
parents to provide the university or college a full picture of what your financial profile is,
that way the college can determine whether you qualify for their need-based financial aid grants.
Another form is the International Student Financial Aid Application.
This is accepted by some universities in the United States as well, and it’s like the CSS profile but slightly easier to complete and to submit.
So it’s not as long, but, again, it would be an application for need-based financial aid.
That form is something that you can submit either during the application process or after you’ve received
an offer of admission. If you wanna appeal the scholarship that you were awarded or request additional financial aid,
the college would then evaluate your form and your need and they would be able to maybe modify your offer
depending on that need. So those are options for need-based financial aid.
I will say also that private universities are more likely to accept the CSS form than public universities and
that’s because private university tuition does tend to be a little bit higher than the cost of a
public university. Many institutions also offer merit-based financial aid,
and this would be in the form of tuition scholarships and stipends. This is something that you can research during the
application process as well. Universities are very straightforward with this information. They’ll be able to tell you the level of scholarships
that they offer. Also, the number of international students who typically received merit-based financial aid
from their university, and there are resources out there that you can search for that provide the average
award for international students and the number of awards that are offered every year.
The College Board has a great spreadsheet that’s available that will show you what students have typically
received from those colleges and it’s across the U.S., so all universities are included in that.
Merit-based aid is typically awarded based on a review of your entire application.
So university will really want to see your overall package and your potential to succeed in their program,
so they’ll be looking at your academics, for sure; they’re gonna look at your GPA, your SAT, ACT scores,
or if you are applying at a graduate program, they’ll be looking at your GRE scores, but they’ll also look at any
extra-curricular activities that you’ve completed; they’re going to look at your statement of purpose, your letters of recommendation, and they’ll
wanna make sure that you’re a great fit for the program. The students who show the most potential to succeed and who really can stand out during the application